Beetles, Like Tiny Black Hearts in a Glass Page

whodunits-

Odilon has made an ear near the fireplace
your head turns
the charwoman brings in the custom
butterfly box
plywood 8 holes
4 on each side
your lover wears a black raincoat

normally
while performing
Exeeth on another Prynne
you take tea
criminal
that you do not take the butterflies
out of their box

your eye moves
from the ear
to another lump
for which there
no cognate known

but it looks
as if an elbow
were sleep-walking home
through a white glade
you think
in glissades of snow
blood cells colored yellow
and hung on the wall
as big as plates

your lover leaves
the charwoman sighs
pouring tea

you remove the first butterfly
and let it go
and landing in your beard
the inner surface of the box
in newspaper mentions London
where Exeeth draws upon
the automobile
running its paternity through patterns
of X

the last phrase of the last line
becoming the first phrase of the first line
and the first phrase of the first line
becoming the second phrase of the first line

Exeeth like tea
and now on your elbow
the butterfly
which the charwoman notices
when she turns on the TV
the table which holds it
an aquarium
a cylinder

her periwinkle coat
you think of her ear
in a fog of cotton near

your lover
as a headless
armless torso
is held by a hand
and is also
a lamp

Schiaparelli
cannot possibly
be publishing this

for inside its soft skin
are veins of marble

cold periwinkle marble
Exeeth in the sea
to Prynne Odilon

telavia
linear
on the hovering spherical
screen

butterflies to commend
the ornamental ink pot
its raw cedar plynth

an amber skin
to scrawl the fireplace
your beard now fresh
with your lover's

ether


pride discrete
your holy breathing