“Each ray of sunshine is eight minutes old,”
Serge told me in New York one December
night. “So when one looks at the sky, one sees

Thus, a woman under the stars might have been you.

For now labor must be done
by the poor from the planets of sleep,

And upstairs: rock stars, dictators,
complexly drawn women in armor,
the dead, the poor, and so and so—

Bit by bit you conquer the whole house,
and your savage mother’s heart.

You watch it. It may be
your pity stirs for all of those white flowers

Upon innumerable stars the boy
reckoned the generations he’d beget;

The horrendous infantile
shrieks and caterwaulings
of our dirty existential alleycat

But which of us is the mademoiselle?

big long hard
bright loud hot
burn light hole