how softly one is seduced by whispers.
Take notice, when leafing through, say, a Calvino novel,
of all of the pages gone blank

Just its fur was moving.
With a snare, they lifted it
and sealed it in a garbage bag.

I want to take
responsibility, to say I made it hard—
I only made it hard for him specifically.

He will teach me how to seduce
Men, stags, double-winged angels

The shaven rinds of lemon
                we squeeze and stir
                                into our espresso,

In the spring they ripen and swarm the trees,
the waxy little fruits that resemble bald heads.

Setting: crooked Brooklyn—rendered beautiful by a night
of rough, wind-driven snow needled across building faces,
sticking where stucco has worn away over years—fragments
of exposed brick—hard edges of a first, forgotten surface.

Father, all of the fears
I’ve learned are one word: silence.
How is emptiness measured? What can

Ghosts peel from the wallpaper. They turn to foxes,
run red to the trees. Weather knots
at the corners of sleep and will not recede.

By now, sir, you expect a second installment.
What novel is worth its ink if the hero's ship
never finishes sinking, if the cold tide