When you pressed two rings,
the one larger than the other,
into my tongue, you crushed my hunger.

My enemy keeps
a bowl of anemones
on my bedside table

I want you to be waiting
outside your door
and squeal excitedly

Is my dress appropriate?
Is my breath still fresh?
Will my underarms fail me?

If you know about the Babylonian Jews
coming back to their stone houses in Jerusalem,
and if you know how Ben Franklin fretted

the biggest bore in town
arrives at my party
as if he were invited

This is the year of the suicide.
The year the grass dies
and does not rise again. The year

I will build you a flag of how I know:
I am counting blackbirds as they fly away,
When you walk by,

A cup before coffee, a shell
  after the scrambled egg,
I am a big nothing

The notion of living entities in human shape, intelligent but not human: look upon it as an experiment conducted upon the stuff of being. Shall they be smaller than we? Bushier, perhaps? What impulses bring about these particular condensations? To what extent do the alien existences depend upon certain crystallizations of our own thought, perhaps upon our very words? Shall we postulate elves, speaking the word aloud so as to give life to a certain meaningful vibration?