More on: scene

Wasp, genus hymenopterae Hymenaeus, the god of weddings These days we gods are diminished things, black winged. I float like the infinitesimal hesitation, the unheard breath after I: “I wasp will.” “I wasp do.” I am the sadness shadowing the speeches of fathers: “Now she’s wasp elegant, wasp a woman.” I’m the one hovering over…

After I decided the spectacular sewer pipes planted with hens and chicks were too tacky to keep, I started to love those succulent single moms, also called common houseleek and long ago planted on thatched roofs to protect homes from lightning bolts. Stone rose, sacred to Jupiter in the south, Thor in the north, emblem…

—five—six—seven—eight, and one— The dancers drum onstage from the wings where they were before the downbeat, that prehistoric moment, bandaged and flinching, calloused, split, grinning—the tick-swish of soles on bare wood; their presence shifts how light leaps off the watch of the ex-nun’s date. Such sound bodies. Their backs, extraordinary overlaps of muscle bound to…