Confidential

Shooting pleasures

Ok’d by

My being seen

For

Or as

If.

Not just light

at the end of the tunnel,

but hearts, bows, rainbows—

all the stickers

teachers award if pleased.

Pigeons bathe in technicolor

fluid “of a morning.”

If I was banging

my head with a shoe,

I was just exaggerating—

like raising my voice

or the ante.

Curlicues

on iron gratings:

Can it be

a flourish is a grimace,

but a grimace isn’t a flourish?

On the inscribed surface

of sleep.

Almost constant

bird soundings.

“Aloha, Fruity Pebbles!”

Music, useful

for abstracting emphasis.

Sweet nothing

to do with me.

Source: Veil: New and Selected Poems (Wesleyan University Press, 2001)