A red hand on the horse’s flanks
One hundred-and-some years ago
In these same precincts

… the moon comes up in her
secondness, left edge not
filled in quite, the abject not filled in quite
    but trying …

I dreamt my love was lost, uncomforted.
He lay alone in Pavia, eclipsed
by fortune, by the catastrophic tides

Are you listening? Mommy takes care of you.
She’s writing this letter with her pen dipped
in the milk her nipples won’t stop streaming

Best of all things are the lights in the sky
but what I am seeking is sleep.
Or not sleep exactly,

My neighbor was a biker, a pusher, a dog
    and wife beater.
In bad dreams I killed him

As in an old memoir, the rhododendrons were over.
Hunger persisted, and the light was weak—
the light of music and books, the light paintings cast