I cling to nightfall, hide my speed from my
belief of bronze. I’ve risen from a dream

hesitant behind a flash of doves
in a darkness where I don’t exist

How this man moves my musky hair,
liquored in his slicker and slick chair,

I knew a girl who also had a ghost
living in her mouth-what we called dumb

Why was soul not solar, not solid?

ADDRESS ME, I said, and I meant “please speak.”
“Oh you mean UNDRESS ME,” one said and turned.

“Oh, stylists try, but hats just don’t come back!”

The suspense is exquisite. A twitch at the last step
intimates that year’s particular rapture:

They wanted rehab-at least a month from her,
not just the writhing days it took for detox.

& anyway by this time it was all a kind of joke:

Strange that he mentions the muses.
Demons, yes. God, of course.
But harlots? Perhaps