September
How clean
the thousand surfaces
rivers
RVs and
orange mesas
emerge each morning
rows of privet
clipped and swept
a linen blouse uncreased beneath
the steaming iron
again and again
the world is rinsed
to a scintillant mesh
And still
the faces
gush from arrival gates
throbbing with this
bare imperative
to populate
the shivering expanse
this drive
of the body itself
to slice a space
out of the aggregate
and hold it
at whatever cost of
blood semen money
spit
Reprinted with the permission of the University of Chicago Press
1989: Death on the Nile
The Lions
September