The earth locks up the truth about life
even though the blood tells moody lies
when, like the smooth afternoon sea,

Tom washes the minerals first
before putting them on the table.
That way they gleam among the leaves.

I am being forcibly retained in the land of no repute. Here all the chiefs of staff are too punch drunk to drop bombs on anyone. Liberation is passé for all except a few debutantes who have put their ostrich feathers in mothballs.

When Mr. Croxford
flicked his skinny wrist,
and the metronome began

You don’t have to worry.
Your secrets are safe with me.
Your secret of how you construct a beautiful necklace from rainwater.

The point of clothes was line,
a shallow fall of cotton over childish hips
or a coat ruled sharp, shoulder to hem

                I want to tell you, it has nothing to do with trees or luck, that the last carnations crumbling in the gutter, the float stripped down by the rain, even the drum major and the fireman, lifting their beers to the moon, are part of some other show, some other season, which the barkers have never known.

She was not so sweet as you would think.
Not in the damp of her hair, not in the joint of her bones.
This you can believe:

There is a space abandoned here,
to this room, as to a panting dog;
and a sound, like scissors

“If we have a turtle we’ll name him Michael,
or Michelle if it’s a she,” she says.
This is one of those moments from an old movie