Three Poems

Bodily the Camellia Drops

  Already I detect his presence.
  Some people deny that one poet
can absorb another, but from the way light bends
  by my body, I know I am denser
now, there are two of us inside the same build.
The Japanese will not arrange camellias
  because the blooms are suddenly felled,

  crossing their minds as decapitation.
  Soon after he died, I had to write;
I did not want to write, but I was reused
  for an unfamiliar scent. Rooms reeked
when I passed through; glass began to have his face;
even my handwriting came out as odd nodes
  on vines. My own life has worked its way loose.

  If I were a master magician,
...