and it blasts the man so that his whole shadow

scuttles beneath his belly.

The shadow grows dense

and the man sweats himself thin.

The man becomes a web

and his shadow becomes a spider.

It’s not that his life passes to the shadow—

but a tipping happens, as in an hourglass,

and suddenly there’s a new order

to the life he never knew was shared.

That night a cricket kills himself in the man.

It’s unbearable, his silk body thrilled through

with the screams. All the man is: a speaker—

and not loud enough to communicate

the fear to God.

Enough, however, to bring the spider.

Who brings a kind of relief.

Is it a sin to take the moon? On a night like this?

To bathe the body in soapy light, sipping

gray moisture like beads on a necklace?

But what night isn’t like this?

The monster is quiet on his long white limbs—

you only notice what he mops up.

And while there’s no such thing as pure silence,

memory breaks apart

and that’s close enough.

Close enough for sleep:

A sweet face

rips in half and

you pass through it

like a curtain.

On the other side, you’re the body again,

and the shadow is again shadow.

You can enjoy anything—you don’t remember

how clumsy the old hands were, how picky the tongue.

When you smile, every tooth is a perfect O,

when you write, every letter is a perfect O,

when you weep, sorrow comes clean out.

Hello again, you say. Hello again.

Poem to My Dog, Monday, on Night I Accidentally Ate Meat

POEM TO MY DOG, MONDAY, ON NIGHT I ACCIDENTALLY ATE MEAT

The lights went out on Monday

lying on a green rug—

wanting to make noise, only—

a visitation left

in his small white body.

The symbol is outrageous: like a hungry man

in your soul slamming down jam jars.

Thank God for the past tense, and its order,

and that the dog died before it was symbolic.

Monday, the Hunt left your bed.

It found a white bulb

in your body to sleep in.

Monday, it’s leaving me too.

Why does life love flowers most

when they are still bulbs?

—the plant and her roots

all stalks, stalking themselves in a circle

in the dark?

Monday, with your millions of soft horns,

I will slip behind your poodle eyes,

loading myself like a cartridge of light.

I will live in your small ecstatic brain

and take your life,

and you can take mine,

and we won’t give our lives to cancer,

but to each other.

And thank God for the future,

where we levitate,

or maybe Oblivion curls down our ears

into wings, or figs that He eats.

Troy

TROY

Tooth and tooth

Tooth and tooth

Baboon

There are tents where the sand

is made of lice

under the light of the moon.

Tooth and moon and tooth