Some mornings, I come to on the floor, / my neck burned with moon tracks
Like an ermine looping through the snow, mouth a pink line, / I’m suited for my habitat.
Here’s a lesson: If you leave a hole in the forest, / leave a mouth open in pain, astonishment or grief, / something will come to fill it
Some days, I sail on an empty boat to a country I don’t know. / With my navy-blue passport, I can go anywhere.
Spring turns to summer, hopes fly high. A golden romance—in my bloody fists I smell osmanthus flowers. Under the pulped sun, lovers grow young and younger.
After the death of the dictator, his son wanted him embalmed. His son wanted him on perpetual display in a glass box.
What damage do I do? / The night avoids my eyes, so does the road. / I am never wholly myself, unto myself.
I’m writing a play about a Kommandant at Auschwitz / who recognizes one of the Jewish prisoners/ as a famous poet
Before North took a seasonal job / fishing for kings in Alaska / I’d never admitted to myself / that he was my only friend.
Inasmuch as our faces / bear resemblance, / now, to what // I imagine of them
