Elizabeth Hughey

I'm carrying a black baby inside a white baby inside a floral blouse that serves as dress. I'm looking at a television through a shop window through which, by reflection, I see a floral blouse.

Will a boy wake in the night and hear his way out of the dark room into a dark hall, past a painting of a pear too dim to see, like the picture of a sea horse inside a closed book. When he hears his feet on the carpet, will there be carpet? When he hears his father roll over in bed, will his father roll over? What about sleet tapping the window? Will his ears create the snowplow shaking snow from a bush? Or does the plow rev itself into engine?

Never speak of it. Be silent as the little b. Lean into the graceful skewing

of the downward spiral. You can't stop the postman from delivering.

Millionaires at large in the garden are just as likely to pull up our fences.

The tickets are for entering a new unimportance that insists it is all

made of glass, smooth enough to be skied upon, connecting

above water to below. You are connected to the Midwest

because your river is connected, but you are made up of non-river

elements, too. You can see how the water is also the skier…

In hooves, trying to get inside the apple without

breaking the skin, or inside the Orangery at closing,

oh, and in that, a hymn containing the words

taken from the antique store down on 2nd Avenue.