Where were you, nymphs,
when I was learning to apply
the proper plaster of Paris and papier-mâché

All day I think about what to do with the day.
I walk down the street for a coffee and to think
About what to do after that.

 Ruffle and tuck, river fabric wags doggedly towards ocean,
Heaping surface on surface, its cadence a gown.

Perpetually beneath lurks stillness, a calm inseam sewn

For how many years have I kept up the lie, the story
of the middle-aged man in the cap and the gray
or possibly bluish sweatshirt
gaining on me in the night, wrenching

From Vienna it’s picture-postcard all the way.
Tell me, was ever such a land at ease!
The fat farms glistening, the polished pigs.

From Vienna it’s picture-postcard all the way.
Tell me, was ever such a land at ease!
The fat farms glistening, the polished pigs.

Three is to recapture isolation’s ease among the adolescents,
Slim curved and tortured body of Mississippi.
One finds sarcastic zealous presidents

Now you are happy, and you are more than happy.
         You swan of Lancaster.

I can see the traces of old work
Embedded in this page, like your bed
Within a bed. My old desire to live!

The family is now watching
The scene that’s produced