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But for a low bank of cloud, clear morning, empty sky. The bright band of light beneath the cloud’s gray I thought at first was open distance, but it’s ice that by extension raised the lake above the lip of blue lake and spilled it farther out than that horizon along the sky and floods the clouds. Seeing the distant level further unfurl into the sky says not to trust blue line as terminus when a meniscus of ice can ride up that wall of the skyline, a measure of illusion how close the eye can be to filled with seeing, to widen instead the tube of that measure of sight we are given. There is the larger lake the wider look we open eyes to see. That glance of the lip put in a bigger cylinder falls away, but how much deeper the spring to fill the cup. As if the surface we are seeing drops the more seeing is added, while we feel the stories well as our height from which to see. And watch the dawns coming. …I seem to be emptying of time the more time I put in, and see like a man with weathered eyes enough to face to face up to the sight’s field expanded to insight. To the dark the lake can turn and curl up like a map for poems to have these likenesses to graph, then come un-scrolled from semblance back to just this lake. Water cities are led to layout beside. But never in stillness; always the restoration to change, from ice, from cloud, turning to clear liquid—as is most of our body water— thinned sheet, layer that if written on or with, a bearing a name chiseled on water disappears.

The south-wind strengthens to a gale, Across the moon the clouds fly fast, The house is smitten as with a flail, The chimney shudders to the blast. On such a night, when Air has loosed Its guardian grasp on blood and brain, Old terrors then of god or ghost Creep from their caves to life again; And Reason kens he herits in A haunted house. Tenants unknown Assert their squalid lease of sin With earlier title than his own. Unbodied presences, the pack’d Pollution and remorse of Time, Slipp’d from oblivion reënact The horrors of unhouseld crime. Some men would quell the thing with prayer Whose sightless footsteps pad the floor, Whose fearful trespass mounts the stair Or burts the lock’d forbidden door. Some have seen corpses long interr'd Escape from hallowing control, Pale charnel forms—nay ev’n have heard The shrilling of a troubled soul, That wanders till the dawn hath cross’d The dolorous dark, or Earth hath wound Closer her storm-spredd cloke, and thrust The baleful phantoms underground.

How does one grow the cojones to celebrate a Fudgsicle? I’ll tell you, and won’t begin by mentioning trellises forsooth. The items on the register are mechanisms inscrutable, yes. But they sway in the doubled-up air with a sense of lucidity, A kind of gong affect that chiggers as it steamrolls forth, Appraisals for unchintziest bling. Time for a sea change. Your turn, and this means you Come with me. Agreeable and mute, like the original Doppelgänger, or as we in my neighborhood called it The Doppler Radar. On school mornings, a trust fund in my teeth, High yacht vanilla swilled my parents’ bed. I would be multiple and exact. From that vantage, a windpipe brought forth On invisible horseback to the sick child’s bed. I’m sure you can’t quite imagine it, ember In the tabby lobby. But I could. I arrested it. Gershwin and American Airlines and I could always Tell the voice without the face, God’s gift to me For being lame in phlegmatic tissue. O parabola. Look at the ashtrays! There they are. Swinging, roiling, Ocean-choppy, a gauntlet of remote controls, Paint supplies all stacked up with nowhere to go In the corner of a grave illness — like pink paint. This forecast of centenarians in Florida, and Burbank. All my life I wanted a fractal tie and strawberry apron. Now I’m a Church lady, no hint of arthritic condition. My name isn’t Sallie or Mae, it’s Sallie Mae. Millions of tiny pendants, Waterford crystal, bubbling From local tree-fort where boys grope one another. Will you come with me for Pilates at Fort Ticonderoga? Denise Austin is here. Stretch in the sun. Champagne woods, lakes chasms, dismounts. Then you say: You have no idea what I lived through. The Green Mountain Boys were like a second dad to me.

The flag is folded lengthwise, and lengthwise again, folding toward the open edge, so that the union of stars on the blue field remains outward in full view; a triangular folding is then begun at the striped end, by bringing the corner of the folded edge to the open edge; the outer point, turned inward along the open edge, forms the next triangular fold: the folding continued so, until the end is reached, the final corner tucked between the folds of the blue union, the form of the folded flag is found to resemble that of a 3-cornered pouch, or thick cocked hat. Take this flag, John Glenn, instead of a friend; instead of a brother, Edward Kennedy, take this flag; instead of a father, Joe Kennedy, take this flag; this flag instead of a husband, Ethel Kennedy, take this flag; this 9-times-folded red-white-striped, star-spotted-blue flag, tucked and pocketed neatly, Nation, instead of a leader, take this folded flag. Robert Kennedy, coffin without coverlet, beside this hole in the grass, beside your brother, John Kennedy, in the grass, take, instead of a country, this folded flag; Robert Kennedy, take this hole in the grass.

Words fall out of my coat pocket, soak in bleach water. I touch everyone’s dirty dollars. Maslow’s got everything on me. Fourteen hours on my feet. No breaks. No smokes or lunch. Blank-eyed movements: trash bags, coffee burner, fingers numb. I am hourly protestations and false smiles. The clock clicks its slow slowing. Faces blur in a stream of  hurried soccer games, sunlight, and church certainty. I have no poem to carry, no material illusions. Cola spilled on hands, so sticky fingered, I’m far from poems. I’d write of politicians, refineries, and a border’s barbed wire, but I am unlearning America’s languages with a mop. In a summer-hot red polyester top, I sell lotto tickets. Cars wait for gas billowing black. Killing time has new meaning. A jackhammer breaks apart a life. The slow globe spirals, and at night black space has me dizzy. Visionaries off their meds and wacked out meth heads sing to me. A panicky fear of robbery and humiliation drips with my sweat. Words some say are weeping twilight and sunrise. I am drawn to dramas, the couple arguing, the man headbutting his wife in the parking lot. 911: no metered aubade, and nobody but myself to blame.

a thing that's called radar love, the whole hog calling, and here's unhoused Ginger, distracted wind-beaten beauty separating from park bench and Frigidaire carton, flying Halloween colors, tie-dye skirt, Orangesicle socks, where will she sleep tonight, where lay those tulle angel wings slashed through her overcoat, who pulses anarchist patchouli and minty hair draughts and cigarette spirits that scuff our fragile air while we hope for some pick-me-up before we pass.

the afterworld sea there was a water song that we sang when we were going to fetch river from the river, it was filled with water sounds & pebbles. here, in the after-wind, with the other girls, we trade words like special things. one girl tells me “mai” was her sister’s name, the word for “flower.” she has been saving this one for a special trade. I understand & am quiet awhile, respecting, then give her my word “mai,” for “water,” & another girl tells me “mai” is “mother” in her language,& another says it meant, to her, “what belongs to me,” then “belonging,” suddenly, is a strange word, or a way of  feeling, like “to be longing for,” & you, brother, are the only one, the only one I think of  to finish that thought, to be longing for mai brother, my brother

If there is a god, let it be the hyena who plunges her mouth into the river after eating our grandfather’s poisoned bait, who, dark with thirst, poisons the river unbeknownst to both of them. Her ghosts stand in the street where we are called already through “time” out of our houses. She tells her stories. We tell her ours. We all clean our teeth with what is sharp. She asks,Will you add this story to your stories of history & land & peace? Yes, we will add this story. We ask her, Will you add these poems to your repertoire of songs about hunger & thirst & fur?& she, being wiser than we, says,Yes, I will sing them if you grant me your permission to turn them into poems about a mercy.

My hair, voluminous from sleeping in six different positions, redolent with your scent, helps me recall that last night was indeed real, that it's possible for a bedspread to spawn a watershed in the membrane that keeps us shut in our own skins, mute without pleasure, that I didn't just dream you into being. You fit like a fig in the thick of my tongue, give my hands their one true purpose, find in my shoulder a groove for your head. In a clinch, you're clenched and I'm pinched, we're spooned, forked, wrenched, lynched in a chestnut by a mob of our own making, only to be resurrected to stage several revivals that arise from slightest touch to thwart deep sleep with necessities I never knew I knew until meeting you a few days or many distant, voluptuous lifetimes ago.

On a starred night Prince Lucifer uprose. Tired of his dark dominion swung the fiend Above the rolling ball in cloud part screened, Where sinners hugged their spectre of repose. Poor prey to his hot fit of pride were those. And now upon his western wing he leaned, Now his huge bulk o'er Afric's sands careened, Now the black planet shadowed Arctic snows. Soaring through wider zones that pricked his scars With memory of the old revolt from Awe, He reached a middle height, and at the stars, Which are the brain of heaven, he looked, and sank. Around the ancient track marched, rank on rank, The army of unalterable law.