When I Look at Pictures

             or better

when the training dedicated

            to what lines my eyes cast

braids me to that skein

            then I know I’m a thing

that can take itself away

            maybe etched with the man

on a horse leaping

            into the lithographed

German windmill’s open bay

            refined, involutely resolved

to curving inward

            while touching the outside,

screaming isn’t looking

            like when my mother died

of being a woman,

            poor and eventually

American, the nerve I had

            to fold time

in my mouth as if to call

            back an escape line

from a life

            and who would think

to hide in a windmill

            and the horse

amenable?

            I really was

looking at that print

            thinking without rancor

of what fraction of hateable men

            I’ve known

and been

            who work so hard

at fleeing into private chambers

            only to find

some uninvited thought of me

            eyes closed, whispering

exactly there, spectral

            and unwanted as I am,

It’s just easier for me

            if you’re not around