This is St. Rafael resigning from the service
Of the mad white queen. St. Rafael is no angel.
But Queen makes comparison possible

ou never get to play it, the rackets
Are always missing or else the net’s dissolved
During the winter, and there are mole holes

The energy chest
One keeps dipping in

With the hand of one’s head

Human mothers are right to take such exceptional care of their babies; after all, even from birth, there is no animal which is quite like man. Yes, even as a child, Man differs from the babies of other species. 

There will always be a distance  
Even when things are pressing  
Against one another, so hard 

You hoarded oyster shells through the R months;
they jut from the backyard garden like unwashed ears
of earth, and listen to your footsteps growing heavier.

I hold my brother’s daughter in my lap
and clip her fingernails. She sits expectant
and will not be distracted from the unfolding

The storms that make it into poems most often
leave something like disaster in their wake:
the wine-glass elms in pieces on the lawn,

The solitary molar of a streetwalker 
whose body had gone unclaimed 
had a gold filling. 

I  

Things you said in drugstores 
when buying painkillers 
or at your tailor’s