I’d just then turned away
from recording all the charge slips I’d laid
aside during morning rush—gas sales,

Not the kiss alone
      but an essence of kiss,
its dark matter left undisclosed

Ever obliging, faithful, good parents that they are,
when he’s happiest, in his happy bed, his wife against him,
they call to him, his tutelary spirits of a moment

I heard tales of it on trains, from tireless travelers
And then its name would beckon from the drowsing hulls
Of steamers docked on Venice’s back piers

It could have been a matter of modesty
It could have been the gold sewn in your dress
You might even have feared for your chastity

In Iowa, Jim dreamed that Della Street was Anne Sexton’s
twin. Dave drew a comic strip called the “Adventures of Whitman,”
about a bearded beer-guzzler in Superman uniform. Donna dressed like Wallace Stevens

It was cold where she was going and she was
susceptible to chills. She felt in her pocket
for her pills. She was out of breath

Poetry is to jazz
as literature is to music
as Lake Como is to the Arno River

Travelers without passports may become
the norm but this Englishman remains
in Greece so Morgan asks how he lost it.