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What a giant I must seem to them, an exhausted giant who dozes above her sewing. Asleep in mid-stitch, sorting the day’s haul of cinders, rubies, griefs— They were laughing and carrying on, their tiny silver needles flying in and out, tiny silver thimbles on their fingers. It’s no use of course, keeping secrets from them, when chattering is almost their religion. Some held corners of the flag like an enormous quilt, and some danced on little shelves above the workshop. They were so merrie that I fell asleep again. In the morning my beautiful flag was finished, every stitch in place and every seam. So now I raise it—slowly, underneath a secret sky. Near the door to the half-daft and the cradle of kleptocracy. Where it rips and shivers, rips and shivers once more And makes me furiously glad, and fills me up with serious pleasure.

—spring wind with its train of spoons, kidney-bean shaped pools, Floridian humus, cicadas with their electric appliance hum, cricket pulse of dusk under the pixilate gold of the trees, fall’s finish, snow’s white afterlife, death’s breath finishing the monologue Phenomena, The Most Beautiful Girl you carved the word because you craved the world—

I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me, And what can be the use of him is more than I can see. He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head; And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed. The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow— Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow; For he sometimes shoots up taller like an india-rubber ball, And he sometimes gets so little that there's none of him at all. He hasn't got a notion of how children ought to play, And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way. He stays so close beside me, he's a coward you can see; I'd think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me! One morning, very early, before the sun was up, I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup; But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head, Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.

Shoes, secret face of my inner life: Two gaping toothless mouths, Two partly decomposed animal skins Smelling of mice nests. My brother and sister who died at birth Continuing their existence in you, Guiding my life Toward their incomprehensible innocence. What use are books to me When in you it is possible to read The Gospel of my life on earth And still beyond, of things to come? I want to proclaim the religion I have devised for your perfect humility And the strange church I am building With you as the altar. Ascetic and maternal, you endure: Kin to oxen, to Saints, to condemned men, With your mute patience, forming The only true likeness of myself.

My sin is an act of cruelty depriving myself of worldly desires. Locked in a rented room I sit all day, listening to the murmurs of many-headed visions. Cockroaches are my temporary friends dwelling in their underground castles. The ocean is my mother I visit in need of love and companionship. She only listens to my laughs and cries like God in presence. Old wounds all over again come hand in hand off and on like jealous friends wanting someone else’s credit. Under a lamp in the night I meet a unicorn sitting in my mirror.

She fell asleep on Christmas Eve: At length the long-ungranted shade Of weary eyelids overweigh'd The pain nought else might yet relieve. Our mother, who had lean'd all day Over the bed from chime to chime, Then rais'd herself for the first time, And as she sat her down, did pray. Her little work-table was spread With work to finish. For the glare Made by her candle, she had care To work some distance from the bed. Without, there was a cold moon up, Of winter radiance sheer and thin; The hollow halo it was in Was like an icy crystal cup. Through the small room, with subtle sound Of flame, by vents the fireshine drove And redden'd. In its dim alcove The mirror shed a clearness round. I had been sitting up some nights, And my tired mind felt weak and blank; Like a sharp strengthening wine it drank The stillness and the broken lights. Twelve struck. That sound, by dwindling years Heard in each hour, crept off; and then The ruffled silence spread again, Like water that a pebble stirs. Our mother rose from where she sat: Her needles, as she laid them down, Met lightly, and her silken gown Settled: no other noise than that. "Glory unto the Newly Born!" So, as said angels, she did say; Because we were in Christmas Day, Though it would still be long till morn. Just then in the room over us There was a pushing back of chairs, As some who had sat unawares So late, now heard the hour, and rose. With anxious softly-stepping haste Our mother went where Margaret lay, Fearing the sounds o'erhead—should they Have broken her long watch'd-for rest! She stoop'd an instant, calm, and turn'd; But suddenly turn'd back again; And all her features seem'd in pain With woe, and her eyes gaz'd and yearn'd. For my part, I but hid my face, And held my breath, and spoke no word: There was none spoken; but I heard The silence for a little space. Our mother bow'd herself and wept: And both my arms fell, and I said, "God knows I knew that she was dead." And there, all white, my sister slept. Then kneeling, upon Christmas morn A little after twelve o'clock We said, ere the first quarter struck, "Christ's blessing on the newly born!"

Pandemic of lilies                          dreaming majesty hovers like sweat & unwraps you & you are in love it makes you bad,    bad is your name is the desert is movement                                      long kiss heavy gut            slow slow hands                 in your seeds

A basket of apples brown in our kitchen, their warm scent is the scent of ripening, and my sister, entering the room quietly, takes a seat at the table, takes up the task of peeling slowly away the blemished skins, even half-rotten ones are salvaged carefully. She makes sure to carve out the mealy flesh. For this, I am grateful. I explain,this elegy would love to save everything. She smiles at me, and before long, the empty bowl she uses fills, domed with thin slices she brushes into the mouth of a steaming pot on the stove. What can I do? I ask finally.Nothing, she says,let me finish this one thing alone.

Interesting that I have to live with my skeleton. It stands, prepared to emerge, and I carry it with me—this other thing I will become at death, and yet it keeps me erect and limber in my walk, my rival. What will the living see of me if they should open my grave but my bones that will stare at them through hollow sockets and bared teeth. I write this to warn my friends not to be shocked at my changed attitude toward them, but to be aware that I have it in me to be someone other than I am, and I write to ask forgiveness that death is not wholesome for friendships, that bones do not talk, have no quarrel with me, do not even know I exist. A machine called skeleton will take my place in the minds of others when I am dead among the living, and that machine will make it obvious that I have died to be identified by bones that have no speech, no thought, no mind to speak of having let themselves be carried once around in me, as at my service at the podium or as I lay beside my love or when I held my child at birth or embraced a friend or shook a critic's hand or held a pen to sign a check or book or wrote a farewell letter to a love or held my penis at the bowl or lay my hand upon my face at the mirror and approved of it. There is Ignatow, it will be said, looking down inside the open grave. I'll be somewhere in my poems, I think, to be mistaken for my bones, but There's Ignatow will be said. I say to those who persist, just read what I have written. I'll be there, held together by another kind of structure, of thought and imagery, mind and matter, love and longing, tensions opposite, such as the skeleton requires to stand upright, to move with speed, to sit with confidence, my friend the skeleton and I its friend, shielding it from harm.

In the suburbs on a bike path that in any other age would be a road roughed halfway through some dark wood’s listening heart two damp young men in suits sucked dry of light walk stiffly and uncertain round a bend in each left hand the black box of a book They see me then spread out to fill the way as sun blares down and dry May wind slaps cheap loose plastic cloth against their shins The thinner taller blond one greets me in an earnest tone these days not often heard and when I do not take his offered hand surprised he pulls it back by jerked degrees says