fresh from his bath, each lop of hair

curling back, as if to caress

his Baby Shampoo head. He looked odd,

standing in the food-line with the grown-ups, and he was as

tall as a grown-up, taller than some,

though different from all of them, because of his

clean crispness, and his patterned bed-clothes—

and the shirt was not deckled all over

but only here and there, with Ursa

Minor, and with golden stars like

solar system p.j.’s, or cop

p.j.’s. Then I saw that the mammals on this

large boy’s short-sleeved shirt were grizzlies—that

free-swinging hump above and behind

the lowered head—and there were only

two bears, one on each bicep,

and the star was made of real metal—

a badge—and across the fat-lump of one grizzly

was a word, all caps, like a spelling word,

s-h-e-r-i-f-f, he was an

officer in the chow line—I checked

by his hip, and there were the handcuffs, and there,

at his right hand, the worn wooden butt

of a Western handgun. Sleep, baby,

sleep. The summer woods are deep.

The boys and girls are in camo, they’re away

from home, killing people, and being

killed. And yet he was a grown man,

and I remembered being his age, hitchhiking

here from privilege college,

looking for what was strange, and real,

and true as a dream, and wild as the former earth.

The Communicant

During the stretch where the train was going backward

through liquid forest, the ferns and trunks

drew back for a moment, making a glade,

and there, at its center, in a green niche,

like a saint in a glory, was a young man,

naked, his pale torso and limbs

muscled and smooth, his hair a furze around his head

which was very still, as if he were the statue of a

sacred creature, unseeing—but his hand

was moving, he seemed to be slapping his genitals

up and out, toward us, bouncing them

with deft fierceness. And he had a look of such

grievous longing, like the cry of the train,

that I did not think of the fear I’d have felt

to happen on him on my own. But he was

alone, and he seemed to have stripped himself

for a ritual, to pit himself

against the cars passing from city

to city through the dense woods, as if he

wanted to be

known to us, to be

seen, in his extreme state—

needing someone, loving and hating someone.

Bianca Helps Me Clean My Attic

When we get to the house, Bianca says,

“One can see what will trouble this sleep

of mine,” and after a few hours

in the attic—grit of dust and crisp

wasps and flies and ladybugs

and ashes, she says, “Whatever sleep

it is.” And when we take a break,

for coffee, she says, “Were he not gone,”

and we talk about how much we had liked

playing with our dolls. “And I think my dolls

sort of liked me,” I say. “At least, I think