Poetry

If there are churches
This is where a church might be,
A theatre if there are theatres, or
A store.

Wingbones shattered—feathers
Scattered over the continent—
The four unbroken animal limbs beating
A shadow-wind to keep aloft:

This dice-white Princess desk phone
Is a ghost, wearing a small bell
About its throat.

The corridor, a New Jersey of the West, its stucco newness.
What king was it that built this highway?

It’s a routine we’ve worked out
to pass the winter.
I saw myself in two, in three,
into a puzzle,

How I hate you tonight!
I tick off
the bumps on your back,
your hangnails, the acid

I watch the point of the twirling stick
Where you are sleeping, where you will come again.

Things of my world, thwart, solid, chockablock,
That I was wont lightly to wield and dandle,
Now, button-bungler, fool of lid, latch, lock,

sic on it, the cameras: witch-green greasepaint canopy—
pan down: the thick bamboo lattice
twine-bound—pan down: dirt with rags to gag up,

Nobody knows what anything
means anymore.
Sea-turtles run inland
at birth.