There was word that the mafia was behind it, which meant Muslims, and the cranky old sores of centuries past were seeping again, and blood was due to flow again in the streets, despite the bodies that were already being carted off.

She folds a piece of typing paper / into a house. Let’s live here, she says

Last night I dreamed I held / a lost and rescued infant / from a kidnapper.

I pray. I pray for the future of my daughters. I cannot pass it on. I pray that my children grant me grace.

Now, Tony lay on his back in the sick room in L 315, watching a fly on the ceiling. The fly was clearly bored. This was no surprise to Tony. He was bored too.

Some months all my thoughts are one colour. / I hit a yellow mood and the world pours out its yolks

Despite my characterizing of Quad as elliptical, there is a clear distinction between narrative disjunction (abundant) and the formal repletion and bevelled finish of Noon’s quatrains (also abundant).

He looked back at me, he was taking note of the moment in his head. The moment the fairy tale crumbled.

Five years into your child’s illness, / when you can no longer conceive of life / without its dank presence, you see / a blanched sky bearing a trace of rose / and the moon, risen huge—