“Mute, I stumble through the dry, verdigris aqueducts of your eye, thinking this prayer, formic acid, ant spit and sandpaper: blink and I will be expelled, sharpen the edge of the water, subtract me from eternity.”

“Your voice, an eveningin late June, ice losingits edges in a jar of tea.”

“The sky bruised my eyes with rain's weight and my body was a held breath.”

“The iris of your fistconstricts.”

“Your self is a cosmetic fiction, a centrifuge.”

“I stand there at the corner, known by the equinox and knowingnothing, exposed by the alethiclight of those apples,that fearless crocus,the magnolia tree, its chandelierof tears.”

“You are not a god, though you are hostileas a god, inhospitable and anonymousas a metropolis, your grey and single-minded industry transforming the shoreinto yourself. Narcissism is notself-love, but a mechanism of survival,your cogs churning amorphous as maggots,pallid as almonds, paper-whites, the highnotes of foam.”