—from photographs by Man Ray
A metaphor of trees lines Pushkin Park.
Apples against the eaves dripping with rain.
I have never felt so alone—
even losing my nightgown at the hotel
didn't diminish the fact that it was by choice.
Whose, I'm not sure.
A folded photo transforms our faces
and I contemplate remnants of an earlier era—
a man in the house,
a cigarette without paper,
an angel without wings,
but clothes empty of corpus
drink the wine anyway.
A knife punctuates the knot. A coin, an egg,
the unusual context of alphabetical order
and gardenias,
