First Girl 
When this yokel comes maundering, 
Whetting his hacker, 
I shall run before him, 
Diffusing the civilest odors 
Out of geraniums and unsmelled flowers. 
It will check him.

                 Second Girl 
I shall run before him, 
Arching cloths besprinkled with colors 
As small as fish-eggs. 
The threads 
Will abash him.

                 Third Girl 
Oh, la … le pauvre! 
I shall run before him, 
With a curious puffing. 
He will bend his ear then. 
I shall whisper 
Heavenly labials in a world of gutturals. 
It will undo him.

Not less because in purple I descended
The western day through what you called
The loneliest air, not less was I myself.

What was the ointment sprinkled on my beard?
What were the hymns that buzzed beside my ears?
What was the sea whose tide swept through me there?

Out of my mind the golden ointment rained,
And my ears made the blowing hymns they heard.
I was myself the compass of that sea:

I was the world in which I walked, and what I saw
Or heard or felt came not but from myself;
And there I found myself more truly and more strange.

This winter air is keen and cold, 
   And keen and cold this winter sun, 
   But round my chair the children run 
Like little things of dancing gold.

Sometimes about the painted kiosk 
   The mimic soldiers strut and stride, 
   Sometimes the blue-eyed brigands hide 
In the bleak tangles of the bosk.

And sometimes, while the old nurse cons 
   Her book, they steal across the square, 
   And launch their paper navies where 
Huge Triton writhes in greenish bronze.

And now in mimic flight they flee, 
   And now they rush, a boisterous band— 
   And, tiny hand on tiny hand, 
Climb up the black and leafless tree.

Ah! cruel tree! if I were you, 
   And children climbed me, for their sake 
   Though it be winter I would break 
Into spring blossoms white and blue!

big brute clubmoss god. dark echo 
of roamable loam & leaf-fat trees. 
looming ungulate, polished 
& moonstone old, i linger 
at your dais, awed as any 
small-called thing. you: 
wide warden 
in a skinfilled room, 
unseeingly keen, each antler 
an open hand of bone. you sock 
the brass out of me, & the two 
gasping quebecois standing nearby, 
the sticky-fisted child 
gathering grapestems in his jeans. 
we wait—little bugs on a sill— 
for permission to look away, to 
murmur over any of the other 
pickled and polished things 
posed in this room, but you grant 
nothing. Watch Me Until I Become
Sublime, Dusk & Shining, you 
do not say, but i hear, somehow, 
over my rowdy blood, my 
clobbering heart, over all this 
wet business. something about 
death’s dry science. something 
about pop zoologists wagering 
your crown your undoing: 
ice grayed the grass faster 
than you could find it 
& so your greedy horns 
drank you dry. it’s not true, 
probably. i’ll die too, 
probably. will the world outpace 
my feeding? i won’t lie— 
i’d like to be looked-at, after. 
some unfamiliar animal 
at my knees, awed by an 
omnivorous bigness.

I wear my grandmother’s teeth on my wrist. She mostly  
used her teeth for smiling. Hi gang! Big and open, her whole 
arm scribing overhead in joy as we approached. Seems  
almost caricature, but it was real. She was real. I miss her. I don’t 

know how she stayed, after all her losses, so cheerful, alone.  
Decades alone, widowed young, alone by choice 
in her bed. The teeth I wear are not from her mouth, but  
from a jaw older maybe even than humans: walrus, fossilized, 

bought before I was born that time she and her husband 
flew a small plane they could borrow cheap, thanks to  
his job at Boeing—details, details, the small gold chain 
that double-checks the bracelet’s clasp, how much security

the details give us—to Alaska. My goodness, the romance,  
the time, their lucky, white, poor and upwardly mobile, just- 
post-depression, educated selves. Those teeth of hers  
I wear are not recently of ocean or ice, and absolutely not 

of this new ocean, this new thin ice, but dug from earth  
and browned by earth, the rest of their original life gone. The  
nerves and blood, the soft gums, the sensitive, broad 
mystacial pad and its seeking whiskers. My grandmother 

wasn’t like a fossil, which is what some people get called  
when they get old. In the care home where she lived  
for a few years or months (time blurs), they said her smile hid  
her decline. I think again about the pass politeness, rote

manners, can give—their grace or shroud. Inside my mouth,  
all my teeth sit still in their sockets, minus little bits which, in some  
cases, are filled with expensive compounds my grandmother’s 
daughter could afford and which I did not tend or value

enough when their care became mine. I know how loose  
teeth can be when a life hasn’t held them or when life’s flush  
fades, when the flesh sags off. I’ve found so many seal jaws,  
dolphin jaws, porpoise jaws on the beach, in dunes, and, 

whether I pocket anything or not, I always wiggle them  
in their ragged sockets, count the cusps, touch each point, which  
tells me not what they said but who, as a species, they were.  
Are.  Hi, gang!  So sweet, so eager to see even our shitty, selfish 

teenage selves. Inside my mouth, there’s a whole lot  
of impolite, but I know how to close my lips around it.  
The teeth on my wrist from my grandmother might  
be fragile. I don’t know and can’t unless I try to break 

them. She was such a joyous force. She was such a joyous  
force. It makes me afraid to pull the bracelet over the knob  
of my wrist, to stretch the old elastic, because I have lost  
so much joy already, which is entirely my fault. She seemed, 

to me, to always be vibrant with care. The teeth are loose  
on my wrist. Once, someone put her finger on the small  
spur no one notices below the last knuckle of my hand and  
that is why I bought a different bracelet that touches me 

where she touched me, with the same, delicate precision.  
I hardly ever wear the other bracelet, the teeth, which  
are really little squares, like lozenges to ease a throat, and 
haven’t I been sore-voiced?  Hey, gang!  Her arms waving

like she was guiding a plane to the gate. The way  
she would love whoever saw her. Really. Whoever.