She may shed persimmon feather boas, but there is no rebirth here. Under the damning spotlight she is diasporic lipstick from the pouting and wailing, Dubonnet siphoning into developing wrinkles, aged Jessica Rabbit incarnate, red nails and sagging contours,

I found a fox elder standing under a box elder. He wore a dapple suit with a pipe in his mouth then tilted his hat to greet me. He leaned against the trunk of the tree or the tree

Long after bedtime and long before the birds and the dawn when I could hear the furnace tick click-tick-tick from the basement, and Dad’s sleeping-sounds stumble from under the bedroom door and not even a car on the road