1. Won’t You Be Mine, Columbine?nMore than once I’ve dreamed of draping the skinsnof animals over my head and body.nI mean trying to get wholly within there.nAs though I could tradenfor a walk on the wild sidenor maybe even be the thingnwhose life was taken.nOne woman laughed and liked itnwhen I put a pelt over my backnand got down on the rugnto make the mythic sounds,nor so I thought, dramatizing my dreams.nThinking about it later,nI realized she would have warmed to thingsnif I’d pressed for something othernthan rubbing our handsnover an animal skinnand talking the dream textndown to number, gender, and case.nThere are tales that apply.nLike the one about the mannwho couldn’t find his assnwith both hands behind him.nTrue, true, you push that skin thing too far,nyou end up in those movies with leather.nStill and all, a lot was lostnwhen we wandered into this grammar lustnand auto-hermeneutics.nTwo Poems on Declensionnby James Seayn2. The Reaching Back with Both HandsnVarro long agonobserved how columba servednas both male and female dovenuntil the breed became domestically blessed and important.nThat’s when the formal difference—columbusnand columba — was introduced to distinguish.nHis point regarded the sporadicnchanges of form as a normnalong with the long-standing.nWhat are we talking about?nCock & hen, poetry & prose, tight-ass & knee-jerk,nand how it works in life or art, peace or war:nan evident difference ignorednuntil what we callna practical need succeedsnin division by expression.nI don’t like some of these linesnany more than you do;nit’s easy to see why the convention changed.nAs for the economics,nVarro cites his auntnwho once sold five thousand dovesnfor a return of sixty thousand sesterces.nThe birds were served at a single banquet.nHe describes the ground plan of the aviarynas shaped like a schoolboy’s writing tablet,nrectangular with rounded head.nBy the time the flusher Romans were finishednwith the villa rustica, it was a pleasure dome.nThey draped nature around their lives like skins,nthe Roman coin talkingnturkey with pure pastoral.nSooner or later, Little Mister Sine Qua Nonnhad to have a name of his own.nOtherwise who would have sailed the ocean blue?nWhat are we talking about?nMaybe it’s all finally phallephoric.nOr like what my sons used to saynwhen I asked them why a movienthey wanted permission to see was rated R:nsex drugs rock & roll,nthe oldest declension, mutatis mutandis, of all.nnnMARCH 1991/29n