How lucky I am tonight to be holding a lantern 
at this railroad crossing in the middle of America 
and not clinging to a leaky raft on the north Atlantic,

In 1027, not far from Bernburg,
eighteen peasants were seized
by a common delusion.

Dozens of burning, fish-shaped clouds dove for the horizon,
determined to make more of an already explosive sunset.

my boys & I refused to believe it was Michael who didn’t make it through the night even though the cameras strewn across the sky showed the mansion lawn specked with red sirens & from my own covers I imagined him to be simply asleep the way I slept 

When the man can’t sleep, he builds
a matchstick replica of Auschwitz
in his basement, working from memory.

Ask the sand crabs for an inch by inch
description of my hips:
they’ve been scaling the depression I left

most people have absolutely the wrong idea of how to go about cutting a throat, the right way to do it on animals anatomically similar to humans such as dogs, sheep, veal calves and very young pigs—emphatically not on full-grown pigs 

I

they have no gathering places
        for taking of council nor
agreements

My books remain on the shelves as I left them last year
but all the words have died.

They are like men because they are isolated
yet stand in the rain, surrounded by mounds
of dirt and asphalt to catch spillover—