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Swirl and smash of waves against the legs and crossgirders of the pier, I have come to Brighton, come as the fathers of our fathers came, to see the past’s Peep Show. On two good legs, on one, they came, veterans and stay-at-homes of the Great War, all casualties, to stroll the West Pier’s promenade, past bands, flags, and minstrel shows, past Gladys Pawsey in a high-necked bathing costume riding her bicycle off the high board, past Hokey-Pokey and Electric Shocker, to the old Penny Palace, pennies burning hotly in their hands, the worn watery profile of Queen Victoria looking away from it all. I bend to the mutoscope’s lit window to see “What the Butler Saw”: a woman artlessly taking off her clothes in a jerky striptease I can slow down or speed up by turning the handle of the mutoscope. Easily I raise her from darkness— the eye eternally aroused by what it can’t touch— to watch her brief repeating performance that counts for so little. Or so much. I can’t be sure which. Abruptly, THE END shuts down the image, but her story continues as she reverses time’s tawdry sequence to dress and quickly disappear down a maze of narrow streets and alleys filled with the ghostly bodies and bodiless ghosts of causality, the unredeemed and never-to-be-born bearing her along to a flight of shabby stairs, a rented room where she is free as anyone to dream her dreams and smoke a cigarette, smoke from the lit tip spiraling in patternless patterns toward the room’s bare light bulb, the light I see her by harsh, violently unforgiving, as she makes tomorrow into a question of either/or: to leave this room, this vacancy forever, or go on exactly as she has before. Old ghost, your history is nameless and sexual, you are your own enigma, victim or heroine of an act of repetition that, once chosen, will choose you for a lifetime. I peer into the tunneled past, so small, so faraway and fragmentary, and yet, not unconnected to what I am now. Dilapidation upon dilapidation, Brighton is crumbling, fading to sepia tones, as your unfunny burlesque continues past your life, perhaps past mine, the past preserved and persevering, the sentimental past.

Poor devil, dog six years on a tether clipped to a cubby box. The sun dropped into a slot on one side & after a dark spell popped up on the other. Birds of a weather chattered along wires overhead & the yards around shrilled emergencies. Who knew? Once upon afternoon a dust demon spins itself up in the master’s tumbleweed to his match scratch: puff: mega blaze & four hours’ ruckus until doused out. I’ll bask three days in wonders. I’ll slobber & yawn. I’ll gnaw & grunt in my groin to my heart’s content. They say death changes a body’s mind about things. Master shuts up & just rots.

There is a brand of play called muteness Beneath the play yard’s interlacing branches. It appeals to children born Entre deux guerres, whose specialty it is. It is mutiny; that is, a tongue Of foreign origin ending in grunts. One such child uses his tongue On a frozen fence for the embrace of it For the mutating appendage makes of speech A combat; an internment. There is a brand of child assisted to the play yard By his keeper fussing with his zipper. Yes, it is cold in the high hemisphere And nothing will be the death of him As he sets hard sweets on his tongue He neither chews nor swallows. Such children can never swing too freely From the elm’s loping barkless arm. It is mutual. There is smoke on the air, tarry, Commuting the industry on high As the children simmer within Their word-cloud. And someone or something is calling them home A familiar voice, if they have one.

For Wade Hall is to become a footnote in a learned work of the 22nd century   not just a “cf” or a “see” but a sol- id note such as Raby gives Walafrid Straho in Christ- ian Latin Poetry

What—write my name! How vain the feeble trust, To be remembered When the hand is dust— Grieve rather that the talents freely given Were used for earth—not treasured up for Heaven!

I watch the woods for deer as if I’m armed. I watch the woods for deer who never come. I know the hes and shes in autumn rendezvous in orchards stained with fallen apples’ scent. I drive my car this way to work so I may let the crows in corn believe it’s me their caws are meant to warn, and snakes who turn in warm and secret caves they know me too. They know the boy who lives inside me still won’t go away. The deer are ghosts who slip between the light through trees, so you may only hear the snap of branches in the thicket beyond hope. I watch the woods for deer, as if I’m armed.

hangs in the closet of this small room, collar open, sleeves empty, tail wrinkled. Nothing fills the shirt but air and my faint scent. It waits, all seven buttons undone, button holes slack, the soft fabric with its square white pattern, all of it waiting for a body. It would take any body, though it knows, in its shirt way of knowing, only mine has my shape in its wrinkles, my bend in the elbows. Outside this room birds hunt for food, young leaves drink in morning sunlight, people pass on their way to breakfast. Yet here, in this closet, the blue shirt needs nothing, expects nothing, knows only its shirt knowledge, that I am now learning—how to be private and patient, how to be unbuttoned, how to carry the scent of what has worn me, and to know myself by the wrinkles.

After Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel His Exterior toes like blue glass marbles nails like wax shavings feet like those of an elephant heels like narrow escapes soles like yellow sponges expanding in water legs like longitude and latitude knees like neon headlights thighs like open desert in a movie hips like a leaping horse a belly button like a luminescent watch pubic hair like frontier instances a penis like overnight mail balls large as a boar-hound’s seminal vesicles like tulip bulbs in a paper bag testicle muscles like rising chords an asshole like an undiscovered planet buttocks like a fleet antelope’s a sacrum like plein air painting a back like a chalked sidewalk a spinal column like a suspension bridge ribs like a bookcase a sternum like gum shoulder blades like kitchen tables a chest like a stuffed animal pectorals like floating bars of soap shoulders like observed facts arms like lassos fingers like sparklers wrist bones like a shipyard elbows like antidotes hands like passports an Adam’s apple like a great circle course a beard like Whitman’s a chin like a lichen-splotched rock ears like a full bathtub a nose like a birdcage nostrils like subway tunnels eyebrows like a captive audience a birthmark like a stop sign eyelids like a partial eclipse eyes like effervescence optical nerves like an orchid a forehead like a window display temples like singing crickets cheeks like party invitations jaws like handcuffs teeth like sweet tea a tongue like watercolors a mouth like a silk lampshade a face like a moving picture a head like a jar of pennies a skull like a geode skin with a black line running down it epidermis like a wool sweater whiskers like a street sweeper and hair like a cloudy day. His Interior cerebellum like a coffee grinder cerebral lobes like a house on fire cranial membranes like a construction-paper diorama optical nerves like a developing Polaroid cerebral fornix like colonial maps pineal gland like a giant pinecone circulatory system like cello strings eardrums like a still life with oranges forehead like television backbone like a fiddlehead fern nerve channels like transatlantic cables uvula like a propeller palate like a telegram saliva like a rotating sprinkler tonsils like action figures stomach like professional wrestling trachea like pirate radio throat like a bold headline lungs like plastic bags caught in a tree heart like a supernova pulmonary membranes like dirigibles arteries like rush hour diaphragm like the sound barrier liver like a public trial veins like Japanese characters spleen like a rogue bowels like surrealism guts like an inheritance small intestine like fake pearls large intestine like stolen currency colon like reliable data rectum like a fade-out kidneys like a barrier reef loins like a mowed lawn renal veins like gossip sperm glands like lava beds prostate like a fissure vent bladder like a fish bowl abdomen like a leather suitcase muscles like an assembly line tendons like pickpockets ligaments like safety pins bones like bones marrow like realism cartilage like strips of kelp lymph glands like sentimentality urine like sugar water blood like melted crayons and sperm like flies in amber. How He Acts If he laughs, it’s spontaneous combustion If he mutters, it’s a retreating glacier If he pouts, he sharpens his horn on stones If he jumps up and down, its hard to look away If he scratches himself, it’s with an aspen branch If he gets angry, he fights with tooth, horn, and heel If he spits, he fights his own kind If he blows his nose, it starts a riot If he sweats, it’s monsoons If he coughs, it unlocks doors in the next room If he argues, it’s over lost rituals If he sighs, it ruffles goldfinch feathers If he whistles, it’s overheard miles away If he snores, it’s over nostalgic reveries If he scowls, spears launch from his eyes If he snorts, it’s over gilt lion-head spouts If he shits, it’s historical documents If he belches, it’s a diary If he vomits, there’s finger-pointing all around If he walks, it’s Chaplin If he writes, it’s manifestos If he goes shopping, it’s for lentils and peas If he dances, it’s the Rites of Spring If he swears, he’s a ryght cruell beast If he drives, it’s among the Mountains of the Moon If he bathes, it’s in deceptive surfaces If he dresses, it’s a white linen suit If he wonders, it’s if his own reflection If he’s jealous, it’s of birthday parties If he lies, it’s about mathematical errors If he spends money, it’s on magic lanterns If he goes to the movies, it’s Vertigo If he listens to music, it’s the sound of running water If he falls, it’s down a slope of turf into the bushes If he recites, it’s from the Beast Epic of Alexandria If he is seduced, it’s a river of electricity If he is curious, he attempts to draw If he calls, it’s about weather patterns If he sings, it’s ‘Tyger, Tyger’ and if he escapes, he’s swift of foot.

My brother’s worth about two cents, As far as I can see. I simply cannot understand Why they would want a “he.” He spends a good part of his day Asleep inside the crib, And when he eats, he has to wear A stupid baby bib. He cannot walk and cannot talk And cannot throw a ball. In fact, he can’t do anything— He’s just no fun at all. It would have been more sensible, As far as I can see, Instead of getting one like him To get one just like me.

It was bruise marks of hands that alluded to tracks of murder. Her neck was twisted too many times in short rope, and the tree too high for a small woman. “He was here.” He says, “He came to her new Man, too, and said that he was coming for him next.” The nightmare is black tongue. No footprints. The form in the room laughs, “Ha Ha, Goody!” He sees that it is vapor. Later, when he cuts her down, he knows that she came to him, to him, she laughed. The night will not make her unhappy. He had no time to hunt, since he had to bury three more brothers the next day. Car wreck on ice. The insidious soul danced across the river to entice other women to death. If he is man, he is subject to will. If one prefers Archangels, he can be cast into oblivion. That does not comfort the people and we must battle with Bell and Prayer, for the brother. This will take up the nights and the rest of our thoughts. The brother has seen the foreshadowing of events. He will bring the damned down in his fisherman’s grip into the mad boil of the river’s strength.