The poet fears failure & so she says “Hold on pen— what if the critics hate me?”

Regret is the young girl who sits… & stares at her hands. They are bluer than shadows in sno… They are bloodless as fear. Her fingernail moons are white.

And his dark secret love Does thy life destroy. —William Blake Because I would not admit that I had nurtured

The cover of the book is astral violet, & within it are poems, most of them

‘Hotel rooms constitute a separate… —Tom Stoppard A bed, a telephone, the cord to the world beyond the womb . . .

Little egg, little nub, full complement of fingers, toes, little rose blooming

I mourn a dead friend, like myself… —Pablo Neruda about César Vallej… I looked at the book. ‘It will stand,’ I thought. Not a palace

the sky sinks its blue teeth into the mountains. Rising on pure will (the lurch & lift-off, the sudden swing

At the furthermost reach of the se… where Atlantis sinks under the wak… I have come to heal my life. I knit together like a broken arm. The salt fills the crevices of bon…

At the edge of the body there is said to be a flaming halo– yellow, red, blue or pure white,

The lover in these poems is me; the doctor, Love. He appears

The man giving birth in the dark has died & come back to life again, is stretching out his arms

I sit at my desk alone as I did on many Sunday afternoons when you came back to me, your arms aching for me,

You can be hurt because you want too much; because in your face it says: love me, nurture me; because in your teeth it says: