I remember four
humps of earth pushing

out from prairie grass
west of the river—

burial mounds,
one following another, a row

of muddy children
and the shadows

fattening behind them.
Of this life, my friend,

she said, it was just a procedure.
I’ve felt it passing

through revolving doors;
everything thereafter

is fragments—each object,
space, lit by half-light,

halved by the turning glass.
At any minute,

I am in motion,
at night, in the sorrowful

architecture of a body.
At any minute,

my mouth greens, fills
with the smell

of torn leaves, blue cheese,
a library teeming

with wet dogs is a memory
of home.