He only allows my entrance to unbutton my dress
and form those animal poses. To be near him
is to be reduced to line
Here, riding in a taxi on the Manhattan Bridge
late at night in a pit-pat drizzle,
everything looks puffy from the back seat window
The tiger makes it all so easy, the way it sweeps the woman’s house, packs a satsuma for her snack, accounts for the taxes.
Just under the browned swamp surface: a reaching
neck (not pictured). The edge of a stick (pictured).
He was NBA-player height
converted to Judaism to marry
And the town crier cries la localende! This is one of the stories where a stranger
comes to town. A stranger with a stranger tool.
Come down from the hill freckled with mustard gesare. You know the stuff, Mara
how it explodes in middle spring.
Don’t ever say
I didn’t see it
coming.
which summer is this
arithmetic is one thing, freckles another
power drags from the east in a late august storm
reparations begin
here,
within
the body, within
the striations of muscle
to tendon, nerve to tissue
did they forget
the vibration
of our throats
humming
in the shade?