this is very rare. Some people say

the sun is washing her face. Some

people say in Hell, they’re having a fair.

Green

Green

I saw an image of Cleopatra being delivered

to Caesar in a rolled-up rug, just falling

from the rug, and at work I began to be worried

that others, and especially those in supervisory roles,

viewed me as green. Temperamentally inexpert.

I tried wearing crisper shirts, but it didn’t help.

So of course when all my friends began

to die, I found at last a means of proving

myself through inattention to their passing.

I refrained from sharing remembrances,

that time we pulled B’s ruined tooth

or when L and I hiked out to the obverse

side of the Hollywood sign. When colleagues

sought to console me, I offered only the stoic

rejoinder DEATH IS A PART OF LIFE.

I underwent my yearly performance assessment

and was prompted to name a task at which

I excelled. I responded TRULY KNOWING

THAT DEATH IS A PART OF LIFE, and when

they requested I then articulate a plan

for the coming year, I said SPEAKING LOUDER

WHEN STATING THAT DEATH IS A PART OF LIFE,

AND PERHAPS APPENDING AN AMPLIFYING

GESTURE. I returned to my desk and removed

my heels and capped my pen and called B’s mom

and told her about the tooth. She recounted

for me his younger years, mud covered or up to his

shoulders in the cold ocean. She said he had been

ready to die, that through his suffering he’d sworn it

several times. Though also he’d said several

times that he wasn’t ready. It was tough to know.

Totally under the Water

Totally under the Water

He knew, he said, he was dying

when for two straight weeks he dreamed of

trying to switch on a swing-arm

lamp that wouldn’t switch on. In baths

I’ve never gone—as they do in the movies,

to demonstrate crux and contemplation—

totally under the water, but if

I did, I would ponder the woman

flooring it into the cinderblock

wall from fifty feet away. I don’t think that image

comes from the movies. I think it comes

from the future. The future, with its color

palette of airport whites and its

unrushed glance, its involute

beckoning. I see it. I can see it. At least

somebody wants me.

Long Wedding

Long Wedding

Through it all—the usher’s nod, the Pachelbel,

the thousand psalms, the joke misplacing

of the rings—I waited for the pause

to acknowledge the few scattered uncles

and friends too ill to attend. I waited for the silence

and the KEEP THEM IN YOUR THOUGHTS.

And keep them in my thoughts I did—I thought

of them so much that I missed all the dancing, all

the sling-back twirls, the forced displays

of riotousness, the cake. I missed all the children

being instructed not to touch the begonias,