People desired things they didn’t know they wanted. Angry voices, heat,
emergencies. That was a summer. Isn’t there anything you can take? she said.
She meant, I’m tired of your suffering. The rustle of the pigeons;

They seem to be gliding toward me, in dresses,
they float and turn, in summer floral, the
ladies of the fruit trees, in ruffles, in dishevel,

Standing in the ladies’ room line,
in the temple basement, the woman in front of me
said, “I’ve been sitting behind you, admiring

I’ll quit smoking
as soon as I
get lung cancer.

You can be a mother who knows a god,
And you can ask him for magic armor,
A shield the width of Saturn’s widest rings,

And, after the explosion, made spheres sing,
A pure expression of pure poetry,
Like rising rain or a nation with no

I walked in the door, took off my coat, took off my sunglasses, set them down with my keys, took off my shoes and socks, my jeans, my shirt, my bra and underwear, set them all on the chair by the door

Montaigne was right, without the body’s meddling love
is more thrilling.
Yet from the start in elementary what she did

Many children’s games depend on a physical handicap. Hopscotch, for ­example, requires a skillful player to hop from square to square on one leg while the other merely dangles in the air, as though amputated so long ago he had time to practice jumping without it.

Winter. Late January
afternoon. Night falls fast.
You think I should know this