The world doesn't end
because it's a sphere.

It ain't big either.
The span between reading Flaubert
and writing like Flaubert
dwarfs it.

True, literature is to the world what
literature is to toilet paper--
a poor substitute.
But it can do in a pinch.
And like the world,
it never ends.



A bare-shouldered woman
isn't what this poem is about.
It's about something else.
So is she.
What that is exactly
I'd love to know.



Aus Chur, Schweiz:
My first memory is picking mammoth bone from my teeth. The second, sacking Rome, followed by 13,972 moons hauling water, tilling cow shit, feeding my life to avalanches, wolves, fever, wind, infants.
Tonight, my wife sings in her hot shower while my daughter rolls on her playmat beside me, holding a unicorn. She crawls onto my lap and laughs. In her eyes glint flint tools, skyscrapers, satellites, collapsing stars.