Kind Sir: This is an old game that we played when we were eight… Sometimes on The Island, in down… in late August, when the cold fog… off the ocean, the forest between…

Listen here. I’ve never played it… in spite of what the critics say. Ask my imaginary brother, that wai… that childhood best friend who com… dress—up and stick—up and jacks an…

Sing me a thrush, bone. Sing me a nest of cup and pestle. Sing me a sweetbread fr an old gra… Sing me a foot and a doorknob, for… Oh sing, bone bag man, sing.

Your midriff sags toward your knee… your breast lie down in air, their nipples as uninvolved as warm starfish. You stand in your elastic case,

Mole, angel—dog of the pit, digging six miles a night, what’s up with you in your sooty s… where’s your kitchen at? I find you at the edge of our pond…

My God, my God, what queer corner… Didn’t I die, blood running down… lungs gagging for air, die there f… of anyone, my sour mouth giving up… Surely my body is done? Surely I…

Oh, love, why do we argue like thi… I am tired of all your pious talk. Also, I am tired of all the dead. They refuse to listen, so leave them alone.

Many a miner has gone into the deep pit to receive the dust of a kiss, an ore—cell. He has gone with his lamp

Before it came inside I had watched it from my kitchen w… watched it swell like a new balloo… watched it slump and then divide, like something I know I know —

A thousand doors ago when I was a lonely kid in a big house with four garages and it was summer as long as I could remember,

Today the circus poster is scabbing off the concrete wall and the children have forgotten if they knew at all. Father, do you remember?