I have taught tennis serves to wealthy women, repeating the importance of the Y. They practiced before me, attempting to toss the ball within reach of their swerving rackets, lifting their breasts inside carefully fitted uniforms, and I sang a song of encouragement, standing near the most attractive.

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