little dark girl with
kind eyes
when it comes time to
use the knife
I won’t flinch and

I can remember starving in a
small room in a strange city
shades pulled down, listening to
classical music
I was young I was so young it hur

I am a panther shut up and bellowi
cement walls, and I am angry at bl
evenings without ventilation
and I am angry with you, and it wi
like a rose

she’s young, she said,
but look at me,
I have pretty ankles,
and look at my wrists, I have pret
wrists

this fear of being what they are:
dead.
at least they are not out on the s
are careful to stay indoors, those
pasty mad who sit alone before the

she died of alcoholism
wrapped in a blanket
on a deck chair
on an ocean
steamer.

I have lain in bed all day
but I have written one poem
and I am up now
looking out the window
and like a novelist might say

sway with me, everything sad—
madmen in stone houses
without doors,
lepers steaming love and song
frogs trying to figure

I’ll settle for the 6 horse
on a rainy afternoon
a paper cup of coffee
in my hand
a little way to go,

we have everything and we have not
and some men do it in churches
and some men do it by tearing butt
in half
and some men do it in Palm Spring