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Down on all fours. The breaking of rules the only rule. Cut off from clear lines of retreat. Beguiled by excess. By like-minded folk enthroned in ever tinier courts.

There are nights I dream of goldfish and in my dreams they sing to me in fluted, piercing sopranos like the Vienna Boys’ Choir. Although in the daylight they are mostly silent and ravenous— the suction-cup grip of their mouths on my fingertip like tiny rubber bath- room plungers when they rise to strike at…

The movie about the great Siberian rose, Brought back to life by the doctor who killed her, Was playing a block away at the Lane. The usher Was dressed like a nurse, and scowled, and told us Not to make noise. I wish we had For as soon as the movie began, a tomblike room…

in memory of Penny Cabot Decades ago you showed me marsh marigolds At Carrigskeewaun and behind a dry-stone wall The water-lily lake’s harvest of helleborines. As you lie dying there can be only one lapwing Immortalizing at Dooaghtry your minty Footsteps around the last of the yellow flags.

Those beads of lapis, even the classical Blues of dawn, are dimmed by comparison. When I hand you this bunch of cornflowers The only other color in the room Illumines your eyes as you arrange them. They are the blue reflection of whatever Moves in you, serene as cool water tipped Into crystal, oddly enough…

“The poem is a sort of animal.” —Ted Hughes I give him words to tell me who he is.     He gives them back, begins a visual discourse on invisibility, gunning by me a film in snippets &     jump-shots, starring him. Light flashes everywhere. But you can still make out frames that form a…