Valerian, and: Song of the Entomologist, and: The Screen

Valerian

I once swallowed Valerian, to sleepoff a man, and fell into a deep, hotsweat, and I dreamed of Jesus, my first

fierce love, sitting at the long table,while his disciples, twelve whoresdressed in tutus and fishnet stockings

twirled around him and shook moon-liketambourines. Now they're bloomingagain: tall, weedy plants, their blossoms

so laced with scent you can't help swoon.God, help me now. The night air is sweet.Sleep hides on the other side of the moon.

Song of the Entomologist

Now, blowflies the size of dimesappear on windows and walls,and carpenter ants eat the houseinside out and send out scouts.

Soon, earwigs will fall from laundryfresh off the line, and mosquitoeswhine in the bedroom all night.Angleworms will tunnel in the dark,

and night crawlers, quick and slickas your tongue, will stretch beneaththe pale moon. Bees will build comband honey from miles of flight

while monarchs lay eggs on milkweed,and Japanese beetles glitter on roses.And I will feast on you, and spiderswill weave their beautiful traps in the grass.

The Screen

Of course, you can't have the manin the movie or be the woman he is having.Though the distance between you and the screenseems a mere membrane, semipermeable,

which the water you are, is somehow crossing,molecule by molecule, to meet their salt,a slow osmosis where actual and imaginedconjoin. Until you are beneath him

and a leaking barn roof while heavy raindrums the barnyard and steam risesfrom warm ground. Later, the sun out,you lie back on the black horse which the man

leads down to the river where mistrises in a golden net. Where the horse lowershis head and drinks. Where the manlifts water in big hands over his own head.

And where you drowse, dreamy and unawarethat soon the lights will snap on, and you'll bebuttoning your old winter coat and stepping outbeneath a night sky and all the moth holes of heaven.