Father says the worst thing is a windless December night with no moon, no stars, just snowlight glowing in through the windows, lighting the path to the spring house.

1.
Technically it was liquid asphalt:
MC, RC, or 85/100—
nothing very far removed

My uncle who got around told me they plastered
money on the pictures, and threw coins
at all the saints.

The best way to eliminate guilt
Is to have nothing to feel guilty about.
Thus spake my surrogate father

Like the bells
That could be ringing out of heaven now
For all my ears can tell,

A large unpleasant woman
Is chasing a songbird around the kitchen
With a broom shouting

Then he deflowers her, pulling away the greenery.
Then a blue vein thinning into a hollow.
Then it is the hollow between her neck and lower jaw.

Maybe enough light    •    to score a wave    •    reflecting moonlight, sand    •    reflecting
moonlight and you    •    spotting from shore    •    what you see only    •    as silhouette
against detonating bands    •    of blue-white effervescence    •    when the crown of the
falling    •    swell explodes upward    •    as the underwave blows through it    •    a flash
of visibility quickly    •    snuffed by night    •    the surf fizzling and churning    •
remitting itself to darkness    •    with a violent stertor    •    in competition with no other
sounds

I finger this vagabond cloth to numbness.
I can't even capture your hands
or what carries us limb by limb.

6. I cried for a long time but finally slowly stopped, loosening my grip on the nurse’s hand. Because his arm was a prosthesis and he had gone away leaving it with me, it fell to the floor, clattering.