Vol. 5, No. 3 Contents

She is already experimenting with the accent as she draws herself up to me. She collects her body like a sharecropper and lays out her insane demands.

As Mr. John Oakhurst, gambler, stepped into the main street of Poker Flat on the morning of the twenty-third of November, 1850, he was conscious of a change in its moral atmosphere since the preceding night.

The antiques on the wall were real, not reproductions like you see in chain joints these days. In fact, even the seating was antique: scarred tables from long-demolished hotels and diners, railcar berths, an old-timey elevator.

What his wife mentioned of his being a tale-teller as well as a musician now occurred to me; and as, you know, I like tales of superstition, I begged to have a specimen of his talent as we went along.

When Alethea came over after school she wanted to know if my grandmother was a witch.

Are you too deeply occupied to say if my Verse is alive?

The Mind is so near itself—it cannot see, distinctly—and I have none to ask—

Medicine is of all the arts the most noble…

I will follow that system of regimen which, according to my ability and judgment, I consider for the benefit of my patients, and abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous.

Each new day planned another. It was always a cool evening, bones brittle as toothpicks.

Tennessee Williams once visited Manhattan where he celebrated the Broadway success of A Streetcar Named Desire with a leather purse.

Safe in their Alabaster Chambers—

Untouched by Morning—

And untouched by Noon—

Lie the meek members of the Resurrection—

Rafter of Satin—and Roof of Stone!

But how he set—I know not—

There seemed a purple stile

That little Yellow boys and girls

Were climbing all the while—

The Heaven we chase,

Like the June Bee—before the School Boy,

Invites the Race—

Stoops—to an easy Clover—

We play at Paste—

Till qualified, for Pearl—

Then, drop the Paste—

And deem ourself a fool—

A likeness or delineation. Or. The application of Light to the purpose of Representation. Rather. The smallest reduction of the largest pyramid. And. The largest enlargement of the smallest microbe. An underwater waterlog of the sawfish in swim. For.

You are no dumb chimp, smacking white on ultramarine, mars black on white, a stroke of crimson somewhere in between to mimic an inferno. You didn't knock over the brushes or try to eat them…

Neverland won't fess up…

Whatever comes naturally, he says

the sky is always the hardest part

with the guest bedroom locked

and you in it…

You there green with teeth

and certificates, summer

another midnight

under a dotted line (a trust fund)…

A scrawny hippo, a tar-caked disc

hopping around out back.

A rogue flipped on his back…

They tell you

that when you think

you can breathe,

you'll bury

what you draw.

I needed to see you,

but you weren't here.

There was no sign.

The gate was bolted.

If I could

be a character with a mind

to find inside my own head

the path from A to B…

At The Future

Home of the New

Church…

You have to wonder

who would leave

a ladder open

in an empty lot.

First, say:

Today will not end

as if it never began.

Thunderheads are not

gathering.

Can you make me

a chair that looks

like this chair?

Don't be biased, but it's about

healing, leaping buildings in a single bound. I went

to Utah once, on the Greyhound bus, and stopped in

a yellow café…

to think a reverse template

could redeem some missing

mirror image as banal as pornography

when I needed a compost pile

You spend the last part of the party in the laundry rubbing salt into wine splotches on your shirt, thinking, even the stone painted like a ladybug, even the slug made of Christmas lights, even rusted bicycle wheels soldered to spikes? This is not party talk about landscape…

Let us drink and be merry, dance, joke, and rejoice,

With claret and sherry, theorbo and voice!

I have had playmates, I have had companions

In my days of childhood, in my joyful school-days;

All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

10. Do grapes feel that sweet while crushing them barefoot? Should I have made love like she did—sticky, swelled, then bursting?

give me my 12 cuckoos worth

of haunted fleurons, nostalgia

to fix my haywire antennae

and be heard…

You say, "I have been tired recently and I've tried to tell you

                About this, about how I'm feeling."

I have looked at you, but you have not seen me looking…

Your return brought many surprises.

I hadn't, for example, remembered

your habit of calling me Herman Tinklewip…

My dad would like to ship my grandmother to Oregon, but first

he calls to ask what I think about heart surgery. She'll die

if they do and she'll die if they don't and there are buckets of hyacinths

on my rooftop, and bathtubs of irises; I don't want to talk about this…

My tongue freezes on syllables        then starts stammering

the way a hand does, trembling on a doorjamb.