Her hands covered her face, her shoulders
Pulled forward, and her back became herself.

a list fell out of the telephone book
father’s whorl whirling writing

Smoking a cigarette in a classroom
a woman is copying sentences from
a book called Our American Way of Life

Are you listening? Mommy takes care of you.
She’s writing this letter with her pen dipped
in the milk her nipples won’t stop streaming

I have come often to this forest,
home to these never not green trees.
Now, in a grove of auburn bones

I watch like a praying mantis 
In the dawn of the day of the world, 
My fingers are knotted like bamboo-shoots, 

Take back that look. Close the door 
To that shuttered room. 
The thought of what we left, forget. 

Go lift that pane of moonlight from the floor
And tell Nicotiana to stop 
Screaming with her perfume. 

Give me loops.
Give me turtles.

So I don’t think I’ll work today. Today it seems best
To let this bench hold my end up. Today
Of what my part was, brooding