From where I watched, the shiny satellite 
Almost occluded summer Sirius. 
I might have sworn they’d touch and set the night 

I took the pill of estradiol. My feet hurt.

We’re watching the sad movie
for the seventh time today.
Let’s take off our tear-vial

I never had a toothache, but the desire to have one crossed my mind constantly. Once I went to a doctor, hoping for a positive diagnosis, but he attributed the pain to a small insect bite on the left tonsil. From that day I resolved to abandon the hope of ever feeling the longed for, quick stab of pain or a steady musical throbbing.

I enter a room where a fan seems to be chanting 
“Air! Air! Air!” as it whirrs. I see it's not 
the fan, after all, but a child facing the wall 

After the rape & the bloodbath, the savage king
& his men retired to a long shed built in an open
field by a thin river fashioned for this lull in the pillaging
so the horses could rest.

All summer the half voice lurked behind me

& I played deaf for days for to live

To not write about it to use my body

Those mornings in the last days of December,
as the smog deepened over the mausoleum
& the ghost of the emperor’s first wife
lingered about the four gardens, weeping
over her dead child

Moving as a mind moves across a math problem,
Or an eye across a lover’s body,
Or a dragonfly across the sky,

First my books grew stiff
brass clasps like the books monks read.

A hush enshrouded them. They were