Because you are the Visiting Distinguished, and because our whole city is celebrating your illustrious Treatise On Weeping, I am giving a party in your honor and discussing with you some prominent instances of weeping I myself have observed in men’s rooms, offices, train stations, etc. My other guests are waiting to join the discussion; let them wait.

There is no sun
for it can not be remembered:
only a growing pressure

As Lorna falls across Freddy, and Bernadette,
who grew up in a rainy village of one factory
in upper New York, a schoolgirl toed and twisted

riding in the pick-up
between the father and the son
I hardly know the older

I never sit in a canoe but rest my bare knees
on the curved ribs of the bow
to feel the water slap and ease through canvas

Not until I learned how to transform my childhood dreams into tomorrow’s crust of bread did I become truly successful at begging. Now I’m able to pick and choose, and there are only a few select areas I’ll work. Of primary importance is the presence of an electrical outlet. 

Maria, you are dead.
But you probably knew that.
We miss you.

It is Sunday, day of roughhousing. We are let out in the woods. The young boys wrestle and butt their heads together like sheep—a circle forms; claps and shouts fill the air. The women, brown and glossy, gather round the banjo player, or simply lie in the sun, legs and aprons folded.

In her dream
the wind blew her vagina out the bedroom
down the Spanish steps

“Uh.” Wayman says. “I think my car has been stolen.”
Well, the voice demands, has it been stolen
or hasn’t it? “I guess it has.’” Wayman says.