For Jews, the Cossacks are always coming.
Therefore I think the sunspot on my arm
is melanoma. Therefore I celebrate

The red barn. The Vermont farm
you ran away from to the city
or vowed you'd retire to some day.

I can answer only to Adonis—
call me that, and you'll find I'm easily
managed. Some time ago, I was promised

Even the few here who regard themselves as aliens
Declare with their window boxes that they' re not ungrateful
For the happenstance of being alive,

Without fear or fault, the green
Expanse of it drops off at acute
Angles, sudden and inconveniently,

Such pleasure one needs to make for oneself—.
She has snipped the paltry forsythia
to force the bloom, has cut each stem on the

James, I could be dead too—we each chose
         to come up to earth

The moon is sick. I fear she’ll die
from lack of love, from poverty
and homelessness, lost in the sky,

Beyond the lip readers, between
enclosures, we have our gangster act

I could go out like that,
sucked to a whisper like the midtown
tax building explosively leveled