for Ramona

She dons latex gloves,
enters her domain
of chemicals, skill and trays,
clicks the door shut behind her,
and stands in utter darkness.

Her art emerges there, rippling
in a dance of light and shadow,
gradually as a patient
shaking off the stupor
of anesthesia.

Suddenly
they break
into a dead

run, desperate
for crest
or butte,

sluicing
through the draw
unobtrusive

as moonglow,
a flash flood
of buffy-

gray shadow,
their great
throats clotting

with the warm,
sonorous vowels
of the howl.

He navigates
the mazes of his days
with the mice of strange
personalities.

His major
capability
is negative.
Idle, he crackles

like the husk
of a cicada,
his new body
shrilling in the leaves

of his manuscript.
He remembers
everything he reads,
savoring new words

like bonbons,
his raison d’être
teetering on the brink
of a well-turned phrase.

He works well into
the night, grinding
out the chapters
of his life.

His mane and tail
are light-colored,
his coat a light
reddish-brown.

Every time he passes
from shadow into sun,
our pupils shrink
like pouches

drawn taut by a string.
By his coat
we know and name him,
his coat so dazzling

in the sun
God gave him
a great heart
just to ripple it.

In dishes
set beside sinks
or shoved
into the corners
of showers,

it waits
in waxen bars
of pinks, greens,
blues and yellows.
It diminishes

each time
it’s touched.
Rubbed against
wet skin,
it cleanses us

over
and over again
with the scented,
pastel ghosts
of horses.

Belief itself, animate,
she dangles in the maw of night
from gossamer spun by the weightless
spinning wheel of being,

so consumed with devotion
she devours the squalid
little lives of her lovers,
rendering them radiant

as minutes of mercury
to issue like the music
of the spheres through the doubtless
red hourglass of her abdomen.