The fine meat of its back
was opened, the steel flourished
with such quickness and artistry

My father lies at the end of my white coat,
witnessing his own angiography. He jokes,

shit flows downhill he who loves power
gets to be king he who loves love
gets to be priest kings and priests

I murder my own grandmother    stuff
her corpse in my top bureau drawer
among my underwear    nightmare of

Yes, like you, I too have been summoned
by an urgent phone call from someone
whose name I never knew

My mother shrugged off life
Three thousand miles from Paris,
City of her birth. It takes

It begins with a meeting
It’s the meeting that’s important—not the two
who meet

In this country we manufacture cages
We construct them just as you wish
made-to-order, a cage for each occasion

I was so young that I invented loss,
The image of the mother’s face receding
On the far edge of the broken bed,

No single excess, nothing jerrybuilt
or squandered in a fit of thriftlessness
accounts for what we've ended with. Despite