From the Fishouse

Listen, everyone in a room
wants

a division, a crack at a girl.
Just keep

one eye out;
don’t lean toward windows, don’t drink
greedily like that.

And when you pass through a room, smile
directly, at someone

even if
they seem to be engaged
in conversation--tell me, who’s

completely engaged?--

and the transaction
shall act as an anchor. Soon you will circle
through turn, through give me

your attention; you will see each face
as something immaculate,

a study of weather
in the distance, a square of rain slanting down

to where it storms across the sea (though there
dark swells are, waves cracking open--). And if sometime

it surfaces, that particular

memory, the turn
down a gone hallway, or how you shamed yourself

once in somebody’s kitchen (--the sunlight

filtering in) let a secret steady your resolve. Maintain,
maintain. To appear

is to escape.