[Narcissus the Debutante]

      newcomer grows in, killing familiarity

      the wealthy scramble to incorporate

      he attends their dinners

      like demons they need new bodies

      downlooker comes to town, comes to their parties

      they think him shy

      no, he knows there’s no such thing as eye contact

      the wolf has a horizontal sweet spot on its retina

      for spotting prey on the prairie

      the stranger has a narcissus

      shaped sweet spot

      all the better to spot himself

      here is his typewriter retina,

      he swaggers from ocular to oracular

      to alienate everyone comprehensively, encyclopedically

      is to become, in essence, alien

[Dotted Lines]

      he bursts the windows round him

      he dreams

      of being tenfold or a hundredfold

      like a paper airplane bent

      into a paper bird

      //

      (over the mainline highway,

      the low-lain bypass)

      he beaks his neck to his chin

      he folds his neck up and down

       but I don’t care,

      that man’s never becoming a swan

[Voyeurs Cum Voyageurs]

      you know the first fucks

      here were trappers

      they dealt in pelts,

      they sold chambers

      of meatless animal

      & mortal coil

      here coal stains, here gun grease

      mingles with bear grease

      but so what

      if you sleep in a hundred deaths:

      beech, birch, beaver dam, bear-dam

      we lowdown our hearts in the tundra

      we lowdown the spades

      & just when we think no one is watching

      everybody is

[A List of Scenarios]

      a bird with a broken wing

      “two bars walk into a downtown”

      the piano is under lock & key

      nobody on the riverbank knows what “riparian” means

      grand canyon as eyesore

      a bird that is only a wing

      hollywood (i assume) was once wooded with holly

      people identify themselves with dances rather than names

      the obelisk song

      “i remember the pre-nostalgia era”

      you discover you are “that guy”

      the randomizer stalks the spreadsheet

       the new york times review of intentions

      letters to a young undertaker

[Echo’s Dogs]

      You grew up with 30-plus

      Different dogs with names like “Little Dog” and “Latecomer.”

      (The time between being a puppy and being

      a dead dog is called “life.”)

      You will recall

      When you wanted to know what missing feels like,

      I said “hunger,”

      And you said “for a person?”

      And then you said “like cannibalism?”

      And then I said “yes.”

[Domestic Spacerace]

      I like it when I look out a window

      and can’t see any other windows. Ours is a simple joy,

      clinking glasses.

      So what if they demoted Pluto;

      it’s still on the rocks, and it’s also still

      neat to me.

      Dear life, thanks

      for being my life.

      Hubble glints out there like a pond, a proud American eye.

      Clinking glasses is how focus works,

      like a matter of fact

      of distance, like I like it when I look out a window

      and see you in the yard.

[Home of the Standstill Parade]

      It was a hard freeze we were up north there were fishhouses

      decorated to look like only fish or only houses there were kids

      grappling with a lot of candy my sister was there

      nobody cared about the wattage of anything the streetlamps were dull

      as knives in candle light it’s not just that your uncle

      was drunk it was everyone had a drunk uncle the fish float

      was