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I He dines alone surrounded by reflections of himself. Then after sleep and benzedrine descends the Cinquecento stair his magic wrought from hypochondria of the well- to-do and nagging deathwish of the poor; swirls on smiling genuflections of his liveried chauffeur into a crested lilac limousine, the cynosure of mousey neighbors tittering behind Venetian blinds and half afraid of him and half admiring his outrageous flair. II Meanwhile his mother, priestess in gold lamé, precedes him to the quondam theater now Israel Temple of the Highest Alpha, where the bored, the sick, the alien, the tired await euphoria. With deadly vigor she prepares the way for mystery and lucre. Shouts in blues-contralto, ”He’s God’s dictaphone of all-redeeming truth. Oh he’s the holyweight champeen who’s come to give the knockout lick to your bad luck; say he’s the holyweight champeen who’s here to deal a knockout punch to your hard luck.“ III Reposing on cushions of black leopard skin, he telephones instructions for a long slow drive across the park that burgeons now with spring and sailors. Peers questingly into the green fountainous twilight, sighs and turns the gold-plate dial to Music For Your Dining-Dancing Pleasure. Smoking Egyptian cigarettes rehearses in his mind a new device that he must use tonight. IV Approaching Israel Temple, mask in place, he hears ragtime allegros of a ”Song of Zion“ that becomes when he appears a hallelujah wave for him to walk. His mother and a rainbow-surpliced cordon conduct him choiring to the altar-stage, and there he kneels and seems to pray before a lighted Jesus painted sealskin-brown. Then with a glittering flourish he arises, turns, gracefully extends his draperied arms: “Israelites, true Jews, O found lost tribe of Israel, receive my blessing now. Selah, selah.” He feels them yearn toward him as toward a lover, exults before the image of himself their trust gives back. Stands as though in meditation, letting their eyes caress his garments jewelled and chatoyant, cut to fall, to flow from his tall figure dramatically just so. Then all at once he sways, quivers, gesticulates as if to ward off blows or kisses, and when he speaks again he utters wildering vocables, hypnotic no-words planned (and never failing) to enmesh his flock in theopathic tension. Cries of eudaemonic pain attest his artistry. Behind the mask he smiles. And now in subtly altering light he chants and sinuously trembles, chants and trembles while convulsive energies of eager faith surcharge the theater with power of their own, a power he has counted on and for a space allows to carry him. Dishevelled antiphons proclaim the moment his followers all day have hungered for, but which is his alone. He signals: tambourines begin, frenetic drumbeat and glissando. He dances from the altar, robes hissing, flaring, shimmering; down aisles where mantled guardsmen intercept wild hands that arduously strain to clutch his vestments, he dances, dances, ensorcelled and aloof, the fervid juba of God as lover, healer, conjurer. And of himself as God.

You are food. You are here for me to eat. Fatten up, and I will like you better. Your brother will be first, you must wait your turn. Feed him yourself, you will learn to do it. You will take him eggs with yellow sauce, muffins torn apart and leaking butter, fried meats late in the morning, and always sweets in a sticky parade from the kitchen. His vigilance, an ice pick of   hunger pricking his insides, will melt in the unctuous cream fillings. He will forget. He will thank you for it. His little finger stuck every day through cracks in the bars will grow sleek and round, his hollow face swell like the moon. He will stop dreaming about fear in the woods without food. He will lean toward the maw of   the oven as it opens every afternoon, sighing better and better smells.

A witch can charm milk from an ax handle. A witch bewitches a man's shoe. A witch sleeps naked. "Witch ointment" on the back will allow you to fly through the air. A witch carries the four of clubs in her sleeve. A witch may be sickened at the scent of roasting meat. A witch will neither sink nor swim. When crushed, a witch's bones will make a fine glue. A witch will pretend not to be looking at ber own image in a window. A witch will gaze wistfully at the glitter of a clear night. A witch may take the form of a cat in order to sneak into a good man's chamber. A witch's breasts will be pointed rather than round, as discovered in the trials of the 1950s. A powerful witch may cause a storm at sea. With a glance, she will make rancid the fresh butter of her righteous neighbor. Even our fastest dogs cannot catch a witch-hare. A witch has been known to cry out while her husband places inside her the image of a child. A witch may be burned for tying knots in a marriage bed. A witch may produce no child for years at a time. A witch may speak a foreign language to no one in particular. She may appear to frown when she believes she is smiling. If her husband dies unexpectedly, she may refuse to marry his brother. A witch has been known to weep at the sight of her own child. She may appear to be acting in a silent film whose placards are missing In Hollywood the sky is made of tin. A witch makes her world of air, then fire, then the planets. Of cardboard, then ink, then a compass. A witch desires to walk rather than be carried or pushed in a cart. When walking a witch will turn suddenly and pretend to look at something very small. The happiness of an entire house maybe ruined by witch hair touching a metal cross. The devil does not speak to a witch. He only moves his tongue. An executioner may find the body of a witch insensitive to an iron spike. An unrepentant witch may be converted with a frttle lead in the eye. Enchanting witchpowder may be hidden in a girl's hair. When a witch is hungry, she can make a soup by stirring water with her hand. I have heard of a poor woman changing herself into a pigeon. At times a witch will seem to struggle against an unknown force stronger than herself. She will know things she has not seen with her eyes. She will have opinions about distant cities. A witch may cry out sharply at the sight of a known criminal dying of thirst. She finds it difficult to overcome the sadness of the last war. A nightmare is witchwork. The witch elm is sometimes referred to as "all heart." As in, "she was thrown into a common chest of witch elm." When a witch desires something that is not hers, she will slip it into her glove. An overwhelming power compels her to take something from a rich man's shelf. I have personally known a nervous young woman who often walked in her sleep. Isn't there something witchlike about a sleepwalker who wanders through the house with matches? The skin of a real witch makes a delicate binding for a book of common prayer. When all the witches in your town have been set on fire, their smoke will fill your mouth. It will teach you new words. It will tell you what you've done.

I’ll conjure the perfect Easter & we’ll plant mini spruces in the yard— my pink gloves & your green gloves like parrots from an opera over the earth— We’ll chatter about our enemies’ spectacular deaths. I’ll conjure the perfect Easter dark pesto sauce sealed with lemon long cords of fusilli to remind you of my hair & my pink gloves. Your gloves are green & transparent like the skin of Christ when He returned, filmed over with moss roses— I’ll conjure as perfect an Easter: provolone cut from the whole ball woody herbs burning our tongues—it’s a holiday I conjure with my pink-and-green gloves wrangling life from the dirt. It all turns out as I’d hoped. The warlocks of winter are dead & it’s Easter. I dig up body after body after body with my pink gloves, my green gloves.

Words shouting, singing, smiling, frowning— Sense lacking. Ah, nothing, more obscure than Browning, Save blacking.

I was cold and leaned against the big oak tree as if it were my mother wearing a rough apron of bark, her upraised arms warning of danger. Through those boughs and leaves I saw dark patches of sky. I thought a brooding witch waited to catch me up from under branches and take me, careening on her broom, to her home in the jaundiced moon. I looked to the roof of mom and dad's house and wondered if the paisley couch patterns would change during the day. My brother peeked from a window and waved. When the bus came, I pawed away from the trunk, fumbled, and took my first step toward not returning.

It burns up all the grass too, and breaks the stones, so tremendous is its noxious influence. — Pliny the Elder, “Natural History” On a blood- or honey-colored moon at midnight & no 60-watt abuzz. With Sirius ascendant. From a dunghill’s punk egg hatched By toad or serpent. From cold gland & pillaged crib, from ruined sluice, Bible comics & potshots at swallows. From the Ring of Fire, the Zipper, The Nighthawk with her victims taloned upside down. From pistis to gnosis To the midway where they draw a bead on cardboard sheikhs. From no harvest. From no temperate father. From years borne down tainted water & all we failed to mark in frequencies cranked up, from How laughing we cast our own forfeit. O well — It’s cinch your boots up now, it’s shoulder to the wheel, it’s soldier on To lay coins on the fang marks & stand already spent, Condemned for what we wrongly thought exhaustion. Comes now the bright arrival, comes the pageant rain of ashes: The seal torn & tablets fixed but still impossible to read.

It wouldn't kill me to find new frequencies in a temper tantrum. Tatamis and memory, magnetized selves becoming heavy. Of what is a scream composed? You may want to know. You may want to know why. It is to these arabesques that the birdsong replies. Copula, disappear. Anguish, multifoliate. I am a brother to a wandering prayer. Orb in ruined loop fluting for a lost future. I grab what is left of pistons bouncing across a street. The barricade is foolproof.

Never instead put the bales in the bounty, resize the type to provide ALLURE. Look how the picture seems to tell a story. Mother, I’m all dolled up in HOPE. My breastplate hinge needs a little oil, I’m hobbling along to kick your crutch. Mother, I’m all doped up with DESIRE. I’ve cleaned the machine with delicate hand, scrubbed the data within an inch of its life. Mother, I’m all diary today, feeling PENSIVE. The returns keep disappearing, I can’t get my hands around even one. I keep clicking through the channels, the links, little vortex displays all the characteristics of a MOTIVE, Mother, but someone’s just reported that the election has been made OFFICIAL. The results seem promising. In one version you get to keep the crown. The twin diamonds sparkling your eyes sparkle harder, the LIGHT takes on a decadence like that of old snow. In the other, your garland consumes itself, your hair falls out like nuclear, your elisions lisp the windows shut, breaking the view in half. Your face becomes but a VAGARY and there are no backups in storage. I AM a cosmos if I am still breathing. Wind breaks at my neck and spells your name acrostically. Spells your name like my BELOVED. Repetition of facts and figures keeps me apprised. Dogs mass in the streets, shaking bones, slurping scrap lifted from the MALFEASANCE of silver plates hung to dry from row house clotheslines, the tread’s worn down on the spires sagging from the GLORIOUS peaks of this great sky! Can you hear the clicking through the air vents? Did you notice the picture twitch on the bedroom wall? Leaves turn pink and blue, SUPERNATURAL is not dead, is rippling through me, I can feel my toes, I can see you staring at my nape, I can see you vivid in the dark corner of the day, taking your damask gown off one strap at a time, as if I were watching. I have a MANDATE. Nobody else would bother to see you this way.

What every painter knows, but most others forget is how bright colors dim in artificial light and lobster tastes most fresh the nearer to death you set your teeth into the lobster’s flesh.