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Then. No. Now. A long silk scarf of voice, pulled through the loop of throat— Jo Stafford singing on the radio. He wants so much to hear a voice like that, and it exists, as simply as creation, the way the world provides an image for the feeling that's richer than the feeling, so that…

Have we grown old before our time folding our hands without a smile or a piece of bread like monkeys, our faces unrecognizably human? We jump and clap to be cursed and mocked. And when we speak no one pays attention. And when we sleep even a bird can wake us. Israel, 1989

She sits in her strong middle age Near his white and iron cage And bites her lip, hearing him moan. She cannot make her strength his own. She cannot answer to the call Of that deep voice. When he was small, O red-faced cry that she could still! O groping mouth that she could fill!…

I. The fields are frozen, swart rows banded white with ribbons of ice, each a horizon planted with a sun. The station wagon's old back end takes the ruts shocklessly, waking everyone, even the potential son- in-law whose carousing late last night merited a bowed-head-in-hands. The light scissoring at him, however, is not unexpected. “If…

Wanting, the enemy cast off, wades in a dark pool outside. Wanting, the oppressor, grows anklets and beads in a wet heat. Charity, the curse in love with patriots, gives all her possessions to the night, takes off her robes and waits on the narrow bed for ruin. The slightest cusp of wind disturbing both…

1. Lately in her full arms I had felt the things That would not go, the hands: She had gathered to herself Some part of all of the fingers Of all of the men who had Touched her there, Florencio, His broad fingers like past winter gloves, Caetano who was matches, Cesar, who could only…

In the middle of the line under my reading eye a spot of fot. It makes faint an e, then a y, and travels to the right. In the next line the spot expands, shifts and erases a whole word. I close my eyes and see a tiny bright buzz saw that flickers. Opened, my…

Eat a third, drink a third, and leave a third for anger. And after waking rise slowly. And after lovemaking rise slowly. And after too much wine rise slowly. And after bloodletting rise slowly. We rise slowly after silence, taking a breath at a time. After days bent over the garden, slight comment about our…

Teodoro Luna met a woman for whom he cared instantly, She loved him back, And together two weeks later they stepped into a marriage Eighty-three miles long. It was his little joke, this calling of the years miles, And she would feign anger At this man who through the years had earned the right To…