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for Taha Muhammad Ali and for Aaron Shabtai From nothing but his fear, and kiss her cunning brows Who braves the risen salar, daughter’s bursting ripeness Moaning through the sash, he marries to a settler The crown sits on his head, to hold her as he wants For him the dead king’s wife, in a…
Night sweats to the rattle and clink of their armor— marching grooves around my bed, pulling toothpicks from tatami to disembowel each other, or skewer and roast a beetle, fine bone china of their sake cups rolling the sound of marbles when they drop them on the hard- wood floors at dawn. You think I’m…
The shame of an idea is in its seriousness, a conqueror’s seriousness, shameful the way it surveys the landscape of remains, laying claim to the vast ruined view and each surviving privacy alike, claiming its own pure force as the origin of things, seizing even the moonlight on the leaves of half a…
Tastes like the melted centers of toasted marshmallows. Tastes like tears of nectar squeezed out of clover blossoms. Tastes like sips from rivers running through lands of milk and honey. Remember those wax bottles filled with colored liquids, how as a child you bit off the top and sucked out the sweet purple, or red,…
In one film, a man turning the pages of a book. In another film, a man turning the pages of a book. Outside, the snow and the semis cover everything with mud and someone talks to someone else. The snow creaks like an old floor. Inside, the paper weighs the same as the inside of…
A muster of white peacocks preens by the inverted lake pooling the ceiling. The peacocks are mute. He is not quite mute. An inattention. Letters answered in such haste, he fails to answer. Words overlaid, commas sliding out of line—a riff of lost eyelashes punctuating nothing. In this hungry place, there is a bed and…
Call me What You Will. This for your complicated hands— my best mechanical tree. Test? No thank you. Question? The rivers run in circles. You noticed. We noticed. (thinking) Duet! & the pin factory . . . Sweet extrovert, it is making pins. You will, you know, but I shouldn’t sing Introvert! Introvert! if I…
What’s it all about? Don’t ask and then you’ll know.
Asking Carrying a bucket full Of a broken window or Watching people and their mirrors on TV; the woods tamped down By snow and the very high iron of trees; Air passes from purple to blue into Black pitched lower than trees; Glass for this Half-week….
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