I heaved my thick world history book
above my classmates’ heads. It arced,
flapped open, boomed against the blackboard.

It's raining women here in Cincinnati.
Parts of women, parts of one woman—
the police aren't really sure. Last week

Grandmomma plucked pin-feathers. I stared
into the cavity and tried
to imagine such jumbled, meaty things

 Between my back fence and the drainage ditch,
the county's
                no-man's land, I'd

My Daddy slapped my hand against my cheek.
“Don’t hit yourself. Why are you hitting yourself?”
He held my wrists, and laughed. I cried. My hands,

The first poem came at an iron glass-topped table
about the space heater near my feet how my ears fuzzed
from its warmth and maybe something else its coils

Francesco’s fingers must have had their say
About the blessed living near the Word
With waxen doll or with a beating bird

The farms are stinking craters in
Sheer sides under the sodden moors;
When it is not wind it is rain,

Murdered me; why I have no thoughts at all.
Run your hands along my temples where something
Beats like a sea with no land, or a cry

Men that have been bending all their lives
In the one dim lamp of a pension
To lift their needs, relax as in graves