Joseph Moxon, Mechanick Exercises. Vol. 2 (1683–84), the first known manual of printing

i.
J. M. begins his book,
Every thought taken up from the block with a roll
Of the ball and inked on the form,
A Craft of the Hand which cannot be taught by Words:
“I thought to have given these Exercises
The title of Doctrine of Handy-Crafts but when I considered
The true meaning of the word I found the Doctrine
Would not bear it, therefore I shall not undertake

If the man who called you nigger in Dominick’s parking lot
had only dialed 1-800-882-Mary earlier today,
he may have been a better boyscout. I bet

We’re strange features, ignoring things. Our hero
Separates from a problem in pink, the thought
To be able to thing in the world.

The day Jim stalked the tomcat between rows of bonsai,
I asked: What kind of gun is that? He said: Air.
And snuffed a squirrel as proof or demonstration.

You were egalitarian with the sleaze you perpetrated, loving
transsexual and coed alike, so shy in your approach, no one
suspected your blue eyes. And when you sat barechested,

Deirdre was almost ebony. She washed your boxers
and folded them neatly inside your backpack.
When I came home from the Cape, you'd painted our bedroom

Blessings on the hunter and the hunted
whose iconography of rifle and bone
whined and hissed and sparked and charred,

Oh transcendent, this aqua blue and all these health nuts
running back and forth hold nothing—no sea gnome,
no salt to scour your bones clean—only placidity

Teukros: . . . in sea-girt island: Cyprus, where it was written
        by Apollo I should live, naming the city Salamis
        to remember my island home

A man unzipping his fly is vulnerable to attack.
Then the zipper got stuck.
An angel flies in the window to unstick it.