feeder: his eye set firm on my slackening
sky. He was true! He was thief! In the celestial sense
he provided some, some, some
(much-needed) relief. Reader much-slept with, and Reader I will die
without touching, You, Reader, You: mr. small-
weed, mr. broad-cloth, mr. long-dark-day. And the italian mis-
fortune you will heave me for, for
her dark hair and her moonlit-teeth. You will love her well in-
to three-or-four cities, and then, you will slowly
sink. Reader, I will never forgive you, but not, poor
cock-sure Reader, not, for what you think. O, Reader
Sweet! and Reader Strange! Reader Deaf and Reader
Dear, I understand you yourself may be hard-
pressed to bare this small and unnecessary burden
having only just recently gotten over the clean clean heart-
break of spring. And I, Reader, I am but the daughter
of a tinker. I am not above the use of bucktail spinners,
white grubs, minnow tails. Reader, worms
and sinkers. Thisandthese curtail me
to be brief: Reader, our sex gone
to wildweather. YesReaderYes—that feels much-much
better. (And my new Reader will come to me empty-
handed, with a countenance that roses, lavenders, and cakes.
And my new Reader will be only mildly disappointed.
My new Reader can wait, can wait, can wait.) Light
-minded, snow-blind, nervous, Reader, Reader, troubled, Reader,
what'd ye lack? Importunate, unfortunate, Reader:
You are cold. You are sick. You are silly.
Forgive me, kind Reader, forgive me, I had not intended to step this quickly this far
back. Reader, we had a quiet wedding: he&I, theparson
&theclerk. Would I could, stead-fast, gracilefacile Reader! Last,
good Reader, tarry with me, jessa-mine Reader. Dar-
(jee)ling, bide! Bide, Reader, tired, and stay, stay, stray Reader,
true. R.: I had been secretly hoping this would turn into a love
poem. Disconsolate. Illiterate. Reader,
I have cleared this space for you, for you, for you.
the sonnets
small quilled poem with no taste for spring
In spring all the poems that need to be written
Have. You are neither dejected nor relieved. Scrape and
Paint. Scrape and paint a grey house white.
Feel something! Your husband, the one married to all the appetites,
Shouts to someone up on a ladder, someone who looks sort of
Like you: disinterested, spated, thin as a cloud.
It's spring again and so the melancholiacs. And so the fat
Sharp animals pace your roof at night: feeding, quilled, recurrent
Dreams. You will never live up to this
Life, they will never refer to you as voluptuous.
You can't remember the last time
you wore a dress. You pressed your mouth
To the phone.
may be you are like me: scared and awake
A wreath of violets lain where my brain used to be. Matutinal,
frantic. The usual. Scalded and cold. I descend. I work like a bird.
I hear spring coming from a long mile off. A distant jungle-meadow.
It comes, it sings. Says: To be heard you must be let, be in. To be heard
It is best to hum, like water. It's true, I am barnacled and black. The un-
Derbelly, the sternum, the prow.
Was, I used to confess the nuns.
Was, the prettier they were the less they said. Week after week whispered
The one I loved like a secret: "I must avow. I'm of that type that's mostly
Hype." I let Him forgive her merely on the strength of her brow. Sister,
Says I, wear it like a wife. Then I'd go wash my hands in mint and rose.
May be, you are like me: all pose.
May be, you are cutting each word harder
And harder, to listen. I'mall watchandwile,waitingtobe Called. Lordy-lordy-lord,
When I asked to be left alone, I didn't mean, like, now, like, this. Full-deep:
All solace and solecism. Un-sail-able. Un-vale-able. To spring, to light, to sleep.
Spring is cheap, but clean of sky. Long after she used to
meet him on the sly. He didn't say much, because to
speak you need a voice, need lead. Among the dead there were
such fresh ghosts, they were still breathing. Through their
mouths. Time, time, to adjust to an other. An ether
O so—No—too sweet. Intox-icated with permeability. 'Tis nox-
ious, to eat evanescence. However steadily, however slowly.
They stemmed into heady blows.
They missed
the stain. Of blue berries and argument. They missed
their lips. The yew and the thorns. They missed.
Their flaws.
O, to be stung by an errant bee. O, to sting.
O, to see you again. Covered in spring.
march licked me with all his brown lack
as if
someone just handed me
a bouquet
made solely,
entirely,
of the absence
of the word:
Abundance.
Thereby hand-
ing me
everything!
O, to Lack!
I too am made
(mostwholey) of that.