Naomi said, Go home girls, I'm cursed,

and we clutched, cried No! No!
the proper length of time. Then

have never known starvation nor plenitude
and unless the order of the world 
changes, I won’t. 

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

Let the glass we smash be doubt,
the wine free will,
the bouquet, a mosaic of mercies.

At my wedding, my father, ten years dead,
practices what Isaac Babel called
              the “genre of silence”—that is,

Climb down, said the angel of the Lord
in banquet-waitress raiment (black skirt, white shirt)
to the plastic pair.

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.

Bark of the birch, aria of the oriole, grit of the sand grain,
In the first stanza I shall attempt to confiscate your essence
And each time, you will slip through the noose of language,

I lie on my back in the damp grass,
Staring at the stars’ mineral precision,
Masses of gas, bearers of dead light,

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