What now is morning as the sun wades between the bodies
of slaughtered horses inside the thin skein of the world?

Those poems you wrote won’t raise the dead, JH said.
Or, bring a girl’s lips to jubilance.

Once he saw her make a trail to the corner of a page,
leading out of his poem, and wait for him in the shadow of a door.

The body’s older now, she said, now that we’ve fucked.
Now only scars heal scars, adoration reveals their holiness.

She’s river, ancient and silent. Spend time there up to your knees, you’ll not
get used to it, faint mutilations alight on the surface of fierce depths.

Standing by the bay window in her polka dot panties, plucking
a ladybug from the curtain, she waits for touch to come to her.