Index

Bashō wrote: Year after
year, on the monkey’s face,
a monkey face. And looking
at monkey faces, it would be so
alluring for an ugly human
face to emerge on my
mind’s silver-coated plate.
It is a monkey face. We
see by our own lamps:
reveal forms encoded
into darkness by covering
them with nets of light.

That night I went to
meet you, the pigeons sleeping
on the cold power
lines under the train
station didn’t
look like pigeons at all——
head-sized
beetles, less animal
than metallic movement;
one leg on the wire;
their heads
sunk into their iridescent
collars. Pigeons, they’re
pigeons. One of them sleeps with one
wing open. What’s she
got on her mind?

You are as dear
to me as my thumbs.