“Being kissed on the back of the knee is a moth at the windowscreen....”

“We talked death with burned-up intensity, both of us drawn to it like moths to an electric light bulb. Sucking on it!”

“being sixteen in the pants I died full of questions”

“Take your foot out of the graveyard, they are busy being dead.”

“Now I am going back And I have ripped my hand From your hand as I said I would And I have made it this far ...”

“WordsBe careful of words,even the miraculous ones.For the miraculous we do our best,sometimes they swarm like insectsand leave not a sting but a kiss.They can be as good as fingers.They can be as trusty as the rockyou stick your bottom on.But they can be both daisies and bruises.Yet I am in love with words.They are doves falling out of the ceiling.They are six holy oranges sitting in my lap.They are the trees, the legs of summer,and the sun, its passionate face.Yet often they fail me.I have so much I want to say,so many stories, images, proverbs, etc.But the words aren't good enough,the wrong ones kiss me.Sometimes I fly like an eaglebut with the wings of a wren.But I try to take careand be gentle to them.Words and eggs must be handled with care.Once broken they are impossiblethings to repair.”

“Cigarettes and Whiskey and Wild, Wild Women" Perhaps I was born kneeling, born coughing on the long winter, born expecting the kiss of mercy, born with a passion for quicknessand yet, as things progressed, I learned early about the stockadeor taken out, the fume of the enema.By two or three I learned not to kneel, not to expect, to plant my fires undergroundwhere none but the dolls, perfect and awful, could be whispered to or laid down to die.Now that I have written many words, and let out so many loves, for so many, and been altogether what I always was—a woman of excess, of zeal and greed, I find the effort useless.Do I not look in the mirror, these days, and see a drunken rat avert her eyes? Do I not feel the hunger so acutelythat I would rather die than lookinto its face? I kneel once more, in case mercy should comein the nick of time.”