“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.”

“The iris of your fistconstricts.”

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

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

“The mind is moored to others;the wasps orbit on little tethers of light.”

“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.”

“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.”