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Up ahead it’s white. Snow animal,
I’m running at your back. I’ve failed to tell you
I’ve been hungry all this time, to tell you 

Think about losing things when you are a child, and how losing things thrusts you into a state of absolute despair, even if what you lost is relatively unimportant: toothbrush, sweater, homework folder.

Adults. We are like balloons inflated...

Everywhere I look I see him,
I have a right to fear for him, 

though I have no right to claim his color.
His blackness is his to own and what will

my mouth say of that sweetness.

“All your working life,” asks an exasperated wife, “you’ve studied these stories. Why?”

She means the stuff of folklore, her husband’s academic field, in which most narratives take a turn to the surreal. The man replies that such stories...

I was participating fully in Life,

or so my calendar said,

when I had the spiritually extravagant

gift of being heart-struck,

standing before a painting.

Flagged to a halt by a woman in boots
and an oiled canvas coat, we stopped for her

orange flag on the highway yesterday in
the first flurries of the season and watched

Bridget is on her way to Mong Kok to buy a goldfish. She’s been told that they bring good luck.

I’m docked at a lake that

the people don’t attend. 

Machete on my hip to 

make a devil cough up 

A paycheck. A nadir. Hired as accompaniment
for sequined swimmers in an amphitheater in Queens.
To keep the band working. A footnote.