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Back in the drafty hovel, the fishwife nonetheless wants. My daughter pats my cheek, asks what I want. Too much, I sigh. The moment already lost in her childhood past.

1. Fear of Subways Sometimes in the dark I fear trampling, an effortless extinction of the spirit underground: mass transit overflowing onto dangerous edges of piers. It connects palpably to suffocation, a child's version of rape, vapid plots of war movies—but who's the victim? I used to envy the unrapable, not for any power-mad apparatus…

It's Sunday evening. Pomp holds the receipts of all the colored families on the Hill in his wide lap. He shows which white stores cheat these patrons, who can't read a monthly bill. His parlor's full of men holding their hats and women who admire his daughters' hair. Pomp warns them not to vote for…

Elgar: Enigma Variations, Op. 36 For what does my longing long? Can I sing my own epitaph? Exactly how infinite are you? Military intelligence. (Military intelligence? Is that what I said?) In laughter hope and despair meet. Play it for me, Sam. At my funeral.

Unwise in love, I blunder overquickly into a glare that shouts, “Turn down your dial for brightness!”—obeying which, I learn the style of all those who love loving more obliquely. I see a dew scaled out along your skin and worship in that field, barefoot as Francis, until each bead across your chest convinces my…

Of What Of what did he dream? asleep near the lit word processor, As if thought had accrued to form. The late-summer sun seen once at Malibu. The primal light over the caustic seas. The winter citrus sun washed up over Jersey. The movie marquee proclaiming love. He wanted to imagine again out of the…

Geneva was the wild one. Geneva was a tart. Geneva met a blue-eyed boy and gave away her heart. Geneva ran a roadhouse. Geneva wasn't sent to college like the others: Pomp's prideful punishment. She cooked out on the river, watching the shore slide by, her lips pursed into hardness, her deep-set-brown eyes dry. They…

Frail warrior, at first there was no breath      in his body, Boy-Turning-Blue,      so when he opened his abashed lips to praise the day. . .      When did you falter, Thought-Woman, when did you fall asleep,      and fail to give him his eagle-feathered bow,      his little arrows of exhalation? And where the blood-warmed air should be,…

Tall in the doorway stands the gentle visitor. I catch my breath.      (She's quite deaf,      not interested in      details of my décor.      Her few words amaze me.      Her visits are irregular,      brief. When our eyes meet      how I am drawn to her.      I keep honey cream, in case,      in the freezer. Once      she stayed for…