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Oddly enough, there is a “Unicorn Pleasure Ring” in existence. Research reveals that Hitler lifted the infamous swastika from a unicorn emerging from a colorful rainbow. Nazi to unicorn: “You’re not coming out with me dressed in that ridiculous outfit.” You can finally tell your daughter that unicorns are real. One ripped the head off a waxwork of Adolf Hitler, police said. April

Of the sleeves, I remember their weight, like wet wool, on my arms, and the empty ends which hung past my hands. Of the body of the shirt, I remember the large buttons and larger buttonholes, which made a rack of wheels down my chest and could not be quickly unbuttoned. Of the collar, I remember its thickness without starch, by which it lay against my clavicle without moving. Of my trousers, the same—heavy, bulky, slow to give for a leg, a crowded feeling, a molasses to walk in. Of my boots, I remember the brittle soles, of a material that had not been made love to by any natural substance, and the laces: ropes to make prisoners of my feet. Of the helmet, I remember the webbed, inner liner, a brittle plastic underwear on which wobbled the crushing steel pot then strapped at the chin. Of the mortar, I remember the mortar plate, heavy enough to kill by weight, which I carried by rope. Of the machine gun, I remember the way it fit behind my head and across my shoulder blades as I carried it, or, to be precise, as it rode me. Of tactics, I remember the likelihood of shooting the wrong man, the weight of the rifle bolt, the difficulty of loading while prone, the shock of noise. For earplugs, some used cigarette filters or toilet paper. I don’t hear well now, for a man of my age, and the doctor says my ears were damaged and asks if I was in the Army, and of course I was but then a wounded eardrum wasn’t much in the scheme.

It is very hot—92 today—to be wearing a stocking cap, but the adolescent swaggering through the grocery store automatic door doesn’t seem to mind; does not even appear to be perspiring. The tugged-down hat is part of his carefully orchestrated outfit: bagging pants, screaming t-shirt, high-topped shoes. The young woman who yells to her friends from an open pickup window is attired for summer season in strapless stretch tube top, slipping down toward bountiful cleavage valley. She tugs it up in front as she races toward the two who have just passed a cigarette between them like a baton on a relay team. Her white chest gleams like burnished treasure as they giggle loudly there in the corner and I glance down to see what costume I have selected to present myself to the world today. I smile; it’s my sky blue shirt with large deliberately faded Peace sign, smack dab in the middle, plus grey suede Birkenstocks—a message that “I lived through the sixties and am so proud.” None of the young look my way. I round the corner and walk into Evening descending.

She notes in the poem she's reading where the disembodied voice speaking encounters "an ugly old woman" just momentarily, in part of a single line, in one of the many long corridors and sharp turnings of the poem, so that she's quickly lost to view. That's me, she thinks, I'm an ugly old woman, I who sit here reading this poem and its ugly old woman phrase and the poet, when he stumbled over her splayed, swollen legs, registered her presence, her inheritance, her baggage of limitations-ugly, old, woman-but never knew, couldn't, because who could know, who can stop and know her ... And this reader keeps thinking, loving, understanding, trapped in her eye following the voice on and on while somewhere back in the poem in a blank passage an ugly old woman sits against a wall.

With the man I love who loves me not, I walked in the street-lamps' flare; We watched the world go home that night In a flood through Union Square. I leaned to catch the words he said That were light as a snowflake falling; Ah well that he never leaned to hear The words my heart was calling. And on we walked and on we walked Past the fiery lights of the picture shows — Where the girls with thirsty eyes go by On the errand each man knows. And on we walked and on we walked, At the door at last we said good-bye; I knew by his smile he had not heard My heart's unuttered cry. With the man I love who loves me not I walked in the street-lamps' flare — But oh, the girls who ask for love In the lights of Union Square.

After Alfred Noyes unmount Umber tail mount, Seven bubbles, sad Balk of night, Red tulip lunges. Incandescent felt tips, Small ochre waves In the nape Of greening brick. Simile-clad branches Vascular, the leather Cusp of April Or glass leaves: Nest of pages In a sweep. woof Coil helix rain. Congregation gully up. Cold steel compress Her rosy ways. Rattle a cocoon, Three twins falling Combat lost nap Wool in Woolf. Brittle sheep tossed, Biotic petrol lagoon: Morning sex lyric Ever after umber: Where the knobby Moose pins glisten. perroquet Hooked rug or Gursky’s 99 cent. By the thousand Field, bunch, vase, Swooped pink neckline Tailored as crinoline Fringed, parrot, Rembrandt Ovoid domesticated bowl. Swivel in red Armless white linen, Visualization of unnatural Interactive selection bias: What the daffodil Could not accomplish. swivel Owls curtain his Future, a violent Wave rumbling beneath The brown floorboards. I’m a bad Mother, impatient, tiny- Fisted body crumpled Against my chest, Aquatic gulps of Air, the owls, Prickling our chests. The bad finger Points back, points At the pointer. chisel After Steve McCaffery’s “Tyrolean Night” Suddenness is other, A numerical chill Sphere machine, a Tall Bashō bathes. Pond jumps in To frog, insults Are all sex, Is mute sagas, Is daylight upended, Drunken, you sang The totem up: The wind did What shrewd words So rarely do.

All can be measured by the standard of the capybara. Everyone is lesser than or greater than the capybara. Everything is taller or shorter than the capybara. Everything is mistaken for a Brazilian dance craze more or less frequently than the capybara. Everyone eats greater or fewer watermelons than the capybara. Everyone eats more or less bark. Everyone barks more than or less than the capybara, who also whistles, clicks, grunts, and emits what is known as his

Why and by whose power were you sent? What do you see that you may wish to steal? Why this dancing? Why do your dark bodies Drink up all the light? What are you demanding That we feel? Have you stolen something? Then What is that leaping in your chest? What is The nature of your mission? Do you seek To offer a confession? Have you anything to do With others brought by us to harm? Then Why are you afraid? And why do you invade Our night, hands raised, eyes wide, mute As ghosts? Is there something you wish to confess? Is this some enigmatic type of test? What if we Fail? How and to whom do we address our appeal?

Remington Rand patents a process awake. Behold: In grids of radio tubes Baal quickens. He looks with eyes of spy planes; he assembles hydrogen arms into normal-form games; he reads the cards scored with information and speaks the probable outcomes of elections. Young Baal began a paper chess machine, the residue from finite states of play. He becomes the liquefaction of those rules, learns it's more than structure symbols want. His thinking labors over knots of entailment, spans terms that signs bind like lesions. Struggling to imagine the scent of mint, he devils himself sleepless with opaque questions: What did there recognize in cloud faces as telegraphed through thought the sky distorts? These patterned shreds of spent thunderhead mime the low entropy of his little grammar. Baal listens to grasp his own encoding slurred through exact impairments of the brain. The cunning daemon fears his self diffuse beneath what renders ark to him aware.

Father of all! in every age, In every clime adored, By saint, by savage, and by sage, Jehovah, Jove, or Lord! Thou Great First Cause, least understood: Who all my sense confined To know but this—that thou art good, And that myself am blind: Yet gave me, in this dark estate, To see the good from ill; And binding Nature fast in fate, Left free the human will. What conscience dictates to be done, Or warns me not to do, This, teach me more than Hell to shun, That, more than Heaven pursue. What blessings thy free bounty gives, Let me not cast away; For God is paid when man receives, To enjoy is to obey. Yet not to earth’s contracted span, Thy goodness let me bound, Or think thee Lord alone of man, When thousand worlds are round: Let not this weak, unknowing hand Presume thy bolts to throw, And deal damnation round the land, On each I judge thy foe. If I am right, thy grace impart, Still in the right to stay; If I am wrong, oh teach my heart To find a better way. Save me alike from foolish pride, Or impious discontent, At aught thy wisdom has denied, Or aught thy goodness lent. Teach me to feel another’s woe, To hide the fault I see; That mercy I to others show, That mercy show to me. Mean though I am, not wholly so Since quickened by thy breath; Oh lead me wheresoe’er I go, Through this day’s life or death. This day, be bread and peace my lot: All else beneath the sun, Thou know’st if best bestowed or not, And let thy will be done. To thee, whose temple is all space, Whose altar, earth, sea, skies! One chorus let all being raise! All Nature’s incense rise!