How to Capture a Firefly

for Ms. Sidney Rosenthal

The box must be built
three degrees of separation
around your target,

to whom your assistant
will speak of panopticon
and games. Go then

to that place
of the afflicted and damned.
His home will be there:

he holds hands
with those you loathe
(Was that you, straight-maned Aspasia,

camera at the ready,
when the shadow people
flitted past your subject?

Did you see them as he traced the names
of flowers his mother grew,
near your vast map with its

keyhole-shaped route
outlined in the window
of the still-gutted

office beneath the parking garage?)
Three years later
some tape remains

tacking a scrap of paper
to the glass, the only trace
left at Golden Gate and Larkin.

Now let him leave
your cupped hand
to dart about and shine that goddess light

throughout the inside
of a hollow marble bust
of Eros. Be advised

he remembers well the ride you took him on,
and could to this day remind you
what the two of you talked about.

You may just want to button him up
and never let him out.

The Marine Colonel

Shall we divide Canaan
or are we Alexander
in India, swallowed
whole by a sea of humanity?

It subsists in humid
forests, dwells there
without a thought
for our Macedonian might.

Do we slash and burn
or sink as in a sand pit?
A courtesan of the old king
spit a wrapped crack rock

At my feet when I turned
to greet her pusherman ass
at the entrance to our camp
on Leavenworth and Turk.