It is just as hot as in the age of the great religious wars

In the beginning the lyre had only one string
wind gone cello deep storm

Diane Von Furstenberg         who created the wrap dress
has a buzzer         beside her to call

her assistants         a diamond necklace         that says
“I am in control”

“Sex-positive”         a phrase Diane learns
in her interview and         immediately adheres to

Sex-positive I am reading         on my phone
Missing the

black smudged ink on my fingers         from coated paper
A tinge of excitement in my feet         the brief ache

flu-like in my ankles
one of the not-covid viruses the allergy clinic says are

“very around”        The peonies        have blurred into beauty
I am lucky to live in a light-filled house

And with the people I love        the exquisite nearness
of DM-ing my friends in New York

when did I come to         prefer this my friends
just across the bridge         the street I would walk

across to see         if I could bring myself
over the glittering waters

before they DM me I wonder if they
have read         the Diane Von Furstenberg

in its entirety in The New Yorker
or seen the decapitated head

if they kept scrolling, clicked the link         to allow it
or not

decay is a world where one is in demand
to bring oneself

and be among other’s others, ghosts in our pockets,
ancestors, strangers alike share recipes

how much cold butter in the piecrust

the world does not say what to ignore

the world is internally cognating
Chicago Manual of Style

Our presidents circle one another displacing dates, times, legalities
great swathes        of 17th, 18th, 19th, 20th, 21st

century prose, the presidents in a rotunda
continue to embarrass us all

each one gets         an aphorism a piece
the Earth is         complacent         sometimes

you have to pay the hand
that shakes yours         inhale the heat

Discovery the dark shadow the hand makes across paper
in dappled light from the summer walnut tree

what is         the evolutionary need         for a convulsion
before being fed

the starving die         upon eating
if not given         sugar water first

addicts shit their pants in anticipation
Diane Von Furstenberg’s         mother 19 months in Auschwitz

Salads for the resistance!
Ghosts suggest new dresses         this time over pants,

Vibrating spiderwebs         a single white flower bodice
I love that Pasolini loved Marianne Moore

People rush to swarm in their mysteries
The ghosts who accompany them
are made of flint and chalk         they stir a hot bath         with your hand

A war abroad is like sitting alone         outraged in a room        invisible to everyone else
Athena coming in on a wind        her gold gown         falling out of a cloud

Athena pulling Achille’s hair back in her fist         exposing his neck
whispering stop this         into his ear
As he was getting far         too into it with Agamemnon

If the rules of battle are not followed
massacre replaces battle

It’s an old story, one found floating in ether
an inked blank corner         clipped from the         half-title leaf

Diane Von Furstenberg giving birth to Anderson Cooper
before she flew back into sky

—(later founded as The Royal Humane Society, 1774)

Like the fog

most people drift more than can be seen.

We were rolling in vast turbines

out to sea.     Either the night air

was drunk, or we were, what was clear

was we could not see

past the dashboard

and you yelled         “we’re flying”         end to end         the car an excalibur

through fields         as if mid- air         was no way to stop         so we kept driving.

Like love that draws humors from the body

the feminine of fog is youngest leaf.

Vats of cornpone fry in stately ship.

We licked the language of the country

into pure atmosphere

like a silk lining torn away, that which disappears does not talk falsely.

Red, wet, a rose about to go opens so wide to stay

a little longer,

lies love war

more than rumor, time,

memory, often moist

as to evaporate fully, gunshots on the outskirts, crappy ashen pistols thrown to grave.

Icy boots trade in shadow

as if a history to tell. At another gas station as if with soft chalk I send a loving message

to invisible friends

who nevertheless I knew were there.

Cigarettes you kept wanting one         a film rolling in one’s hands

or wired around in one’s headphones. Daylight forth and forewarding,

I am loving you our hands have not curled like this since babes.

End to end you yelled         “we’re flying”         I love you in the wave come to taunt you

At your throat.        Hiss, mist.

Fuse the other, why loathe

When we can spit our breath

out so hard

we have the rain.

Pluralistic pink umbrella is every human tongue.

War 10

Running into the enemy, in the middle of the night,

one on one, all alone, without any others around

in mud, grass — but it is not the time for anyone’s death yet —

the fates in a busy, suspended void

Withdrawn commanders and their charges sleeping it off somewhere in separate

bunkers, on opposite outskirts of the city, where the fennel keeps its sightlines

messy, smelling of sweet anise.

We can begin again. Take off our sincere

uniforms, link arms, thighs touching, and regenerate.

Like newborn mammals born blind we are,

but we are not deafened —

We stumble, paw, and miss,            we have the immobilities of newness,

We cannot yet show our love too passionately.