When love was a question, the message arrived
in the beak of a wire and plaster bird. The coloratura
was hardly to be believed. For flight,
...
The ones too broke or wise to get parts
from a dealer come here where the mud is red
and eternal. Eight front ends
...
Dark still. Twelve degrees below freezing.
Tremor along
the elegant, injured right front
...
For Karen
I think you must contrive to turn this stone
on your spirit to lightness.
...
Linda,
said my mother when the buildings fell,
before, you understand, we knew a thing
about the reasons or the ways
...
Emanuel de Witte, 1653 [?]
And you, friend, in a footnote, thanked
for kindly
inspecting the date “under magnification,” who
...
It had almost nothing to do with sex.
The boy
in his corset and farthingale, his head-
...
A kind of counter-
blossoming, diversionary,
doomed, and like
the needle with its drop
...
As when, in bright daylight, she closes
her eyes
but doesn’t turn her face away,
...
If the English language was good enough for Jesus
Christ, opined
the governor of our then-most-populous
...