There was an odd community giddiness
in that orange-stand shaped like a pagoda,
but also a fabulous wittiness.

I am what I deserve, blinkered, public,
Get-atable, indecorate, with finch-like tints,
Neither black nor white but always gray,

What man, tell me, ever
crossed the street like that,
an angle boxed on a sign,

The doctor had said he could fix everything
Except the eyes.

Spring again. Wet April calls the blue
from the sky, would give me names
for all the green things writhing from the earth’s

Wish you were heir / To more naturalness / Than simple lust

Can you be busted for fucking / The enemy? The radio is curiously / Still in the tropical night

When the last girl came
to the pile of leaves, she chose
a green one for her mother, brown

We missed the point: the red gash
of a hood was a door in the forest,
a mouth to the unknowable. We wanted

An unlit world knows nothing of desire,
said God to Adam, pointing to his hip;
The pleasure’s naming what you most require,