1. THE SACRIFICE On this tile the knife like a sickle-moon hangs in the painted air

For Jews, the Cossacks are always… Therefore I think the sun spot on… is melanoma. Therefore I celebrat… New Year’s Eve by counting my annual dead.

It was early May, I think a moment of lilac or dogwood when so many promises are made it hardly matters if a few are bro… My mother and father still hovered

I have banked the fires of my body into a small but steady blaze here in the kitchen where the dough has a life of its…

I sing a song of the croissant and of the wily French who trick themselves daily back to the world

When our cars touched When you lifted the hood of mine To see the intimate workings under… When we were bound together By a pulse of pure energy,

January Contorted by wind, mere armatures for ice or snow, the trees resolve to endure for now,

The gathering family throws shadows around us, it is the late afternoon Of the family. There is still enough light

Perhaps the purpose of leaves is t… the verticality of trees which we… as if for the first time: row afte… yearning upwards. And since we wil… ourselves for so long, let us now…

What we want is never simple. We move among the things we thought we wanted: a face, a room, an open book

I am only leaving you for a handful of days but it feels as thought i will be gone forever the way the door closes

The door of winter is frozen shut, and like the bodies of long extinct animals, cars lie abandoned wherever

I married you for all the wrong re… charmed by your dangerous family h… by the innocent muscles, bulging l… weapons under your shirt, by your… the colors of painted scraps of su…

When I taught you at eight to ride a bicycle, loping along beside you as you wobbled away