U.S.

The conversations of the French
Quarter mules in their stables
after a full day of pulling
tourists and voters over cobble-
stones is not espresso witty
and in their dark no TVs feed
them news of the ends of mules
elsewhere in the Middle East
and West. In our stables the ends
of others are a fact of atmosphere.
The yoyos on the mystery island
nextdoor are revving familiar tools
in backyard now gripped by failure
first of electricity than of
a meaner something that’ ll grow

To invent the alef-beit,
decipher the grammar of crows,
read a tangle of bare branches
with vowels of the last leaves
scrawling their jittery speech
on the sky’ s pale page.

Choose a beginning.
See what God yields and dirt cedes
when tines disturb fescue, vetch, and sage,
when your hand dips grain from a sack,
scattering it among engraved furrows.

Fighting a losing battle
lives next door
to a vibrant woman
in her 30’ s.
When he talks to her
sub-mediocre takes over
in a big way.
Zombie-ized by the big eye
she even sleeps with it on.
Just sign me: concerned.

I think it is interesting
though not exactly amusing
how we go from day to day
with no money. How do we
do it, friends ask, suspecting
we really have some stash
stacked away somewhere.
But we certainly do not
and we also do not know
how we do it either.
You sure are lucky,
some of our friends say. I am
none too sure of that though,
as I wait for the winning
lottery numbers to be announced
on CKLW. Thursday in Detroit
is the day of dreams. We have
been dreaming of a place

Snow would be the easy
way out — that softening
sky like a sigh of relief
at finally being allowed
to yield. No dice.
We stack twigs for burning
in glistening patches
but the rain won’ t give.

So we wait, breeding
mood, making music
of decline. We sit down
in the smell of the past
and rise in a light
that is already leaving.
We ache in secret,
memorizing

Plum black & the blush white of an apple
shoulder, melon & cream, in tones to list
the flesh; in light, washed colors off at last
& textures sheer with damp I slowly pull
from you with your quick help. Weekend's ample
procrastinations to forget the least
of what we want to do. April, half a blast
of cold, half new light, green & simple.

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.

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

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