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Mr. Van Ess bought 14 washcloths? Fourteen washrags, Ed Van Ess? Must be going to give em to the church, I guess. He drinks, you know. The day we moved he came into the kitchen stewed, mixed things up for my sister Grace— put the spices in the wrong place.

It thuds and clanks like tennis shoes in a dryer, only I am the shoe, sour, damp and wedged into the narrow metal tube, heart clanging.

I have lately come to the conclusion that I am Eve, alias Mrs. Adam. You know, there is no account of her death in the Bible, and why am I not Eve? Emily Dickinson in a letter, 12 January, 1846 Wake up, you’ll need your wits about you. This is not a dream, but a woman who loves you, speaking. She was there when you cried out; she brushed the terror away. She knew when it was time to sin. You were wise to let her handle it, and leave that place. We couldn’t speak at first for the bitter knowledge, the sweet taste of memory on our tongues. Listen, it’s time. You were chosen too, to put the world together.

I know that he told that I snared his soul With a snare which bled him to death. And all the men loved him, And most of the women pitied him. But suppose you are really a lady, and have delicate tastes, And loathe the smell of whiskey and onions. And the rhythm of Wordsworth's "Ode" runs in your ears, While he goes about from morning till night Repeating bits of that common thing; "Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?" And then, suppose: You are a woman well endowed, And the only man with whom the law and morality Permit you to have the marital relation Is the very man that fills you with disgust Every time you think of it — while you think of it Every time you see him? That's why I drove him away from home To live with his dog in a dingy room Back of his office.

You are sitting in Mrs. Caldera’s kitchen, you are sipping a glass of lemonade and trying not to be too curious about the box of plastic hummingbirds behind you, the tray of tineless forks at your elbow. You have heard about the backroom where no one else has ever gone and whatever enters, remains, refrigerator doors, fused coils, mower blades, milk bottles, pistons, gears. “You never know,” she says, rummaging through a cedar chest of recipes, “when something will come of use.” There is a vase of pencil tips on the table, a bowl full of miniature wheels and axles. Upstairs, where her children slept, the doors will not close, the stacks of magazines are burgeoning, there are snow shoes and lampshades, bedsprings and picture tubes, and boxes and boxes of irreducibles! You imagine the headline in the Literalist Express: House Founders Under Weight Of Past. But Mrs Caldera is baking cookies, she is humming a song from childhood, her arms are heavy and strong, they have held babies, a husband, tractor parts and gas tanks, what have they not found a place for? It is getting dark, you have sat for a long time. If you move, you feel something will be disturbed, there is room enough only for your body. “Stay awhile,” Mrs. Caldera says, and never have you felt so valuable.

God and Mrs. God in watercolor blue skirt desolate. — David Schubert I am not a woman, I am a man. Made in His image. I keep the house, a gray Cape Cod, and broom it well. I wear a skirt to be comfortable. I build the fire. When my husband comes home I don’t pester Him with questions. He knows where to find His slippers and His pipe. Out our kitchen back door I see the prophets freight-hopping the long bad Western in ancient English that no one need read to know. Everyone speaks his part: the women keep their heads down while the men are losing theirs. Children? How often I’ve prayed for a child, which means slipping meaning looks to my husband as we rock together on the porch of an evening, drinking lemonade and playing Scrabble. If He lets me win it’s a sign. I haven’t won yet. But the neighbor children come and go and take the pies cooling on the windowsill without thanks. Sometimes terrible things happen to them — some man spills the blood cradled so carefully in every hand. I accept no blame. The pies were there to leave alone, or not. God says nothing but taps out His pipe, stands, with a hand to ease His aching back. Time for bed. Our bed is a rolling ocean that I tread alone just a head bobbing above the ash-colored waves while the moon waits for me and everything to drown, to know again the peace the moon knows, the silence interrupted by astronauts, little green men, the spectacle a mother can’t help but make of  herself. God comes to bed and I clutch a spar, a barrel, an oar, and ride out the night with it. When He fucks me still He doesn’t speak, for speech is creation but I rock with him, I roll inside what cannot be comprehended, in force. I forget that I’m a man, I forget the wild sea, I let slip my grasp and the colors I have that cover me. Once I dreamed of the morning: we left the house together in identical sober suits, we stood in the street and beheld the sad little town, wreathed in black crepe for its children. As though the morning could show me His face. He coughed. And when I awoke in our ordinary bed, streaked by sun through leaded windows, I held my baby to my breast and watched the roof  beam and whispered to her,It’s all right, we are safe only and always from our dreams.

I am so young that I am still in love with Battle Creek, Michigan: decoder rings, submarines powered by baking soda, whistles that only dogs can hear. Actually, not even them. Nobody can hear them. Mrs. Hill from next door is hammering on our front door shouting, and my father in his black and gold gangster robe lets her in trembling and bunched up like a rabbit in snow pleading,oh I’m so sorry, so sorry, so sorry,

He protested all his life long The newspapers lied about him villainously; That he was not at fault for Minerva's fall, But only tried to help her. Poor soul so sunk in sin he could not see That even trying to help her, as he called it, He had broken the law human and divine. Passers by, an ancient admonition to you: If your ways would be ways of pleasantness, And all your pathways peace, Love God and keep his commandments.

The school bell rings, we go inside, Our teacher isn’t there. “Maybe she’s sick!” her pet cries out. Yeah, right. As if I’d care. I have a D in Language Arts, My grade in math’s the same. And now my teacher might be sick. Could be I’m part to blame. She doesn’t like me, that’s a fact, I wouldn’t tell a lie. She says stuff like: “You’re very smart, But you don’t even try.” I start to laugh—my teacher’s sick! And boy, I’m feeling fine . . . When someone knocks the door right in, And there stands Frankenstein. She’s six-foot-eight, her dress is black, She’s wearing combat boots. I start to gasp, she growls and says, “I’ll be your substitute.” The teacher’s pet is whimpering; She doesn’t stand a chance. The smart kid stares and points and faints. The bully wets his pants. “My name is Mrs. Stein,” she says, And every student cringes. She leans the door against the wall, She’s knocked it off its hinges. “Now let’s begin. You there! Stand up!” She looks me in the eye. I try to move, my legs won’t work. I know I’m going to die! In one big step she’s next to me, And she does more than hover. She blocks the sun, it’s dark as night, My classmates run for cover. “Now get up to the board,” she says. “I’d like to see some action. Pick up the chalk, explain to us Division of a fraction.” I leap away to save my life, This time I really try. I think and think and think and croak, “Invert and multiply.” “Correct! She says. I breathe again And head back for my chair. “You, FREEZE!” she shouts, and I stop cold. “And don’t go anywhere.” This all begins at nine o’clock, I fight to stay alive. It seems to last a million years— The clock says nine-o-five. That’s just three hundred seconds, And then my turn is through. She points at every one of us— “Now you. Now, you. Now, you.” We all get nailed this awful day, There’s nowhere we can hide. The lunch bell rings, we cannot eat, We simply crawl outside. We can’t believe the other kids Who run and play their games. Not us, who have big Mrs. Stein— Our world is not the same. The bell has tolled, I must go in, My time on earth is through. I’ll leave this on the playground— Here’s what you have to do. You must listen to your teacher And pray her health is fine, Or one day soon you’ll hear the words: “My name is Mrs. Stein.”

A tribute The elephant's trunk uncurling From the lightning flashes In the clouds was Marie Antoinette, As usual trumpeting. The greedy suction Was her tornado vacuuming across the golden Kansas flatness. Meanwhile, the count was talking to the swan. The swan liked what he was saying and got Right out of the pond. Meanwhile, grown men in Afghanistan. The count had fought in Algeria. Meanwhile, neon in Tokyo. Madame la Comtesse waved to us from the top step, Waved to her count, their swan, their ornamental pond,et moi. We were a towering cornucopia Of autumn happiness And gourmandise rotating counterclockwise, Backwards toward the guillotine. I kept a rainbow as a pet and grandly Walked the rainbow on a leash. I exercised it evenings together with the cheetah, A Thorstein Veblen moment of conspicuous consumption: A dapper dauphin in a T-shirt that said FRED Parading with his pets decked out in T-shirts that said FRED'S. I left my liver in the Cher. I ate my heart out en Berry. We drank and ate France between the wars, And every morning couldn't wait. It felt sunshiny in the shadow of the château. And when the rainbow leapt from there to here, It landed twenty years away from the Cher. The place it landed was the Persian Gulf. It landed twinkling stardust where I'm standing in my life With one-hump Marie Antoinette, my wife, Who resembles that disarming camel yesterday. In fact, the camel yesterday was smitten. She left the other camels to come over. You have a lovely liquid wraparound eye. She stood there looking at me sideways. They feed their racing camels caviar in Qatar. The ruler of Dubai has said that he will try to buy Versailles. A refrigerated ski slope, five stories high, Lives improbably inside a downtown shopping mall in Dubai. Arab men, wearing sneakers under their robes, hold hands. Faceless black veils stop shopping to watch through the glass. Seeing the skiers emphasizes the desert, Like hearing far-off thunder at a picnic. Both the word thunder and the word picnic are of course Arabic. Indeed, Arabic was the language of French aristocrats Before the Terror, bad body odor perfumed. It is the language of the great Robert Frost poems, Which have the suicide bomber's innocence Walking safely past the checkpoint into the crowd. They pay payola to Al Qaeda to stay away from Doha. The emir was in his counting-house, counting out his oil and gas. Another sunny Sunni day in the UAE! A candidate for president Who wants to manumit our oil-dependent nation First has to get the message to every oily girl and boy To just say no to up and down and in and out, Labanotation Of moaning oil rigs extracting oil joy. My fellow Americans, I see a desert filled with derricks Pumping up and down but never satisfied: Obsessional hydraulics and Jimi Hendrix has hysterics. I smash my guitar to bits on stage and that's all, folks! It isn't. I contemplate the end of the world. It isn't. I have my croissant and café and the Trib and walk the rainbow Around the block. The young North African hipsters in the bitter banlieues Contemplate the end of the world. I contemplate the end of the world but in my case It's not. There are still things to buy. I walk the rainbow in the dark. The world is the kiosk where I get my Herald Tribune. The world is my local café where my café au lait is quadroon. I go to the strange little statue of Pierre Mendès-France In the Jardin du Luxembourg, in Paris, France. I make a pilgrimage to it. My quaint political saint and I visit. The young North African hipsters in the bitter banlieues Contemplate the end of the world, which isn't The end of the world, though yes, quite true, In Algeria and Afghanistan Jihad is developing a dirty nuclear bomb That smells like frangipani in flower To keep Frangipani in power. Ayatollah Frangipani has returned from his long exile in France To annihilate vice. I stomp the campfire out and saddle up my loyal Mayflower— Who is swifter than a life is brief under the stars! My prize four-wheel-drive with liquid wraparound eyes! We ski the roller coaster ocean's up and down dunes. We reach land at last and step on Plymouth Rock.