It rises from childhood
like a humpback whale, water
streaming down the grill, 

He assures me that my head “doesn’t look shaved”
when he sees evidence of my late teen unhappiness. 
There are this many heads I want to break with this 

No one but lovers and children tell their dreams:
not fish, nearer fowl, where does that leave me—
bantam in the barnyard, pecking for mash.

I heard a little cough
in the room, and turned
but no one was there

There are country roads now that are empty.
They’ll hold on to the light of the day

This landscape with its somber skies
Must have fallen in love
With a story by Edgar Allan Poe.

He liked drunks in church,
Nudists playing volleyball,
Stray dogs making friends,

When she still knew how to make shadows speak
By sitting with them a long time,
They talked about her handsome father,

What I hate are short winter days,
Cold and snowless afternoons,

Stalin was killing off his fellow revolutionaries,
The first Dairy Queen opened in Kankakee, Ill.,
As I lay in my crib peeing in my diapers.