The poems that used to entrance me in the days of Miss Violence now struck me as overdone and sickly. Alas, burthen, thine, cometh, aweary—the archaic language of unrequited love. I was irritated with such words, which rendered the unhappy lovers—I could now see—faintly ridiculous, like poor moping Miss Violence herself. Soft-edged, blurry, soggy, like a bun fallen into the water. Nothing you'd want to touch,

and when we spoke /we spoke /the sounds of our voices fell / into the air single and /solid and rounded and really /there /and then dulled, and then like sounds /gone, a fistful of gathered /pebbles there was no point /in taking home, dropped on a beachful /of other coloured pebbles

Though I knew how this failure would hurt you, I had to fold like a grey moth and let go.You could not believe I was more than your echo.

What touches you is what you touch.

Writing poetry is a state of free float

from under the ground, from under the waters,they clutch at us, they clutch at us,we won’t let go.

No wires tender even as nervescan transmit the impact ofour seasons, our catastropheswhile we are closed inside them

nothing is more opaque than absolute transparency. Look--my feet don't hit the marble! Like breath or a balloon, I'm rising, I hover six inches in the air in my blazing swan-egg of light. You think I'm not a goddess? Try me. This is a torch song. Touch me and you'll burn.

It must have been an endless breathing in: between the wish to know and the wish to praise there was no seam.