I just want to touch everything
hanging from the walls and the ceiling

I've never felt this way before—Ruth Duckworth—is she
really still living?
The card says so. What do I want to look at

a bunch of quilts hanging on the wall for? I am almost done

with this guileless pose
exhaust one's self in several poses
currently standing and looking
my ass off

at doll quilts 1863
in a glass box
everything darker
just the general tenor of life
—darker

the fabrics, candlelight, eyes

shut at sundown
The "sunshine and shadow pattern"
made with tiny stitches a whole lot of sense

Unbelievable—
that human intelligence—
now so dulled—
could have flamed

so bright as to stitch this square
with a ladies' fan

with a velvet boot
this a tilted teacup.

And then I went to see Bright Star

and wept more in the dark for that recaptured
affect

peering at poems,
by candlelight, when night
was dark.