My mother, who opened my eyes, who
brought me into the terrible world,
was guilty. Her look apologized:

In a world where no one knows for sure
I roll my blanket for the snow to find:
come winter, then the blizzard, then demand—

At night sometimes the big fog roams in tall
from the coast and away tall on the mountain road
it stands without moving while cars wander along

Lady of last night, no offense,
but when in the café I glimpsed you
seated with your husband, bored,

I took the trip just to try it
in spite of warnings from friends
about over-cooked borsht, dreary

started from unpretentious beginnings
and hasn't, in fact, come very far along—
still occupies the back wall of the bedroom,

The ass-muscles sag like a sling
but those glorious membranous wings
expand all the more extravagantly—

The pains so produced
are not, of course, excruciating—
more abstract,

purple petunias, amaranths, flattened
daisies, mattresses with phosphorescent
bodies that shimmer in the dark—

When the movie theatre closed
we decided to stay.
It was depressing, at first,