COSMOLOGY 

Cold hands—warm torso—
time like an orange—

time like a bag of salt 
gray oxen drag—

How many years of salt? 
Then, one day, a shell. 

And fire, where joints should be.
A field of rose, a town 

of anthracite, river of milk— 
a face that hisses, sizzles—

girls who sort potatoes in the dark—
I orient myself by smell. 

Memory blooms in the stone like a rose. 
Its fiberglass insulation burns.

ZAVOD DIAFOTO

The face of history is sweating.

Her cheeks stretch
under a white kerchief.

 Hills of wheat hum 
dark against the horizon.

Women work the sugar beet 
into crisp monochrome. 

Women sit like sand (uncolorized).

Swamp fields of hemp.
Salt hills on the shore.

Men merge with their standing—
more pitchfork and spit.

They photograph her body—
no record for the state
of her arm, the corn,
our rippling hand.

I interpret dutifully: Academic 
in the field, squints at heat. 

The cleft in his chin speaks
to the clefts in the wheat—
a well-worn association.