A jackal and a crow. Blood neither shed nor shared
between them. The dynamite, nearby, is armed.
They are barely contours, prepared
to escape the kernel of blackness and assume a rudimentary form.

Above them, thought balloons are floating. The cartoon repaginates
the seashore, windy, dry as bone.
When the rain falls, it becomes clear the photographer, buried to his waist,
was welded of bronze and focused on no one.

A betty’s mouth rotates. The wind’s proof doubles.
Mesmerizing Boeings. The cyclopic reveries
of stadiums. And America doubles
over and b/pounces—all are pleased

Flaring in epithelial darkness, as if bitten
by a rabid, magnetic gesture—
all at once—body, converted to hydrogen
all at once—hydrogen under pressure.

Magnetic pressures, within and without,
the bear hibernates in a lush’s cranium.
When the room starts to spin, the bear rushes out
and deposits itself for a glass of uranium.

A Jugendstil tower. Myself quite new.
I heard the underbell flowers uncurl.

You were sitting on the little staircase. By all accounts, a pearl.
I stiffened. Limits were measured.

You were the sum of all you encountered,
become what you could not deter.

We were joined by the ladies’ confessor (and connoisseur),
self-absorbed as a Klein jug.