like a star

who snuffs out

its own path

like a tsar

who wears a

many-beaméd trinket on his chest

like a target for a

Taser or a laser

-guided stent

quasaring throb that knocks

the breast

of the

ocean-going

vessel

fist-sized wren or

cardiac event

vein choked

with the plush that coats

the stag’s rack

stoked gland or glitch

pumping out error

in the constellation Lyra

the second-most glamorous star

the second to be daguerreotyped

and assassinated

stepping out of its car

galactic halflife

neural

leap

no wider than a

a single

bacterium

weak heir

‘s hairline

who chokes up at the opera

eyes glued to his lorgnette ting ting in the

operating theater where the gods all

cluster at the trompe l’oeil

dome and suppose an

even more monstrous eye

looks back

who can swallow the view whole a pupil

who can take the whole thing down

on his knees in the backroom on his back in the sacristy

and

vomit it back up

on the bar on the altar

on the street

outside the viper room

who

chokes on the skein

unwinding from his

bolt like a colt’s mane

extravagance, consciousness,

prize sheep that can bleat

through its cut throat

pleat

that can spread

like blood on the waves and

fetch a price that makes the wind rise

and hurl fleets at the future

nerves pinch at the side and

hold the garment up in rictus

grin and say alive

whatever’s too much is the

price

like a dog returns to its vomit

to appraise it once again

and cart it off

for a price

and the neck

of that doggy star

can bend