Your true name. Annis. The Blue Hag. Plenty, Boiling, Raven. Her flanks spread out a bit as if used to riding. But firm and round. Carried with ease. Opening the drawer things get swept into I find one battery and three bottle tops. The brown freckles on her white skin. They invite notions you’ve never considered. People with grand opinions seldom look hungry. The green haze fuzzes out the blank interstices. Starlings allow this to mean something before they fly away. Sometimes we think we’re living, but we’re really just rehearsing. The real performance is lives away. We wake up on stage and the blood is real. Smells strong on our hands. There’s a trapdoor in the stage. It leads to the Underworld and it’s time to jump down the hole.

A fear of telling stories. Of the things they ultimately create. New people who step into worlds we can barely see. In the shadow of the conifers little white flowers grow. In various parts of town there are sirens. A news story about the elementary school. Over the weekend someone sprayed graffiti on the brick wall of the gymnasium. Disparaging comments about certain segments of our society. Call the number on your screen to report any suspicious activities. There’s a creek near the school. A couple of bridges. A large storm drain. Crumbling at the lip where it drips. Sometimes things go in and don’t come out. I still wear the same tired costumes. Find the lines come out of my mouth tethered to heavy weights sunk deep in my guts. Wait for the glass knives near dawn when my chest is slick with sweat. The pillow flat and stale. You won’t kiss me when we first stir. Sometimes I wait until you’re asleep to come to bed. I take all the spiders outside before using the shower. Your hands linger on my nipples. The election was inconclusive. The procedure will have to be done again under better circumstances. The Olympic trials are coming this summer and the Mayor has asked the anarchists to play nice. The soldiers deploy decoy pieces of technology and phony medical supplies so the snipers can pick off the curious passerby who decides to take a closer look. The cashier at the market says they haven’t had fresh spinach for nine months. He seems to think it has something to do with distribution. You’re always trying to feed me more vegetables. When I wake in the morning and see the back of your neck I want to cry.

Girls on bicycles. Mountain climbers. People who travel a great distance in a boat or a plane. The guy who testified against his former employer. Boys who run away from home. Depressed entertainers. Civil rights activists. College girls who go abroad. College girls walking home from the library. D. B. Cooper. The industrialist who leaves the restaurant at 7:13pm. Walks off into the forest. Soldiers. Sea divers. Journalists who talk too much. Infants left alone. People who park their cars near bridges. The guy who took a lot of money from his former employer. Russian cosmonauts. Civil rights activists. The guy who murdered his former employer. The guy who wants to set a record. The wife of the guy who set himself on fire in the house with his two sons and all that gasoline. Jimmy Hoffa. Girls walking to the candy shop.

In the shower I smell you on my skin as soon as the water hits my body. A mist rises and lifts the secrets you left in my underbrush. I’m taking pictures of your hands and developing them on a paper made of ash. This is how we’ll recognize each other in the dark. There’s a rattle at the door. My wife stumbles in and vomits in the bowl. There’s still something left to be said. It skipped town though. Weeks ago. Tied to the back of a blind dog. She rocks on the floor. Her legs stacked sloppily on top of each other. Her panties riding up one side of her ass. There’s a bruise too. I start thinking about surfactants and ways of misleading the government about the color of my eyes. Somewhere deep down there the sharks are circling each other. They’re waiting for the weight of the ocean to produce the slightest tear in their skin. It’s made up of tiny teeth. I draw the curtain. She’s left her panties in a wet ball in the sink. It’s October. Last night I took my friend to the emergency room. He had cut up his hands and face with a broken bottle. He takes pills that take away his feelings but leave him with a desire to steal and hurt himself. The Nurse who took his belongings at the psychiatric ward said she liked the way I smelled. My wife has a date tonight. I cut up some onions to get breakfast started. You’re in another city. I’m never going to let you read this poem. Not even the nice bits. This poem’s for Neptune. Not even he knows what to do next.

The girls on the bus are taking pictures of themselves so they can send them to each other while they’re riding on the bus. Seeds whirling down in the muggy afternoon and clicking as they fall in heaps upon themselves. Some of them were ballplayers who threw the game now and then. Some of them were doctors who hurt the people they loved. Some of them were fortunate. Lost only a portion of the leg when they stepped on the land mine. She tells me about a machine that makes the sound of a wounded crow. It calls hundreds of crows so they can be shot by the Hunter. The Minstrels have threatened sedition. They’ve set their instruments ablaze and tied your daughter up with trembling string. Spring is making us do stupid things. We trade our first child for a set of matching silverware. Then we eat with our hands. The holes are painted the wrong color white. Where the spider was. A bigger spider. In the distance whatever it was you were looking for wavers in the heat. After the fiasco with the apiary the authorities naturally cracked down and soon fewer things happened than ever. Crawling up the red thread an ant is looking for the last drops of the honey. The new leaves look very much like the leaves that came last year. A few of them beginning to curl at the edges. The foreign contract workers are quicker to sit at the table with you than the wives of successful men. When he said that I wasn’t really sure if he meant death is always a mystery or that he was going to come back later and do me in. By the chair with the cracked leather seat a white extension cord is plugged in and trails out into the empty room.