they made a movie of it starring Boris Karloff
as Mord the executioner, who dabbled in torture.

America’s old churches were seen as a new
philosophy of one-upmanship:

It was my first 3⁄4 length child. (Fumed oak.)
Look how funny her little arm is.

Nobody lives
above me,

I predict, like the one who was sucked to sea 
and returned in an Arabian container ship, 
all small worlds will be dashed and drowned. 

Suddenly fatigued among French
women in the roman

(You had a plan for me. You wrote in your notebooks—you plotted, reasoned, schemed. to bring me into being. (But reason is a fragile wing).

squirrel killer 
predawn snacker 
keeper of a card-table office in the garage 

They’ll seem to pose for you,
though they’re always posed

It could feel good to stare at numbers 
all day, another job but I can’t name any;