Mark Doty

I love starting things

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Fat and shadow, oil and wax, mobility solidified, like cooled grease in a can –

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Seeing how far I can go

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      Analiese said, happily, ‘He paints the ugliness of flesh,’       but that isn’t it: flesh without the overlayer, how we ought to see it, all we’re taught –

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Thirty-seven clocks in five tiers.

Sunset, end of a mild afternoon the hand of winter’s never quite let go of.

Mantel, cuckoo, rusticated, ormolu, glass-domed, moving brass balls and chimes, porcelain, French clocks with bronze figures, thirty-seven, ranged in the shop window, not especially attractive,

none fine, none precious, even to my taste individually desirable, but studying...