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“Schools and Schoolmasters”

I used to watch your wrists in class; the black hair curling on the backs of your hands, your cuffs closing in small pearl buttons. You chainsmoked, apologizing between cigarettes. You waved the book at us, frustrated, yelling the question—always the same question, “Don’t you see this? Don’t you get this?” Did you know all…

Detail from “The Assassination of Khosrow Parviz’

a Persian miniature      The architecture of dreams: this part of the page is large enough to be a world — several in fact. Walls which are sky            hold baby chicks,            dove, ducks, phoenix,      and a wolf who floats up incautiously, having lost his perspective. The least flowers, transforming the lapis            lazuli, gold…

“As If Suddenly Reincarnated”

As if suddenly reincarnated One lunch-hour as Saint Sebastian, pierced and visible, The weathercock loses his freedom to turn, Crowds advance on him like the four winds. And in the street, under Transparent branches of trees Single, fixed, waving softly, Human figures wave their transparent hands. Down to the roots not a pocket, a closet…

“Mania Klepto”

You never come to shoplift but to leave things: rhinestone butterflies you borrowed from mother’s vanity, assorted lengths of nails, your brother’s manic metronome that, boxed and locked, still ticks on like the crocodile in Peter Pan. You have to be discreet and furtive as a Gideon Bible placement clerk, dart your hand out when…