my face. Everyone on the train is asleep. At the first stop

I get off, wanting to be lost, but the paths are everywhere,

turning me out with the tourists. I drink from a stream

and the water hisses in my throat, the taste of liquid rock,

it sinks right through me, sickening. In the hotel the foxes

come in through the window two at a time. Their tails

brushing my legs. I open them. A plate of fish wriggles in the

sink. I eat warm mozzarella by the handful, vomit into the

bowl. The foxes have a certain smell, I used to hate it, not

anymore. I hold them by their necks as they lick me. More

and more surround the bed, the bath, I go to wash and step

into a sea of fur, I wash the fox off with fox, the landlady

knocks, I don’t answer, there’s fox in my mouth, and the fish

is dry, and the paintings have followed me, the old masters,

stuck to the ceiling, they don’t approve, they will kick me out

of the studio, I’ve taken too much vacation, I didn’t light

a candle in the church, and I don’t know how to paint and am

not going to learn now.

RUINS

RUINS

Three girls scribble in notebooks next to me, anxious, they

feel it as much as I do—how dead this place is. Don’t get

down on your knees, Calypso warns, headless, her stone

skirt cutting the water. You won’t get up again.

HARUSPEX

HARUSPEX

It’s in the       rotting. What woods do is die lightening    fire

ash beetle

disaster deep freeze. Departure. Then: the stirring

beneath the leaves. Life plucking the future from

its own sad gut.

Tityus knew:

every dusk a fresh feast. The swarm in the fallen trunk.

Tend       not the    wound

but the hunger: keep

eating. Tomorrow comes. And comes.

CROWN

CROWN

Your hands on my throat,

the bruise lace

they left behind—

those crown jewels, that ghost

necklace.

PORTRAIT OF THE LOVER

PORTRAIT OF THE LOVER

The photographer proposes a show. Insisting, in his poor

English, that my bodies and his bodies are alike, turning his

pictures over like cards in a magic trick, slow, revealing boy

after boy in black and white, standing on one foot, smoking

cigarettes at the window, eyes full of contempt. When he

has laid them all out the photographer bows his head, hands

behind his back, and I can see, in the attitude of his lover,

that this is a habit with him, that he asks for mercy routinely.

I lean away in disgust. It’s clear in the photos that the boy

doesn’t want him, or not very much, and you, you wanted

me, we were absolutely united in that. No, I say, and he looks

at me as if he has some great secret. I have frightened you,

the photographer says, simply, distinctly, and gathers his