Three Poems

The Princess Casamassima / Figurative Versions of Exclusion

Precisely because a distance       identical to itself necessarilyintervenes consciousness ass-       umes an attitude with regardto the body that penetrates it       to live it this way or that way

thereby our joys, our joy. Ye       are not straitened in me butin your own bowels as my body       without a soul is a carcass somy soul is a chaos a heap of       faculties without your spirit

a heap feeling given over to       itself unable to refuse let alonerefine what was given or run       away or otherwise escaping itscontent handing itself over       to itself.

The Ambassadors / Rothko Chapel

My boy blue holds out thesehands to show the world we'dbroken is different from the onewe made I am being eaten alive amaroon throbbing to deeper indigo an arc keeping us fromand in ourselves a clearing inthe heart of which as Boscovichor Mabel Mercer writes thepossibility of nerves re-growingwhere nerves were needed.

The Wings of the Dove / Bardo

Small urn of emptiness I fol-lowed the warmth of alary rus-tling ink ball oak a koan's infre-quent boulders and morainesfrom what was left of slip-shoddimity selvage a glitch in augurywhere pines give way to sky'sidle nesting dolls short-circuitingNovember a single cold compos-ite sheet of what was left of allthe resinous hearts towed to har-bor all of which (including mine)went black a temple in atramentas though the moon picked outa pickerel nearing its own palespeculation what you thought be-ing thought from the cold blackgreen.