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

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

When I was born my mother said she had prayed so long I
   must be a miracle.

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 shiver of lightning buckles the sidewalk.
Love cracks my sternum open

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