16

Late, getting out stuff stuck in glasses, bits of food, a sodden cigarette, she thought: Polish the will if you polish anything.

She thought: We never succeed; and she held that for a long time. Later, still busy bringing it all back up to mind, she thought: I was hoping to be smooth. There were no meet words, only rules.

A body withers, working slowly, quietly, an epitaph to the inflamed, and all the course changers of the human.

The distance between one and another is intimate, but there's the matter of touching without damage. What's so easy to see through can still be sharp. A shaky hand makes and receives impairment. Confidence does it, made and broken on the wheel, turning its trick in the glittering light.

And in that light, efficient heels and correct speeds, the most skilled branches of existence... there are breakages.

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29

The earth is being dug between us this evening.
Turned over with resolution.
No one will know come morning.
The clay will have risen, that confident perfume.

Slaughterhouse fish have slipped into the lake
And the hum of summer is a cloud of bees.
There are sickles in the grass, murder in the trees,
And the pretty pond is full of snakes.

The clay has hardened and thus we harden.
We smooth the cracks into skin.
No one will know come morning.
But the worms will have risen, and the blooms.