I.

    I followed James Wright to Nicollet Island
    from eastern Pennsylvania. Near the lake,
    the soil is sand. My neighbor, the woman
    who dreams of killing her children, tells me
    that all this used to be underwater. And I can see it.

        In the museum hall, near the shocking air
        around Kiki Smith's Virgin
        (bold labia cast in metho-cellulose, shining
        glass pupils pushed into a paper head
        with no mouth),