01 10 20

I ask are you finished, you seem to want mine. There’s only time left to tell how the floors met the walls and we saw centipedes all the time crawling across the carpets which were green beneath the blue glass table which was a mirror with a plate of balls on it under the windows which on some days we cleaned but not too well so we wouldn’t fall out like my mother did not but someone else’s mother did and she died but my sister fell out once with a piece of cheese in her hand but she was so embarrassed and ashamed she didn’t tell anyone and just got up after I had already tried to compare with her how sex for us might be different but then we got into trouble again and resorted to the cellar to tear each other’s hair out and teach tongue-kissing.

Mindwinter day (22nd December 1978)
New Directions Books 1982
p. 71–72
domesticité états-unis intérieur notation poésie américaine quotidien sexualité