We stood, in health class, around the cow’s heart
Miss Hutchings unwrapped on her desk. Inside
And out, she said, we need to know ourselves,

In the handed-down writings of Pliny.
In Herodotus; in Aristotle.
In da Vinci, who fears The Flood’s return

The surgeon Celsus, at the time of Christ,
Said the right hand should operate
On the left eye, the left hand should invade

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 

   Even as Shaman stroked her womb
   with the tip of his thaumaturgic wand,

     The tracks run side by side, like bathers’ prints
     in damp sand at ocean’s edge,

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

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,