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In the ocean one fish swallows the other: a geometric progression of loss. You are bigger than I. The calamity of love swelling out larger than us. And what destiny partakes of our dilemma? Swallows the cause and effect: eyes and kissing mouths and enlarged parts wanting to breathe and wanting. There is no gentle sense to this. Is there? Only a kind of terror at the chain of events, the scale of loss, the ordered destruction one against the other— all that something larger awaits its moment.

The woman who cannot bring forth her child: go to a dead man’s grave and then step three times over the grave, and then say these words three times: This is my cure for the loathsome late-birth This is my cure for the bitter black-birth This is my cure for the loathsome imperfect-birth And when that woman is with child and she goes to her lord in his bed, then let her say: Up I go, over you I step, with a quick child, not a quelled one, with a full-born one, not a doomed one. And when the mother feels the child is quick, go then to a church, and when she comes before the altar say then: Christ, I said it. This has been uttered. The woman who cannot bring forth her child: grasp a handful of her own child’s grave, and after that, bind it in black wool and sell it to peddlers, and say then: I sell it, you sell it. This blackened wool, this sorrow seed. Translated from the Old English

Has them in every room of her house, wall hangings, statues, paintings, quilts and blankets, ark lampshades, mobiles, Christmas tree ornaments, t-shirts, sweaters, necklaces, books, comics, a creamer, a sugar bowl, candles, napkins, tea-towels and tea-tray, nightgown, pillow, lamp. Animals two-by-two in plaster, wood, fabric, oil paint, copper, glass, plastic, paper, tinfoil, leather, mother-of-pearl, styrofoam, clay, steel, rubber, wax, soap. Why I cannot ask, though I would like to know, the answer has to be simply because. Because at night when she lies with her husband in bed, the house rocks out into the bay, the one that cuts in here to the flatlands at the center of Texas. Because the whole wood structure drifts off, out under the stars, beyond the last lights, the two of them pitching and rolling as it all heads seaward. Because they hear trumpets and bellows from the farther rooms. Because the sky blackens, but morning finds them always safe on the raindrenched land, bird on the windowsill.

I. Smilers, smirkers, chucklers, grinners, platitudinizers, euphemists: it wasn't you I emulated there, in that Godawful place. What kind of face to put on it? How simple is a simon's sign? To my mind laughter's not the mark of pleasure, not a pleasantry that spread; instead it's intimate with sheer delirium: spilt brain on split lip, uncontainable interiority— (make no mistake, it is a horror, this inmated, intimated self, revealed as your material: red smear, white swipe). It's said the brain stinks first, then organworks of art and eatery, and then—what's left? a little cartilage for ambiguity? a little tendon's B&D? At last, the least ephemeral of evidences: nuggetworks (discrete, and indiscreet) of teeth, bone-bits, odd scraps of a delapidated strut—and this is just the sort of stuff, insensate, to which life (which comes again as slime) has always loved adhering. Life! Who wouldn't laugh? Your inner life! Your pet pretense! It can't be kept up, can't be kept clean, even in a thought, except a good bloodworks or shitpump keeps it so. II. Out of the mouth comes a tongue, it calls itself linguistic and it never quite effects the cover-up (good Lord, there's much to cover up: so many belches, outcries, upchucks, sneezes, puffings, hiccups, osculations, hawks and coughs)— so laughter (which, among the noises, prides itself on being the most intellectual) can't help but come out, snorting. Nothing smiled or mild or meanwhiling—a laugh's got teeth to send it off, and spit to keep it company, and rot to end up with. Its closest kin is grimace, it's a grimacing with wind. It will (the will be damned) burst out in bad cacaphonies of brouhaha and borborygma—it's the stockbroker of mockeries, a trachea rake— the vent of rage and irony, and right there in the very shrine of signs. A laugh, I mean, is sorrow's archery and signature, while flesh is being hoisted and arrayed on roosts of skeleton. III. I saw what good comes to; I saw the figure human being cuts, upon its frame. The laugh was a cry from my own perscrewed, misnailed, cross-crafted armature. Despite your consternations, oh you meekened warners and polite conventioneers, the thieves were better served upon that day. For the heart is a muscle, where cruelty's humored. The tooth of moral rectitude's a fang. What I gave at the sight of him there was up. What I got of humanity there was the hang . . .

Fredonia, NY Of course I regret it. I mean there I was under umbrellas of fruit so red they had to be borne of Summer, and no other season. Flip-flops and fishhooks. Ice cubes made of lemonade and sprigs of mint to slip in blue glasses of tea. I was dusty, my ponytail all askew and the tips of my fingers ran, of course,red from the fruitwounds of cherries I plunked into my bucket and still—he must have seen some small bit of loveliness in walking his orchard with me. He pointed out which trees were sweetest, which ones bore double seeds—puffing out the flesh and oh the surprise on your tongue with two tiny stones (a twin spit), making a small gun of your mouth. Did I mention my favorite color is red? His jeans were worn and twisty around the tops of his boot; his hands thick but careful, nimble enough to pull fruit from his trees without tearing the thin skin; the cherry dust and fingerprints on his eyeglasses. I just know when he stuffed his hands in his pockets, said Okay. Couldn't hurt to try? and shuffled back to his roadside stand to arrange his jelly jars and stacks of buckets, I had made a terrible mistake. I just know my summer would've been full of pies, tartlets, turnovers—so much jubilee.

has a moth in her palm, a river on her tongue, a scalpel in her boat, a lump in her throat, a gamble in her shoe, a fire in her den, a shadow in her flesh, a flutter in her breast, like everybody else.

As dawn breaks he enters A room with the odor of acid. He lays the copper plate on the table. And reaches for the shaft of the burin. Dublin wakes to horses and rain. Street hawkers call. All the news is famine and famine. The flat graver, the round graver, The angle tint tool wait for him. He bends to his work and begins. He starts with the head, cutting in To the line of the cheek, finding The slope of the skull, incising The shape of a face that becomes A foundry of shadows, rendering — With a deeper cut into copper — The whole woman as a skeleton, The rags of  her skirt, her wrist In a bony line forever severing Her body from its native air until She is ready for the page, For the street vendor, for A new inventory which now To loss and to laissez-faire adds The odor of acid and the little, Pitiless tragedy of  being imagined. He puts his tools away, One by one; lays them out carefully On the deal table, his work done.

When I was three, a tsunami hit town. “Daddy, Daddy, save me, don’t let me drown.” He saved me and my common-type dolls. When I was sixteen, another tsunami hit town. I cried to my daddy, “Daddy, Daddy, please save me, don’t let me drown!” But he let go of my hand! I still dance to what broke on my life.

Womanhood, wanton, ye want: Your meddling, mistress, is mannerless; Plenty of ill, of goodness scant, Ye rail at riot, reckless: To praise your port it is needless; For all your draff yet and your dregs, As well borne as ye full oft time begs. Why so coy and full of scorn? Mine horse is sold, I ween, you say; My new furrèd gown, when it is worn… Put up your purse, ye shall not pay! By crede, I trust to see the day, As proud a pea-hen as ye spread, Of me and other ye may have need! Though angelic be your smiling, Yet is your tongue an adder’s tail, Full like a scorpion stinging All those by whom ye have avail. Good mistress Anne, there ye do shail: What prate ye, pretty pigesnye? I trust to ’quite you ere I die! Your key is meet for every lock, Your key is common and hangeth out; Your key is ready, we need not knock, Nor stand long wresting there about; Of your door-gate ye have no doubt: But one thing is, that ye be lewd: Hold your tongue now, all beshrewd! To mistress Anne, that farly sweet, That wones at The Key in Thames Street.

The dissonance of women. The shrill frilly silly drippy prissy pouty fuss of us. And all the while science was the music of our minds. Our sexual identities glittery as tinsel, we fretted about god's difficulties with intimacy, waiting for day's luster to fade so we could slip into something less venerated. Like sea anemones at high tide our minds snatched at whatever rushed by. Hush, hush, my love. These things happened a long time ago. You needn't be afraid of them, now.