For hours I will sit staring at a portion of myself. A leg perhaps. Mine is thick and heavily muscled, a bit fat in the upper thigh. Most people would consider it powerful, capable of winning some kind of contest. The short, curly black hairs cover it in a regular pattern. There is no detectable flaw in the perfect taper of the calf or in the smooth-working joint.

Preferring ‘resemblance to beauty,’ 
There were some who found more 
Truth in Philoktetes’ rotten legs 

After three hundred years had I not grown
Content with my oblivion and found
Solace in small needs satisfied—one song‚

   But what can we make of the artist beside him,
   working relentlessly, fabricating,
   past maestra, great creatrix, laboring still,

Very woman the tomato
cut up cool and floating in gumbo,
so rice the okra swans!
Spoons prowl the soup, poking flotsam:

To the living, the words for death are like the dead. 
When they come calling, they’re difficult to make out, 
ragged at the edges, unaccountable ghosts, 

Summer was dry
but the farmers forget
and plow the dead stalks under.

While Frenchmen kissed, I gave man wings.
Reportedly I dreamed of birds. The hills along the post road
once lined the floor of a vast inland sea; behind the foundry,

sun is first coming through the eucalyptus early morning

the question you asked
in the center of the world we were making