Where the bladderwort and water lily
give way to bulrushes and pickerelweed
and cattail heads nod hugely high,

This time the mycorrhizal infection
at the crooked roots of a hazelnut tree
meets a set of conditions so knotted and invisible

Psychoanalysis
Pursued by a tiger in his sleep
he turned himself into a horse turd

for dinner, vacation, carnality,
I took up an ancient text on military strategy
hoping to find the miracle subterfuge,

Fish are swimming at ease—
         this is the happiness of fish.
                  But the sage kings are dead

Nine lamps in the shape of teeming censers
hung from a courthouse ceiling, forty
wooden chairs facing a video screen.

A security-man who stood, arms crossed, outside
the men’s room (making sure that no one lingered)

   Cars parked alongside a chain-link fence
overlooking houses that have no view,
   plates from three bordering states aglow

I knew the length of an average penis
   was five to seven inches, a fact

A canvas we cannot stretch across the frame
nor staple down to fact: a ladder leaning

against an awning, workers pitching tar