Undone. Only a head, a fine
cheek and throat his chisel cut
from white. She waits to become a thought,

Night arrives solid and heavy
more than several blocks long—to displace
its weight and float like a tanker over us.

When I was a teacher 
I taught the truth, viz., 
The two great levelers are 

when out walked I
down fell the sky,
a backward boom

His kind decree: we should not cut ourselves
Upon sharp edges;
So, when that parent rib was fleshed,

Who killed Cock Robin?
Where is the boy who looks after the sheep?
What’s in the cupboard?

What do I see? What do I wish to tell.
How haunting the shadow of a metal stair
Circling a tank is in the evening sun?

The echoes held him, hugged him, hurled him down,
And above all October seemed to shout:
‘You worried you with what it’s all about.

I sit in a body & think of a body, I picture
Burnens's hands, my words
make them move. I say. Plunge them, into the hive,

I kept it hidden, it was easy
to hide, behind my lingerie, a shoebox

above my boys' reach, swaddled alongside