Who was eaten by a taxi
Lost on a beach of fire

When she would decompose the shrubbery
Leave the trees alone or lose herself around pools

In your body the alcohol poured
or your eyes broke apart
quiet poems they saw.

It’s okay, I wanted to tell her. It scares me, too.
But I was already plummeting, tumbling in free fall

space and your sizzling flywheel
   has fibrillized a cantaloupe so far out

He barely looked, so used he had become
to how little pleasure Time could bring,

Words as these, repeated since childhood, repeated
into transparency—how do we dare attend

the cool painterly quality the eye
attains during its mute pause at the pier.

kept in the linen closet—
cut perfectly to fit

Above the East River,
dull ochre smoke hangs