Stiff stilts of herself.

Silver bag of herself
with turquoise gilt
midriff.

(Shake it but
no more will fit.)

Red lipstick line
between the folds —

precise —

opposite baby"s soft
gurgling.

Have you lost your
passes?

Greeks pictured the afterlife
as an insipid version
of the world they knew.

But they couldn"t
see this.

Two women,
with red mesh crests
atop white hair,

enter the lounge area;

one laughs, " I feel
like we should
say something. "

1

Touch each chakra
in turn and say,

" Nothing shocks me. "

2

Watching bombs fall
on Syria,

we feel serious,

occupied,

not preoccupied
as we were

previously.

3

" Makes me end,
where I begun, "

wrote John Donne,

turning love
into geometry.

Deathless Aphrodite, adorned with embroidered flowers,
daughter of Zeus, weaver of wiles, I pray to you,
do not stress my heart, lady,
with aches and pains,

Rather, come here, if ever before
having heard from afar this, my voice,
you heeded it, and leaving your father"s
golden palace, came;

you yoked your chariot; quick, beautiful birds
brought you over the dark earth,
from heaven and across the sky,
beating their thick wings,

and suddenly they were here; and you, oh blessed one,
with a smile across your godly face,

O why do you walk through the fields in boots,
Missing so much and so much?
O fat white woman whom nobody shoots,
Why do you walk through the fields in boots,
When the grass is soft as the breast of coots
And shivering-sweet to the touch?

Springtime's messenger
The nightingale, her voice filled with longing

The moon shone full
As the women stood around the altar

[In Sardis] Her mind often here

Readily acknowledging your goddess-like beauty,
Most of all she rejoiced in your music.

Now, though, she stands out among the Lydian women
Just as at times as the sun
Sets the moon rises rosy-fingered

Outshining all the stars, the moonlight
Stretching out over the salt sea
As well as the full flowered fields

Dewdrops appear beautifully on
Blooming roses as well as delicate
Chervil and sweet, flowerful clover.

But she wanders about, dear
Atthis on her mind, and in longing

In the fog there goes a knock-kneed farmer
And his ox, slowly in the autumn fog
Which hides the poor and shameless villages.

And out there as he goes the farmer is singing
A song of love and infidelity
That speaks of a ring and a heart which someone is breaking

Oh! The autumn the autumn has been the death of summer
In the fog there go two gray sillouettes.

He fancies his chances are good with her,
unaware that in the years since the war

she has come to prefer women whose cunts
taste like mustard. To pin one" s hopes on

a bark-colored moth, its wings crinkled
like crepe paper, a moth affixed high

on the kitchen wall, frozen for days where
it will likely die in noble clinging mode

just under the cobwebby heating vent,
is to confirm your need for more friends

and a greater daily quota of sunlight.
To raise C." s hopes that T. can stop

drinking and then to liken those

In English
we place a noun
meaning fixed purpose
before our verbs
to create the future
tense.


Here, in the private life
my team invents,
I" m in a floodlit kitchen
like the set
of an old-time ad
for Tide

and I am chopping
something.



Isn"t this the past
perfect?
Should I feel nostalgic?

This corn is highly
leveraged

and I" m wearing
a pink slip.