“Believing something will happen 
        Because I don’t want it to 
And that some other thing won’t 

Susannah Harrison, “Songs in the
Night; By a Young Woman, Under Heavy
Afflictions,” didn’t touch him, but Morrison
Heady traveled by stage from Louisville
to touch Laura Bridgman, who
demanded that Helen Keller wash her hands. Helen
would later touch many of us but wouldn’t let us
touch her back.

After the sponge bath
Spice cake and coffee
In a sky blue china cup

I like breathing better than work
but strange is the meat
when it is yanked out of the sky

Light spray over a daisy chain of days.
Many wives, brought on rocking boats,
Dissolve in one loved damsel.

Everything turns into tape. It (check one)
        puts the multiples on a loop     (1)
        reduces all numbers to one       (2)

The green world thinks the sun
Into one flower, then outraces
It to the sea in sunken pipes.

It is a loose sleeve whose hair wraps the
Bedouin on his pony and then slings him
Into the wind, always to be a monad

The rat who came last night scratching
By the door—did you appreciate
He might be wanting to converse?

You approach me carrying a book
The instructions you read carry me back beyond birth
To childhood and a courtyard bouncing a ball