and pushed out on the water, given

over to the gods of the next world

who will find her

or not find her.

Son

Coming home from the women-only bar,

I go into my son’s room.

He sleeps—fine, freckled face

thrown back, the scarlet lining of his mouth

shadowy and fragrant, his small teeth

glowing dull and milky in the dark,

opal eyelids quivering

like insect wings, his hands closed

in the middle of the night.

Let there be enough

room for this life: the head, lips,

throat, wrists, hips, penis,

knees, feet. Let no part go

unpraised. Into any new world we enter, let us

take this man.

Pre-Adolescent in Spring

Through the glass door thin as a light freeze on the pond,

my girl calls me out.

She is sucking ice, a cup of cubes

beside her, sparkling and loosening.

The sun glints in her hair dark as the

packed floor of the pine forest,

its hot resin smell rising like a

smell of sex. She leaps off the porch and

runs on the grass, her buttocks like an unripe

apricot. She comes back, hair

smoking, face cool and liquid,

skin that vital, translucent white of the

casing of milk-weed pods. She fishes

another cube from the cup with her tongue.

Around us the flat spears of bulbs

are rising from inside the ground.

Above us the buds are opening. I hold

tight to this child beside me, and she

leans her body against me, heavy,

its layers still folded, its fragrance only

half unlocked, but the ice now rapidly

melting in her mouth.

Blue Son

All day with my blue son,

sick again, the blue skin

under his eyes, blue tracing of his

veins over the bones of his chest

pronounced as the ribs of the dead, a green

vein in his groin, blue-green as the

numbers on an arm. His eloquent face

grows thinner each hour, the germs use him

like a soap. Exhaustion strips him, and under each

layer of sweetness a deeper layer of

sweetness is bared. His white skin,

so fine it has no grain, goes blue-grey,

and the burning blue of his eye

dies down and goes out, it is the faded cobalt on the

side of a dead bird. He seems to

withdraw to a great distance, as if he is

gone and looking back at me

without regret, patient, like an old

man who has just dug his grave and

waits at the edge, in the evening light,

naked, blue with cold, in terrible

obedience.

Pajamas

My daughter’s pajamas lie on the floor

inside out, thin and wrinkled as

peeled skins of peaches when you ease the

whole skin off at once.

You can see where her waist emerged, and her legs,

her arms, and head, the fine material

gathered in rumples like skin the caterpillar

ramped out of and left to shrivel.

You can see, there at the center of the bottoms,