After (as though brushing past her in the dark)
Ingeborg Bachmann

Here heaven (not sky) has taken another bite
from a crisp apple

No one’s misquoting Tertullian

*

Before she wakes he and the pug take their favorite loop—
through the park, along the golf course, over the pontoon bridge

Now sand-sugared paws pad over wet grass

*

She tears off a corner of her toast and hands it to him

This close to St. Paddy’s Flann sends in a little man carrying
the twenty-ninth chest to tip over the salt

Incoming sun and blind slats stripe the table, clothes
and two faces

They have debts, they have a house