And when they bombed other people’s houses, we

protested
but not enough, we opposed them but not

enough. I was
in my bed, around my bed America

was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house.

I took a chair outside and watched the sun.

In the sixth month
of a disastrous reign in the house of money

in the street of money in the city of money in the country of money,
our great country of money, we (forgive us)

lived happily during the war.

^{(from the suite STALKED)}

She tried to keep the house 
        from floating away 
              bought heavy furniture 
       carried in the couch. 

She thought she could 
            hold anything to get it 
                   from one place to another.

This is why she was covered 
        with bruises 
               and lifted anyway. 

She is so slim. She wears a long silken dress. 
       She handed me a poem, her first, 
          framed in Italian Byzantine. 

It read surprisingly well. The last line 
      said, 

            He finally had me, 
my cheeks pricked by tears 

I didn't know whether to 
       take up the word pricked 
             it was her first poem after-
                          all.

The blood from the swelling 
         on her right forearm dripped 
               in the shape of a tear 

wet with her first speech. 

      This is progress I thought 
            her finally speaking. 

The beautiful must be as vulnerable 
       as anyone else 
          for when I ask why she 

accepted his flowers 
           she said 
                 I wanted to feel alive.

1. Because pockets are not a natural right.
2. Because the great majority of women do not want pockets. If they did they would have them.
3. Because whenever women have had pockets they have not used them.
4. Because women are required to carry enough things as it is, without the additional burden of pockets.
5. Because it would make dissension between husband and wife as to whose pockets were to be filled.
6. Because it would destroy man’s chivalry toward woman, if he did not have to carry all her things in his pockets.
7. Because men are men, and women are women. We must not fly in the face of nature.
8. Because pockets have been used by men to carry tobacco, pipes, whiskey flasks, chewing gum and compromising letters. We see no reason to suppose that women would use them more wisely.

wade
through black jade.
       Of the crow-blue mussel-shells, one keeps
       adjusting the ash-heaps;
              opening and shutting itself like

an
injured fan.
       The barnacles which encrust the side
       of the wave, cannot hide
              there for the submerged shafts of the

sun,
split like spun
       glass, move themselves with spotlight swiftness
       into the crevices—
              in and out, illuminating

the
turquoise sea
       of bodies. The water drives a wedge
       of iron through the iron edge
              of the cliff; whereupon the stars,

pink
rice-grains, ink-
       bespattered jelly fish, crabs like green
       lilies, and submarine
              toadstools, slide each on the other.

All
external
       marks of abuse are present on this
       defiant edifice—
              all the physical features of

ac-
cident—lack
       of cornice, dynamite grooves, burns, and
       hatchet strokes, these things stand
              out on it; the chasm-side is

dead.
Repeated
       evidence has proved that it can live
       on what can not revive
              its youth. The sea grows old in it.