Somebody’s aunt out swabbing her birdbath
with Lysol and the town paper mill down the block
is beginning to blister in a clean shock

How parched, how marrow-dust dry
they must get on their long surface and undersea
journeys—huge stuffed husks,

Thud, thud, all the sores go blind,
and over the basket of pears hover
brief addicted fruitflies.

One of these days she will lie there and be dead.
I’ll take her out back in a garbage bag
and bury her among my sons’ canaries,
the ill-fated turtles, a pair of angelfish:

Skin pallid, lips painted,
jars of pills on the bedside,
you are beautiful.

Standing in November (as the dead 
Brown color seeps into the land), 
In waders and in water, with a red

From a live oak, a feeder swings
in a gust of wind I can barely hear
as I reread your postcard of Ayrshires

I remember erecting a screened-in porch
for a house I lived in, the staple gun
all afternoon like a giant mosquito

1.

Max, I lean a photo of Josephine Baker
in this box lined with black construction paper,

as she lies there, her flesh cooling, on a table,
what blush easing the furniture of her body
toward the invisibility in a mirror