.

no one has come to eat it. It has frozen.

      (Easy for them to follow was the child's way.)

      Love they could never put you on a stick.

      They could kill you in their prison

      but they could never have you.

       They can do anything.

       We didn't know each other

      We didn't know each other,

      only what we ourselves hardly knew,

      though they hurt us, every breath,

      the holes in our sides,

      though they were invisible,

      underground rivers, caves—

       Touch with your finger

      Touch with your finger

      the left side of my chest I hunch to protect

      the side that holds like a womb your walking

      your walking over to us

      at our plastic table in the Visiting Area

      your hair cut, your chest caved in, your face caved in, your covered-over

      silence.

       Noon in the Line Outside

      The pretty woman with a prisoner number, CDCP *****, written in

      ballpoint on the palm of her hand. “You have to give them the

      number.” “You can't bring anything inside.” “I'll hold your

      place in the line while you go back to the car.” Her clear

      plastic pocketbook full of quarters for the vending machines inside.

      “It has to be clear plastic.” “You're allowed $30. in quarters.”

      I find his number, with the prison pen I write it on the palm of my hand.

       Inside

      Your red eye—

      soap, you said

      —injury?

      and the darkness

      around your eye

      and down your cheek

      —birthmark? injury?

      Close close you drew me in,

      Injury—

       Your number is lifting off my hand

      Your number is lifting off my hand

      you are becoming gone

      to me but

      the cut-out hurts

      where you were

      behind my eye

      around your eye

      down my cheek,

      Ancient Injury—

      *

       The Needle North

      I had a boat

      lost the food

      and the shoes

      Hollow wrist

      fill it with food

      fill it with shoes

      Some say we rise like dots into the sky

      Walking through the snow

       the world begins to whirl

      from this immortal coil

      to that immortal coil

      We whirl now into deadwood

      but fire inside

      dead wood but fire

       The Passing

      The shimmer

      gone

      out of what we know

      Bells

      din dan dawn

      but we—down here—you little

      Lord

      the needle North

      and move the boat

       In the Burning Air

      In the burning air

      nothing.

      But on the ground, at the edge,

      a woman and her spoon,

      a wooden spoon,

      and her chest, the broken

      bowl.

      *

      She would long

      to dig herself into the ground, her only

      daughter's ashes

      in her nose in her mouth her only daughter's

      makeshift ashes

      nothing

      lying

      in the hole in her chest

      But her eye would still see

      up into the ground above her, still see

      the upper air

      —Let her lie down now, snake in her hole, house

      snake in her hold.

       Little house

      Little house

      clay house

      thousands of funeral smell

      ground swell

      we knew the boat of right action

      but the road rubbed out

      —water gone!

      —the dead girl gone!

      (was she pregnant?)

      dishes blew by

      I searched my hollows rubble

      Burnt grass teach me

      before I forget you

      into a time

      when I sit and roar

      over the flowers

      and don't know them

       Notes

      NEW POEMS

      Page 3, “Annunciation”: drawn from Helene Aylon's Breakings. Page 5, “Occurrence of White”: the first line echoes Jane Kenyon's poem Things. Page 26, “My old body”:

      My old body

       a drop of dew

       heavy at the leaf tip.

       —Kiba

      Dream Barker

       (1965)

       First Love

      How deep we met in the sea, my love,

      My