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Awake in the gypsum, in
the wrestler's stretch, every
hair charged like the pollinating
bee's--
 Alkestis
in white silk
creeping between my chest
and thighs
*
White
Herakles, Herakles
of the pearled back, is it
vein or artery driving
the color under your pallor?
the first orange flame to taste
the sap, sighing illiquidly upward
till every leaf is
a ribcage of fire
*
Rosemary, rosewood,
murex: the would-be
victor in his oils, my father
with the graying laurel on his grayed
scalp,
Alkestis climbing the white
slip out of her breasts
and thighs
*
It was a casket
no larger than a child's, a twin-crib
for two logs: the one
green ash, oozing
the green stink of life--
the other
only ashes she wiped into
a hand towel, then rinsed out
with the morning's dishes.
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