from Live from the Woodley Park Marriott, Washington, DC

                                Wickily days aburn with a rumorous delight.

                                Days shaking one’s finger until it feels fat like a sausage.
                                The various by way of the vague.
                                The wild success of a nothing doing day.

                                                                Four blocks up Connecticut
                                                                over the Cleveland Bridge
                                                                is the zoo:

                                                if you imagine the animals are happily
                                                caged it is easier to be one.

       I can’t keep enough open to harm, the mind woodens.

       Shakespeare’s Thought kills me that I am not thought.

All answers are flesh.

                                A working title of “Accounting in the Key of Dusk:”

                                                                leaves blowing
                                                                nocturnes
                                                                in a window, a pocket
                                                                of dark air to breathe,

                                and its tiny penumbra: the sometimes light

                                parsed from dark—toll and ring and after-ring—
                                this odd, good fit for the falling through.