Stephanie in the winter of our pregnancy
Karen K. has a garden in Oregon
and writes on stationery bearing birds

I'm a poor correspondent except when Eros is involved
Even the plants need water but I just sit here
without plans and not really warm enough, not at all

pleased with my cold uninsulated house
(more on which, see recent prose) though it makes a nice picture
and everyone will be here soon for lunch

 

 
The opposite of something
isn't always something else
you were saying in my favorite dream

We were all arrested for "failure to educate"
the boy who threw up on the clothespins

An angle made
by a pin drop is, or is not?  the opposite of sound,
Richard Serra

The blue I love in Motherwell
was printed upside down:  what is a color
upside down, university press?

Then some sheep
"lacking psychological intensity"
came out gray and yellow, with no sheep visible

No one is thinking of me
jumping out of a cake
in the history of women
in a time of war

No one jumps out
from the birch trees or the pines

As if we had sold nothing by the sea—
no shells, no shelves
full of glass figurines—
we took off our nightgowns and went in.
Umbrellas on the beach blew by,
the man with the rack of tunics
spoke of virtue, a small town
appearing on the horizon and receding
as the studio I made inside your body
began to be a lighthouse, then a boat
then a bridge across a river through a house.
So many windows, there were no walls
and all that paper stacked under stones.
I have a fabulous plan for the winter
kale & spinach, such consolations of biodiversity
and full immersion for participants
in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius.

Slept better with a full moon
Occasionally M's are upside down
as James sees it (a full woon)

We're home now and the swallows returned to Salerno
I have intense longing for both of you
speaking of letters





For example Henry is building a tower
of blocks to be knocked down

Ordinarily enough
the bread machine goes off

I don't trust any form
of birth control, although end rhymes are a pleasure

because of where things are
J learns prepositions first

Astrologically the garden is a disaster
We can correct this with an ephemeris

The internal crowds out the external
Revolution says Turgenev

The arms go around
various shades




All the parts of my
Body that stick out are
Cold, even though it is April
4th and we have Sprung
Forward like skipping E's.
Getting and spending or not
Having gotten are spent like money or
Inklings of other people's money such as
Just last night when C. F. paid for my beer.  O
Kay, I said, my turn next.  Not too much
Liking his beard but understanding why he
Might feel the
Need for it, I
Only thought of R. riding his bike home in the dark,
though that was also skipping ahead.
Prelusive means "like a prelude," I tell my
Queer and straight students alike.  No,
Really, DHL is talking about anal sex!
Six times on one page, 4
Times on another, it's not even
Underneath the text, neither
Vaginal nor phallic but a kind of book of common
prayer belonging rightfully to men and
Women, in his view.  I had to
eXplain why I kept saying Wordsworth when I meant Lawrence—one class trod upon the
            heels of another in my mind, the
Young in one another's arms, the syllabus on Eros and the qui
Z on Revolution back to back becoming blurred by
April, not starting over, childlike, but having yet to end, as yet.