Purportedly a chain of civilians, soldiers, voices
lice they were called. It is sometimes sufficient to beg
Lice creeping over one, kill them with a chemical;
then there are lice-ghosts everywhere. Glints of pearly
nails. The light of my beloved will keep me from noticing.
Trailer to keep her in; he asked me if I knew her ‘auction name.’
Walked over the scorch; what are values when there’ s nothing here?
The wing of a dead soul grows into all the lace you see through,
foreigner, lice-ridden article of divestment. Splendid vices

Pain trains an undisciplined mind.
I will end yours if  you end mine.

Little feet, little feet are playing
Hopscotch among the landmines.

Hope has worked miracles before.
If  yours didn't, how can mine?

I could have learned to welcome night,
If only  you had been mine.

How dare you put words in God's mouth,
Shail?  Why not. He put ashes in mine.

Whatever the cost I pay up at the minnow pools.
I don’ t know anything of the misery of these trapped fish,
or the failure of the marsh I’ m so hidden.

Up above is the island with its few houses facing
the ocean God walks with anyone there. I often
slosh through the low tide to a sister
unattached to causeways.

It’ s where deer mate then lead their young
by my house to fields, again up above me.

Pray for me. Like myself be lost.
An amulet under your chest, a green sign of the first
rose you ever saw, the first shore.

There’ s a crack in this glass so fine we can’ t see it,
and in the blue eye of the candleflame’ s needle
there’ s a dark fleck, a speck of imperfection

that could contain, like a microchip, an epic
treatise on beauty, except it’ s in the eye of the beheld.
And at the base of our glass there’ s nothing