White’s designed to fake an edifice,
but the matted crenellation of reed-thatch
throws it to the side. A squadron of crows
clarifies the rhythm, carries the eye through

Today we are going into shelter,
we are going underground to discover the passage that leads
to the next world. We will be happy there,
or we will not worry about happiness; we will make neat designs

I support the animals’ urge to survive.
So much for opinions. Slithering, writhing,
nosing my way through dirt, I can identify
with that. I joke to keep the system going.

I’ve chosen to take the stairs.
It’s harder, but quicker
than waiting for the elevator
which seems eternally stuck on R—Roof.

I walk into the men’s room at LaGuardia Airport
And the guy standing next to me zipping his fly
Has been dead for thirteen years. I know because
He was one of my professors in graduate school.

The lightest touch
if it is gently giv-
en can yield as much
affection as a deep

I read somewhere that every love
has its own government. Or was it
that every love has
the government it deserves?

Righted, they would form
a somnambulistic stance in the
stoop-shouldered dark; shuffling
in the absence of skin stretched

Stand in a field long enough, and the sounds
start up again. The crickets, the invisible
toad who claims that change is possible,
And all the other life too small to name.

Something to drink helps, of course, and humor must live
even on that dark corner where once
your life was threatened. Something in the voice, in the telling,
must signal I am safe now and am trying