pictures, tapping the corners together. Later he will write

me: The boy is died of AIDS, has been dead for decades: I

understand, too late, the theme. Mourning. I am chilled,

when he leaves. I hold my hands over my eyes.

ALWAYS MY LYRES WILL HAVE YOU

ALWAYS MY LYRES WILL HAVE YOU

You are in a video giving an interview    astonishingly old

still a full head of hair

laughing    the terrible    tremendous    arms

I’d never seen    someone    age    so

muscularly so bitterly

So how is    the underworld treating you    the interviewer

asks    you say

It’s missing       one or two       things       otherwise       quite well

The women?

The women are fine       The children?       Strong and

grown

The dog?    Dead       I’m afraid       What about

your book

What about    it       How much of it is       fiction       All my books

are fiction

Well there’s a rumor       Hey fuck your rumor       you smile, the

interviewer       smiles       it’s your       kingdom

after all

Can you read something for us       the interviewer       asks

Certainly you say crossing       uncrossing your legs I

choke up

a cup of tea

your eyes beneath       the screen       on mine       you

sing

THE LOVERS

THE LOVERS

He likes a woman who breathes easy.

More and more I am that woman,

clawing through the belly of the wolf,

shredding its strong sides.

He slides the flesh from my nails

washes my wrists white.

There is love and then there is love.

His kind sticks but leaves no stain. Its pleasure

is smooth, pitless. I needed a subtler skin for it,

a quieter mind—so I got them. Cell by cell.

Shedding the old ways.

I made a candle a candle, a tree

a tree.

I uncut you from water,

from stone, from leaves.

No more stars. No more sky.

Nature very silent now.

The wood quiet and fragile as eggs,

inside, untouched.

There are things he knows

watching my back at the window,

as I watched yours, years before:

deep night,

not letting me go.

HOSPICE

HOSPICE

Unlike her father I was careful to die in front of her.

She was reading a book; I waited.

Then she lifted her head.

Mama! she cried.

Only then did I step through the door.

WEEDS

WEEDS

I wouldn’t say

her death organized me.

Only that there are deaths

and there is Death.

I had a difficult time

approaching my notebooks

without thinking of sheets, shrouds,

how light she lay

on a blank page.

Paper seemed complete as it was.

You knew it was coming?

you said. Oh yes, I knew.

It was very calm, how it happened

and I felt how death could be a friend,

how it was separate from dying,

the true monster.

Anyway

I’m cleaner now, I said. Not knowing what it meant

but it was true. The pressing feeling

wasn’t so bad anymore.

I’d said to her

There was a man, once.

She scraped her Jell-O.

I put my face in my hands.