When you think of me, don't think of me wooing/the bed all thick-tongued with vodka./O god, come to my assistance./don't think of me baby-/oiled in a green bikini with dirty feet.

So how could I teach it to you. I think/the body's a hub and bodies are spokes/and there are things worth setting the house/on fire for, but hard to know what things/they are plus they may shift and …

Too easy/to say Shiva/or Janus/or butterfly/effect or tree/of life or/Christmas/wreath because/it is December

An old lady fell out of the window because she was too curious. She fell out of the window and was smashed to pieces.

(because maybe I am and Elsie)/isn't a spot in my head, in my whole goddam spotted heart.

This pleasing or displeasing you,/I curl my hair into a ball of strays.

Remember the night I passed my test and the Thai/place where you took me brought my rice pressed/into the shape of a heart,a maraschino cherry/bleeding sweetly on the top?

You warn me you'll be wearing a suit. Don't./Warn me if you're going to be naked, killed, careless,/in flames.

I teach all day, get a weak signal at night,/Malbec, Idol, pasta, peas, cherries. Night, night./Wake at three a.m. to wind-streaked dark, I know/death thinks about me, like a dog...

It's a great sea of stupid people./An ocean of idiots./Everyone just sort of bobs around/And bumps into each other./A lot of the stupid people are kids./Fat, ugly kids.

We are waiting in line for the carousel. My mother's breath is short and shallow. the closer we get, the more must support her. I'm dizzy, she says. I have to lie down. Her breath as if. In labor.

I am sewing a quilt in the shape of my hand. I am sewing a quilt in the shape of my arm. I am sewing a quilt in the shape of my body, a quilt that will cover me perfectly, so long as I lie stiller …

I have a bird in my mouth. He can't get out. his wings and head keep struggling. Everybody notices bulges in my cheeks and asks what's wrong. Rrmmrmff I say.I can't seem to get my mouth wide enough …

the fox body and another and the snow thicket. two foxes circling as bodies, the bodies rigid, the bodies circling in the neighborhood of a thicket rigid with bodies foxes red. the foxes wit tails …

The teacher can't hear the children/over all this monsoon racket,/all the zillion spoons whacking/the rusty roods, all the wicked tin streams/flipping full-grown bucks off their hooves.

I admire you most, boldly/drawn boy in Bronzino's/Venus. Oil on wood. where/you, Cupid, cup/your mother's breast & bend/your pale, putto's mouth to her.

The last I saw of him was on the final neurasthenic afternoon of his harmonica/When he lost his hair ad said I did this to him with my grief,/As the pink halo of a monk's scalp began to shine up …

the bed was every damned thing a man says / before he screeches gimme my gun...

I have only watched someone turn the auger, / Cutting through the obvious ice, in a belief / Of that which is swimming below. Neither of us / Was wrong…

The year, this distance— when brightly his face hums and ticks like a washed penny and you can see him now as a co-worker or neighbor…