drifted to the broken sidewalk— you know the place: past First Ward school (where AA meets now) but before the crest of the hill, before the road narrows so…

  People say that the eyes are the windows to the soul. I don’t know if I believe that. Your hands moving over the blankets were the last indicator of…

  I go through her buttons: that population of immigrants, some humble, prepossessing, some big, shiny hemispheres like the golden dome of a Shiite mosque. Some are eagle-embossed, tarnished from…

  I can’t tell you how happy I am to announce how happy I am. No, really. I can’t tell you— I have no mouth, only the skin of my…

  Remember this one? Narcissus vs. Pond in a staring contest? Wind riffles water, Narcissus declared winner. Enraged pond pulls out hidden revolver. I don’t remember it ending like that…

  Where one should hear the echo of a duck’s call there is only glazed stillness, the word lake so close to lacquer, lack. Stood at the scum-rimmed edge I…

  XI. In Navajo creation stories, the Coyote convinces the water monster     to inhale him. Our neighbor is surprised to learn that Eric, reared Jewish, identifies as Buddhist,…

  Unless while it’s growing you feed it strips of pork fat crushed with orange   rinds & ginger. Unless you turn the soil with your bare hands & blacken…

  The Golden Age Then the animals could talk in words. The sparrow to the farmer sang and the farmer sang along, the pine and the laurel counseled the honey…

  The old oak in the creek’s bend stands blotted black with songbirds— stripped branches’ lateral buds breaking early-sunset sky— we sounded like them, you and I, when you screeched…

  give me any lyre-like thing I’m on my knees what I’m on my knees * the swamp I move through careful your own drowning is at hand * presume…

  A scarlet breeze buoyed him next to us, his white feather hair a boy’s, giddy and bright for this, what he called, “the immaculate air.” It never crossed my…