The skin is the largest organ in the body. The skin of an average-
sized man has an area of approximately seventeen square feet and
weighs about five pounds. —medical handbook

First you run! Fly!
Turn yourself inside out.
Another time you escape.

After the first death there is a shrinking.

Miracles to fit in a spoon.

The sun rolling crazy and free as the wheel of an old baby buggy.

So much depends
upon
forgetting much

“I feel like such a… shit.
I rescued this little lost terrier
on Broadway and 90th, mangy little thing

Where the gale winds blew they crouched low
where too much horizon leered they fashioned a circle
and drew its boundaries tight

Though you learned the dance routines they made you learn
         and you were 1996 Colorado State All-Star Kids Cover Girl
            and you were 1996 America's Royal Little Miss

—with only the cavernous house as a witness.

It nudges you from your shallow sleep,
it whispers love-mockeries.

Beyond our seed-littered pond a small forest of bamboo grows wild.
Hear the wind-rustling like shaken paper? Bamboo.

Numbskull, inject
At first there seems a placid lake
      on which