With the patience of radishes
                        whose crisp spheres ripen underground,
            she moves through her house, out to her patio,
                        steps through the creek and moves to her fields—

            All ancient american
            calendars agree-

            this era is not infinite.
            One daykeeper

            says the next world
            will be water,

            Our Lady of Morning Breath

            blows into her hand and sniffs—

            odor of last night’s

            cigarettes, and the taste of sex

            she hasn’t had yet, mix

            with the pasty smell of

            old blood; her sensitive gums

            How to be Catholic without being a virgin.  Cranberry juice for a bladder infection, but go to the clinic just in case.  Nothing like chlamydia to kill a romance.  This black eye’s the reason I called in sick