I'm An Empress. I Wear

Bless All Useful Objects, The Spoons Made Of Bone, The Mattress I Cook My Dreams Upon, The Typewriter That Is My Church With An Altar Of Keys Always Waiting.

Jesus Saw The Multitudes Were Hungry And He Said, Oh Lord, Send Down A Short-order Cook.

I Sit At My Desk Each Night With No Place To Go, Opening The Wrinkled Maps Of Milwaukee And Buffalo, The Whole U.s., Its Cemeteries, Its Arbitrary Time Zones, Through Routes Like Small Veins, Capitals Like Small Stones.

I Burn The Way Money Burns.

I Find Now, Swallowing One Teaspoon Of Pain, That It Drops Downward To The Past Where It Mixes With Last Year’s Cupful And Downward Into A Decade’s Quart And Downward Into A Lifetime’s Ocean. I Alternate Treading Water And Deadman’s Float.