paper/thérèse.

quiet holy ambigram calculus win- 
dowing the softened girls's hair, 
buddy-system gemini scaled as for 
repenting queen bent over the hot 
oven--that the boy and girl push- 

ed her in--and the echo of chatty 
plaints subsuming the stairways & 
channels that carry heavy soil or 
nightly cares into the cavernous, 
chilling cold of eternity unnamed 

with the ignominious threats past 
finding out: succour our glancing 
wounds redounded with intellected 
stance or if the toll breaks open 
the debtors beggared every count; 

courtesan blinking fettered whole 
abstemious gilt, shivering horses 
that bilk, the gait understanding 
gentle moving that indiminishes.. 
omnipresent crescendo tattooing & 

splayed like spilt milk neverthe- 
less without guile, maximum silv- 
er satellite of infraorbital maze
surrounded with mausolean & laby- 
rinthine courts, ringing hammers, 

children whose gaze is to the sky 
mouths open in eager anticipation 
of the once and future king, this 
is a story i heard when i was un- 
owned and before i had been born.