have never known starvation nor plenitude
and unless the order of the world 
changes, I won’t. 

Where were you, nymphs,
when I was learning to apply
the proper plaster of Paris and papier-mâché

At my wedding, my father, ten years dead,
practices what Isaac Babel called
              the “genre of silence”—that is,

Let the glass we smash be doubt,
the wine free will,
the bouquet, a mosaic of mercies.

Climb down, said the angel of the Lord
in banquet-waitress raiment (black skirt, white shirt)
to the plastic pair.

It is hard to explain the light here,
earnest and aerobic light,
not the complacent kind.

The first word I loved was crepusculo.
How long it took, one u mimicking the other,
volleyed in the syllables’ canyon.

Once again I’m caught assuming
human privilege, as if only our parts merit names.
We are mere givers of names.

Naomi said, Go home girls, I'm cursed,

and we clutched, cried No! No!
the proper length of time. Then

Patty Seyburn’s poem “Adam Reads The Guide to Western Birds” appeared in our Fall 2001 issue. Her latest collection is Hilarity. ... let fowl fly above the earth in the
open firmament of heaven. Genesis 1:20This book is bliss.
It includes a bird’s to…