the white-faced heron
attempts lift & falters

Not frequent, the monitors of doomed pastoral
admit these native moths their autumn rising

after a sleepy eviscerated summer, stubble
suddenly alive with beakiness, and then and then . . .

But their science is flawed—it’s Autumn
now and the rains have yet to come

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,

Dawn air bites like a solvent
as crazy kids race ring-necked parrots,

There is a lull, as if the storm, transfixed over the city,
contemplates its course. I am possessed

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

Bright discs of color satisfy my skin,
ornament this surface of self and flash a million meteors
across your dusty mirror. These are my mermaid’s scales

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,"