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Only God can make a tree “THIS GROVE LACKS AN ALTAR.” —So Latch built A temple and an altar.                                       Templum aedificavit. How shall I remember the use of his tools? (A coffin-maker among the Immortals. What a scream!)                              —Where is that Latch now? Will I see him again in his shadowy cave On…

The angle of the postman’s cap looked like he’d dressed himself in dark, the darkness, say, that’s lurching from his mouth, where teeth should be, a smile like charcoal, awkward on this full- grown man, but safer for his world where fuchsia picket fences float above a lumpy car that trails a cautious, chastened string…

When she came into his room he was asleep and when she touched him, he woke— her hand on his shoulder, her knee at his mouth, and in the darkness, she looked like a boy. When he tried to sit up she covered his ears with her hands: “Save ourselves from ourselves,” she said, and…

In the chapel of the Catholic hospice we listened to the list of those who had died in the past six months. I waited to hear the name I had so missed hearing. A woman seated in back comforted a weeping man, her tears hidden, “I told you this would make you feel better. You…

That which you made me do I did. That which you made me say I said. Now the blame, like oil over water, spreads, and so our life together that began in vows—the licensed oath— has leased itself back to us both: what we knew and couldn’t know what our words no longer show.

You and I lay together on a grassy bed while one sparrow chased another from a limb. A bumblebee left a flower he seduced, and flew away covered in her scent. I reached my lips to catch your lips before they turned away. “Just a kiss, please a kiss.” “It always starts the same way,…