“Consider, O Lover, my throatwhite as cigarette paper.The crushed lavender of my knuckles. My heart, a dulled needle threaded throughtoo many patterns.”

“Prayer is a many fingeredand kaleidoscopic thing—it foldsand unfolds inside of you. It entersthe many rooms you cannot enter.”

“Consider, O Lord, how You sit atop the sky;like a man in a glass bottom boat.Consider sky elsewhere; worn thin as a mattress.”

“That dandy, the sky, enters blue-suitedsun like a scotch in hand.”

“Consider my Lover; the yellow churchof his skin, the clean wells of his ears;How the notes of a song come to himlike birds descending on a power line;How in his absence I am of twothroats--each of them cramped.”

“Consider, O Lover, my throatwhite as cigarette paper.The crushed lavender of my knuckles. My heart, a dulled needle threaded throughtoo many patterns.”

“Winter is already a lost shape, forgottenin the ground. Instead, here is Springwith all the grace of a womansmoothing out her apron.”

“Darkness moves like a pack of wild dogs.The wind moves like a wounded animal.The ground must be full of teeth by now.”

“Consider the road, long and forkedas the Devil’s own tongue.Consider the Devil, burningevery bridge; Placingin every tree a black bird. In every bird a black thought.”

“There are boneswaiting for names in the graveyards.Even the sun above us is dying, onelanded repetition of light at a time.”

“If the sun rolled back like an eye,it would see the mind of God.”