I hoist the cat up in the basket of
a forty-foot-long picking pole and give

it a wild ride whipping the pole around

Where are my robes, my sword, the minted coins
inscribed Pros Doxan…? I ascend my throne.
When the Bishop, bearing unction, comes

Flustered (words always made him flustered),
He thought of saying never mind, but instead
Changed the subject. She, the listener, listened

At the back of a Point Reyes ravine
Mescaline, three powdery silver piles
Poured on knife blades and then and there licked clean.

They call me Jack Jigger because
I'm entirely made of little pieces
Taken from other people (some are

I'm sitting on a bench at One Hundred and Fifteenth
and Riverside Drive, with my books beside me,
early for my lesson in Chinese

Now I am married there is much to despair
now that I seem to need to.
By the powers vested in me, I am

When I heard he had entered the harbor,
and circled the wharf for days,
I expected the worst: shallow water,

When he left to plow the sea and husband
other lands, she became all fire.
The flames clutched air, their smoke

They cut off hands and composed cantatas;
They gutted their neighbors like fish and released
The shape of spirits from bonds of ebony;