encloses air, encloses also

the philosophical cat both dead and alive

inside it. The way a car inhales the gas

containing bones of dissolved dinosaurs

and the cheese breeds mold to heal the cut that holds

the hurt cradled inside the body, the blood

thick with the trace of all things

we might yet express or become, such as

the mathlete or music lover, who holds first

one note and then the next inside her ear.

We try to pin the mind’s attention to the task at hand

though the mind can sometimes falter, the way

a tongue sometimes cannot rein in the word

whose meaning may escape it, may be captured

so perfectly within its syllables for once

the desire/the surprise/the distaste churn

palpably when uttered; just as the parent’s past churns

inside the child’s future or the identity of the stranger

hides inside the mundane title with which

we greet him. There are lies we clasp to ourselves

upon waking, truths with which we worry

ourselves to sleep, dreams memory struggles

to capture in the retelling: only the ends remain

in which the building crumbles back to dust

or the mother steps, naked, out of her unzipped skirt:

an image that bears the seed of future therapy.

One book contains at least a dozen others, the scarlet

bitterness of its pith conceals the sweetness

of the mangosteen and, when saddest, we suspect everyone

embraces someone else, though many don’t.

We think a woman shelters a house, husband and a child

inside her, that a man might accommodate

no one else. The party can hold its liquor

only so long, as we can maintain faith that requires us

to keep two contradictions alive at once, like day

and night tucked into the same sunset or the sudden

hatreds ignited by love: the patience

with which we hold still for the camera, believing

it will shore up time, and knowing it won’t.

At the Fishhouses

AT THE FISHHOUSES

And the black water under the boats with their pools

of bilge rainbowed out like rinds

of steak fat, the salt thick

in my nostrils, but pleasant, too: details

I still keep from Bishop’s poem, everything

else about it lost. At the docks,

I watched my friend slip

in her rubber boots; the wide, wet planks

glossy with mosses. You must walk

duck-footed to get to the boats, the black-and-orange

fishing barrels, the air with its tang

of rust and blood. There are always hooks

and anchors to be found here, nets and scrapings

of wood planed by chisel, the way

my great-grandmother was said

to have worked, employed as a shipwright

on the city’s waterways in the ’30s, according

to the newspaper clipping my grandmother

photocopied for me each Christmas.

The description of her gunmetal hair

and slim torso clad in overalls, the hands

she held out for the Times reporter

(“Callused,” he noted, “strong