The workman
in white crossing the street
carries the wood T-beam

Nel mezzo del cammin what one finds is beans
and wrinkled cabbage and an awful case
of ambling vacuity, an affliction resembling

I hate the quiet, green suburban hills
of Scythia, and all the new-built houses,
all alike, around which children play

Naomi said, Go home girls, I'm cursed,

and we clutched, cried No! No!
the proper length of time. Then

It's summer: none of the toilets will flush;
just enough water for a half-swirl wets
the sides, coughs and stops. No more dependable

My friend stops his father
in the doorway, asks him
to show me the numbers burned

“So lasting they are, the rivers!” Only think. Sources somewhere in the mountains pulsate and springs seep from a rock, join in a stream, in the current of a river, and the river flows through centuries, millennia.

One A.M.
two cops
three teens nabbed

Had I glanced from buttering my toast
a moment before, would my heart
have been riven by the fierce thrust

It's raining women here in Cincinnati.
Parts of women, parts of one woman—
the police aren't really sure. Last week