Sitting up, nude, shrouded in twisted sheets, muffling
the travel alarm, she touches him, asking
if feathers have no pigment, that is, if they are clear

After I found my blood in trouble
I could hear its rapid
underground current swell, terrorists

In the trees from Faulkner, Calvino,
and probably as many writers
         as I was starting to know.

One definition of love
is the grocery list, its
shorthand reckoning

Plain and simple: he failed.
Lost a battle. And the angry
Athenians wanted him dead.

I rode down England
as they fired the crop
that was the leavings of a crop,

After the outburst and the terrible squalls
I hooped you with my arms

That so priceless patience gone
Into these fragments of fret
Intact where the gay figure

“It was your fault! It was your fault!” cried the Peacock.
“And it was yours too,” whispered the Snake.

“It was lust! It was lust!” shouted the Peacock.

In black and green and white one candle burns
Upon some pages, under a lute that leans
Against a wall. Outside the window pine