from THE DAYLIGHT SECTIONS (29)

she, under the miraculous fibrosis
of detained light strips enfolding and encoding
symmetry to come, prefers to hate someone
in common with an other
who can fortify inflexible dislike
for what might be her arbitrary target
dazed by artificial light of a pretend acceptance
only to fuel the link, live at the edge
of excommunication that would equal
freedom in one of many formulae
indigenous to flowering plants and fractions,
intonations of the good, the true, the bounty,
shaken from dependably productive trees.

Her tresses and her muscles fall, her happiness
is fleeting and depends upon maintaining mutual dislike
for enemies she makes and fastens on as if protecting
selves from something sacred,
that pretends substantive self,
an invented peerage that deserves
in her best thinking
to be shunned and kept material
within the minds of individuals who beg to premise
all that is not lyrical
on her divisive blinders to the good
and what might be a foster cure
for the indelible dominion of her cruelty.