NO SMALL MEASURE

your morning worry
as my logged feet run the dew-wet field,
harvest-furred, dug with mud traps, a stag caught in dawn

or am I a siren sticky and erect in indecision,
a broken tercet with the middle line lost
—open night shade—
outside the obscure room, a moon

indecent as a hole in tin
since you know bottom too why quarry my affection
indelible on the blue blanket
a corsage of fallen leaves waving me in

this talk of tending confusing, so come
come quickly: I can’t write love poems
only morning poems as this one

unravels, unrevealing tired dogs
and reconciled lovers I don’t dare ask
after or before

instead a night writing cold and hard
as the equinoctial stars judge us
in remonstrance—though winking—to be:

a refuse unremarked by exposure
as you are some time marked in me

NINEAIN AFTER PAQUIN

Rubbed callouses during the lecture and if foot is penis how horny the loping gait?
The question of the fetish may go better after wine or, better, after Sappho. Butter
if you churn it but always less than two percent. In an absence of erotic attrition
I thought of frog groins and wing nuts and body as sacred texture. Tender with a capital T
and rough like sand, “minus school.” If you can figure out the risk and halt business
you are a better than beat poet. I’d like a pheromonal invitation and only regret the affairs
I didn’t have. Pretend I’ve never heard of canyon. All my poems on armor fleck the smith fire,
a kind of recconnaisance emission, myself elected detective. Only if love spoils you
is the axing worth the risk, and not here but somewhere Hart Crane is smiling.