One boy was hard-of-hearing,
red-haired, freckled, never smiled,
another wore a white bib,

You would have to go down
into black earth like my father
gold light against shadow

Belle. As a boy of eight he thought of a bell,
something that rang, like the little crystal bell
on the antique table beside the bed that Mother

Eighteen years ago my cousin Arthur
   died alone in a hotel
         in Perugia,

The Doctor fingers my bruise. 
“Magnificent,” he says, “black 
at the edges and purple 

Someone enters your life
on a day you no longer
remember. The years pass,

The Beach Boys haven’t had a hit song in years
yet their albums continue to enjoy an extraordinary success.

He fears the tiger standing in the way.
The tiger takes its time, it smiles and growls.
Like moons, the two blank eyes tug at his bowels.

Unknown faces in the street
and winter coming on. I
stand in the last moments of

The light sifts down from the naked bulb
he’s quickened with a string. He speaks
to no one out of the well of his anger.