AS THE MAID
IS DUSTING

she notices the photo is uncertain:

mammogram or Mars?

Up close its speckles could be either

mineral or flesh, the tiny saltings found

in both environments. And these

environments are sugared brilliances,

patterns of time. 

Does cancer come from outer space,

travel on an asteroid and with each orbit 

toss off poison like a lettuce spinner?

If so, the sky really does fall, 

our futures fall as dust.

​

The lenses need cleaning, too,

an adjustment of focus: 

nipple to crater,

crater to nipple, 

or nipple as crater, the saucered

woe of what goes wrong.

Nothing is definite yet;

it’s just a photograph, the cover 

of a book, where the universe,

reduced to a body by instruments

and a fine scalpeling of dread,

bleeds the image to its borders.