Tiny, dark, annoying, air-scribbling, vaguely
Malicious things keep buzzing around him like
Electrons about a nucleus, interstellar debris

The body pierced by a small hole,
or the lampshade, invents you.

How the seasons come unwrapped:
a rash like an orchid swells beneath my shirt.

And the rain falls exactly
like rain only inside you.

And the toilet is running,
and it’s autumn all at once.

Lonesome as the color of your hair
Unbound at sundown

Starved and then slaughtered, Virginia is
A spit of land that cowers before John

Still not out of hope one day to
see her country … Close now,

Simplistic, domineering,
recapitulating, flesh
wants flesh to last.

A half-theosophical, half-biological conceit:
The dentist calls, the radio goes on the blink.