replace the narrative
with another
form of narrative

When they were wild
When they were not yet human
When they could have been anything,

Then one day the gray rags vanish
and the sweet wind rattles her sash.
Her secrets bloom hot. I’m wild for everything. 

Nasturtium surplus.
         Water curls and lilies,
lily water. Vermilion and orange

I AM MY FATHER’S ONLY UNBORN DAUGHTER.
I gave birth to my mother and am responsible for her death.

Someone who believes that at least one part of her 

He stayed up late, staved off sleep, wandered, drank,
as if sleep were a kind of devouring,
as if it would masticate and spit him out at dawn

Cézanne has placed a surly easel
in what is still not there.
He feels the geology of absence,

Zeuxis painted grapes so real
that birds came down
to peck, but Parrhasius painted

                                  We all came down with it
in the seventeenth century, back

                                  when it was still possible
to die.

She was only a woman, and no more 
than his latest wife who was commanded 
not to come before him without the grant