Beautiful little bitch
with your fine bones,
thin and sweet ears,

It’s like something breathing
its last. God, it’s a lonely sound.
Pacific fog is blowing in.

You call out to the one who walks on castle walls,
wakening the storm lashing trees
to spell the stone steps of a night's curse,

The chopping of the chocolate, the zesting of the orange,
the scalding of the milk,
the pouring of the cream, the folding-in,

Freud liked to collapse distinctions:
masochism is the continuation
of sadism (“nothing but”), in which

Vienna revolts outside; in,
an addict is bent
over everything ever written on dreams

Slapped by saplings, hampered by roots,
our shovels went like spoons into
mouths that opened wider as we worked.

Close up, much too, ivory’s surface like most
surfaces is nothing smooth. To the touch
in all particulars it’s what the fresh

an excert from The Ferguson Report: An Erasure

Not too old, not young anymore, 
almost three dozen years gone by. 
Not a failure, not a success—