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Contrails crisscrossing overhead,spreading puff by fading puffinto each instant of the past…dull notes, antiphonal clouds lined outagainst the blue, arpeggiosdown that road as faras we can hope to go…                                            The dishran away with the…

She was the stain in the teacup   that spread up toward the handle.She was the handle that snapped   off the hairbrush, andShe was the hairbrush he tossed   onto the fire, andShe was the fire he carried   each day in his pipe. She was the pipe the bath water   rode to the river, andShe was the river where they   boarded the boat…

That it was fine linen flawlessly stitched,            as silken as new skin. That it was the color of ivory or an old book’s pages            left blank in the front. In the beginning shape of the letter A, it made            a long A sound. With lace. Because she was heard to say it had been passed           …

The dome, the mustachelike a circus strongman’s,those shoulders people still climb on.and eyes that hold youin the snow before stackedand battered volumes of mutuallyexclusive systems of belief:UFOs, black magic, MadameBlavatsky’s wisdom receivedat the feet of lamas, whileyours grow cold in the slushy street.His look follows passersbywho, though they can’t identifythe man or recognizethe eyes which…

So many have died,to pick just oneseems willful,unkind, and besidesyou might forgetthe friend you promisednever to forget,so let this be for anyone who diedin this season of death,which from now onwill be full of facescoming forward,smiling from the pagelike the line hastilyformed backstagethat stands beforethe curtain, and bows,then follows its spotinto the shadeof scenery and props.

If I get religious for a minute, it will be to keep termswith the bewildered caul of being thirteen, surrounded by the dead. What used topeek through the roof, never so much stroking string things and eating afterlifebiscuits, as making sound like a wonky piano dragging its broken leg in an interminable circleof Sundays. I…