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He —

You saw the way her body looked at me
all address
calling me down
she was so
well-turned,
curve and volume
her body presented itself —
Clay —
I could mold it

She —

In the middle of December
to start over

to assume again
an order

at the end
of wonder

to conjure
and then to keep

slow dirty sleet
within its streetlight

the plates are broken after just one meal:
plates that mimic lily pads or horseshoe crabs,
swifts’ wings,
golden koi, whirlpools, blowholes in rictus:
all smashed against the table’ s edge —

... also our chef eschews pepper & salt
for violets & vespers
& squid ink & honey from wasps
rare lichen grown in local snow
authentic silt dark from the Nile or Tigris.

What vegetable leviathan
extends beneath the dinner table,
an unseen, monstrous green that pulls
the chair out from under our faith

in appearances: see a mere tuft
of leaf on the plate like a wing,
but if it flies away, it undoubtedly
will disturb the continental drift

asleep under the salad plate,
the hidden world we forget
as we reach for the smaller fork—
(and now, mouth full, don't speak: politely

On the radio this morning: The average woman knows
275 colors — and men know eight. Women say coffee,
mocha, copper, cinnamon, taupe. Men say brown.

Women know an Amazon of colors I might have said
were green, an Antarctica of whites, oceans of colors
I'd stupidly call blue, fields of color, with flowers in them
I would have said were red.

He fancies his chances are good with her,
unaware that in the years since the war

she has come to prefer women whose cunts
taste like mustard. To pin one’ s hopes on

a bark-colored moth, its wings crinkled
like crepe paper, a moth affixed high

on the kitchen wall, frozen for days where
it will likely die in noble clinging mode

just under the cobwebby heating vent,
is to confirm your need for more friends

and a greater daily quota of sunlight.
To raise C.’ s hopes that T. can stop

I find it helpful to imagine writing in a blizzard
with every inscription

designed to prevent snow
crystals from drifting in.

Avoid the hive mind. Go fly a kite,
raise a stained glass window in the sky.

It’ s the opposite of making love to drudgery,
what I do for a dying.

Remove the bitter sediment
trapped in the brewer. It will be new

whether you make it new
or not. It will be full of neo-

I should be diligent and firm,
I know I should, and frowning, too;
again you’ ve failed to clean your room.
Not only that, the evidence
of midnight theft is in your bed —
cracked peanut shells and m& m’ s
are crumbled where you rest your head,
and just above, the windowsill
is crowded with a green giraffe
(who’ s peering through your telescope),
some dominoes, and half a glass
of orange juice. You hungry child,

how could I be uncharmed by this,
your secret world, your happy mess?

This time I’ m not going to say a thing
about deity. It’ s not the blizzard,
it’ s three days after. Trinkle from thawing
roofs, ruined crocus pronging through.
Ruin, I promise, won’ t be mentioned again.
Trees, sure, still begging in the road, split
to the bole but this isn’ t about the chainsaw.
A pruning saw will have to do. The puppets

and then Tony showed us the lake
where he had thrown some of his sadness last summer
and it had dissolved like powder
so he thought maybe the lake could take
some of the radiant, aluminum kind
he had been making lately.
And it did.
It was a perfect lake,
none of the paint had chipped off,
no bolts showing, the arms that Dante