Sunset in the valley,
which is still sometime away

from “official sunset,”
this inland of an earlier

nautical twilight;
but at the fastigium

of the dead central limb
of a York gum

at the southwest corner
of the red shed,

Sawdust soaked in kerosene,
storm-fallen wood, ash-flurries
over the stoked bed of a dead fire.

Like monks tunneling into desert
mesas, a vibrant hermitage surrounded
by a moat of sand, rats have tunneled

As a stunted woman (you might say
stunt) my body is every day
ready to explode in some crazy way.

Guy walks up to me in the park and says, “My girlfriend killed
    James Brown,” and I start to say, “Do I know you?” but
I don’t want to miss out on the story, so I say, “No lie!” and he says,
    “Yeah, I got bumped up to first class, and when I saw who
my seatmate was, I went back to economy and told my girlfriend,
    and even though she had the flu, we switch places, and three

   Because I make the big bucks fooling around
with words, in France sometimes I like to say
   "Sylvia Plath" instead of "s'il vous plait,"

                                                                                pigs,
and this one pig wallowed in his slough
as the others chewed grass and made pig

We all know where we will be a hundred years from now:
beyond the dailiness of this slow panic
and the fear always present behind the look of denial;

To get to this place, 
you must go through the village which is above.
If you find yourself before the mountain

They have come from dinner at the nearest new restaurant—
you know the kind: bottle glass in the window,
brass rails, and a fanciful line of red neon