Bathing, Miss Del Greco informed us in health class,
is very important, especially once you become a teenager.
In fact I can smell many of you this very day,

The book rotted by the rain, the clay that’s slipped,
the earth screeches, plates collapse,
the walls lose their grip on the paintings,
nothing is aligned like the planets we think we understand.
Within the shock announced this morning by the howling dogs

Pindar says the poet must guard the apples of the Muses
like a dragon, but I grew up among Christians,
I pierced my dragon side by scraping off the scales
the way I clean fish in the sink.
A barely saintly gesture, but surgical.
You need gloves, scissors,
and a lot of running water.
And listening to its splash I start to meditate.

Writing with swiftness concerning the movement of water,
of startled fishes, the lavender sea-fan, the lobster,
you have omitted the arch of sand and the rigmarole

The soldiers were in the habit of saying that a dying

soldier was “going west.” Are you going west on your

vacation? We turned west at Allentown and drove west-

Under the Mirabeau Bridge there flows the Seine                    Must I recall          Our loves recall how then After each sorrow joy came back again

Our story is noble and tragic
As the face of a tyrant not fun not for everyone
No drama or magic

The first time?
So long ago—that brown-eyed boy…
How can I say thi s, your Reverences,

As the black wings close in on you,
their circling shadows blighting the sand,
and your limp legs buckle, far

Instantaneously and repeatedly, Blank serves as a station for our senses, making possible an impression of continuance.