Am not sure what it is
In oceanography
how the tide just tears apart

The natural law is wearing winter’s face.

Mortared by macerated wood-pulp effluvium,
                                 a paper palace hangs.

The young queen spun her eggs and hatched her grunts.

Breathe when they aren’t looking. Suck your fists if you have to.

Where in heaven have you been?
Wreathed waif, pale grace,
Scandalous would-be.

I breathed on the glass
of my other lives 
so I could write in the fog.

For makers of elaborated worlds, adorned and peopled by the creatures and the furniture of their inventions. For those who live as if the way things are were not enough and mean, by their words, to do something about it. For those who would protect the first beloved from the fresh reality of the second. For fabricators of plausible excuses that will save

Knowing then our appetite,
and the table laden with pleasures,
it was by design we were made,

Your clue’s in the way they tilt their faces, away.
Or others, shamefully close. A guzzler
will lean against your hand, muscle the cup.

How far does this street extend
beyond the cemetery, the Catholic school,
the oil refinery, the trolley’s turnabout,