At the next table
a woman in patent shoes,
blue summer shift

Open yourself up: today
that's no different than opening
a refrigerator door: large chunks

Keith, at the time, was living in an old warehouse just across the freeway from downtown, right at the exit ramp. There was a long asphalt driveway that ran up to the huge double door that was his front door, and there was one exactly like it across the warehouse; the same kind of door and driveway leading out and down to the street again. 

The harvest was over. Even the scythe had not been mine. I had nowhere to go.

In the evening I found a girl lying on the ground like a sheaf of wheat, radiant and silent. When I bent over her she was watching me, smiling.

I have always considered it bad policy to land on my head. I try my best to avoid doing so. The head is just not structured to bear the weight of the body, or to withstand more than an occasional semi-violent thump. The soles of the feet, on the other hand, manage this quite well. I have jumped from a few moving vehicles in my day, and let me tell you, the head is just a frightened onlooker in such instances.

I, Erica Jong, in the midst of my life,
        having had two parents, two sisters,
        two husbands, two books of poems

It's gone about far enough,
your being kind to animals.
I've had a belly full.

A toe dances under my nose         My eye
Takes it from there, moving on up peekaboo style
Over ankles and calves past kneecaps to thighs—

(1) I don’t know about your boss, but my particular employer is certainly exacting. For example: Not too long ago the orders came down from above: no more of this sloppy filing, no more of these simpleminded rectangles and neat but inappropriate manila folders.

   I used to want to make sense. Then I wanted not to make sense. Now I want only to say something not stupid.