Vol. 9, No. 3 Contents

To him, the problem with a public library was that it had too much sincerity about it. Everything was so nonprofit and earnest. Even the posters showed a pacifist propriety. He felt judged by the public library.

She was sixty-two and widowed. Church people did not recognize her, but people at the animal shelter did. People at the shopping mall did not recognize her, but people at the library did. In this woman's life, there were more books than traffic lights, more cats than cell phones, more vegetables than credit cards.

The side entrance to the library is a proper Ivy door: a solid antique, heavy, imposing. I'm used to its resistance, its demand that I show a little gumption, so I give it a proper pull. But as I grasp the big brass handle and begin to give the door its due, it lunges toward me, tossing this handsome red-haired woman into my arms.

One mother used to boil orange rinds in sugar for hours to form a leathered candy. When her daughter was released from Dachau, she vowed no tears. Then the soldier tore the skin of an orange. Today, I read in the Encyclopedia of Birthdays that orange is a calming color for those born in April. I can't paint my walls this spring without picturing a mother boiling sweets for silenced tongues. I place my compositions in the corner. People think it isn't risky to be a satellite. My god, what I've never seen.

The children have placed our eggplants

Beneath their shirts, purple boobs.

Earlier, daughter was pregnant

With a honeydew.

Note which figure the tree

triggers imperceptibly,

the night-blind awl,

the ingot of blood,

the face down grace

of grain…

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.

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?

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.

Fiction made desperately, to fence in God.

Oh swollen mercury

Oh swollen Oh

And so again we're left with speculation. Luck, destiny, fortuity.

           The mouth makes its sounds, curls ever so slowly, forming

                      into horror or love, while lightning in the sky, if you're a passenger,

cannot be described, because those moments are always

           your last. It's 3 a.m. Monday morning…

Because I have waited too long to ask why we deserve this,

           it keeps pounding harder than we ever imagined. Awnings

                      have collapsed over every balcony, cars start floating

gently down the streets, and even rats nestled in the sewers

           have already drowned. But still there's no flood, no looting.

Too late to think about tomorrow, I do it anyway,

           and while I'll still be sleeping, your drive across I-95

                      I always picture, every situation different. First

a man in a car with a siren—flickering and silent—

           wearing away its dark black paint. He stops, tells you

                      to get out.

Smoke from the pipe of our lungs, unreaching, shifting molecules

           to air and back

to smoke, will leave us, in the midst of this city, quietly to drown

           among our past—

suicide gun blasts through walls, our waiting and heart-stopped nerves

           then quickening,

then beginning their stretch…

If there is something to be devoured, there is something to be devoured, this taste of whatever it is that makes things taste, the touching of tongues and the speaking of tongues in various languages, words that I have never heard, meanings that can never be parceled from the letters formed, these looping curves, these straight angles, up and to the left like angels circling above like buzzards, like vultures, all things holy and good…

I never win at the game Hump the Hostess

or Musical Beds. Martha says I don't

have any rhythm or know how to mix

a drink. Last week I sloshed in

rubbing alcohol to see if she could feel

a difference, but she just asked if I went

cheap on the brand.

of snow dust

on pigeon shit

at the end of another year

their inevitability, like frost

or pigeon calls in morning air.

there is a turning point

with snow, swooping

Everything passes, said the Buddha,

and I saw it myself on the river—

tennis balls and condoms,

waterlogs and dead dogs,

styrofoam battleships,

the mastless schooner of a rubber sandal…

Or let the answer be

that sweet scent of smoke

when in his special chair

he puffed then let out hummingbirds.

Cut, cut the envelope says.

Keep it deep

and hide

my father says.

I obey limits, green soup

and insomnia.

The glass was empty except

for the cherry… the TV showed

volcanoes in Ecuador.

And rain and rain

in the South of France.

Read your hand in the mirror:

this is your only chance

to be the victim.

Lucks, my fair falcon, and your fellows all,

   How well pleasant it were your liberty!

Ye not forsake me that fair might ye befall.

But they that sometime liked my company:

Like lice away from dead bodies they crawl.

They flee from me that sometime did me seek

With naked foot, stalking in my chamber.

I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek,

That now are wild and do not remember

That sometime they put themself in danger

To take bread at my hand; and now they range,

Busily seeking with a continual change.