From Carbonate of Copper, which will be published next year by Fordham University Press.

Mirror symmetry in the wilderness.
The marauders with their sirens

and sticks. An astrolabe
for the constellation

of cancer—for the one
true calibrated

mercy of my immediate
and overfamiliar

shadow cast in autumn
fern: hexagonal.

I could no sooner bring
myself to imagine it

was just as well to them
I was disappeared

or barely discernible
along the causeway

than to dwell confined
in the animal recesses

of my vesicular sleep. Only
then am I entrusted

to shelter consigned to
the rattling outer reaches

of my nerve in turquoise
uncovered by lamplight     a body

outnumbered by octaves