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I watched you walking up out of that hole All day it had been raining in that field in Southern Italy rain beating down making puddles in the mud hissing down on rocks from a sky enraged I waited and was patient finally you emerged and were immediately soaked you stared at me without love…

my father said, when Jacob enters the tent, until it is accomplished. I did not believe it would be accomplished. What thief does not know trickery when it comes courting, hands full of daughters, and sheep, and savoury meat? Yet he came into the tent in the dark, full of intention and heat. My body…

A good hard slap to the middle of my head. Three blackbirds sing in a red cage, three last filaments of thought that will probably snap. Their chatter rouses the gold-painted saint cross-legged near my bed. Something larger’s visible edge. I hesitate to reach out; then it comes to me that it is mine as…

he pours whiskey on time making a home in sleep one wall is enough for his back yesterday’s paper makes for a ceiling life is postponed for now but the ghosts still roaming his past are always on time panting every moment is an open grave a window to be shut he quarrels with the…

I erased it from the blackboard. Chalk bits dust to floor. The alphabet trailed me out of school. I wrote it again, in bold. By afternoon, I’d ripped out the page and fed it to the ducks. Bits of paper from bills into the pool. I walked to where the dam collects the shore and…

So big deal, so you find it sort of sucks, the voice said. Fine. Go out to your regular life where they pay you for doing something. The poem’s okay in that pile of old papers. You’ll see how you’ll empty the day, be back and open the door. Keys, even useless ones, have a…