anywhere. Someone more beautiful follows with eyes the color of caramel, the color of denim, cornflower, topsoil, overtone of carmine, new leaf, hair the color of bittersweet, patent leather. Over your shoulder should you choose to look she lolls on the grass sunning, her tongue on loose, her eyes closed, no wrinkles shouting age age at the corners. Bow to her. Whisper, "nice day" whisper "milady brown tree' say "love me love me" and see how her shoulder dips to you, all the sudden hollows filling with silver wide eye flicking open then shutting askew on one color, your color: a sliver of bone a sluice of water, running. Reprinted with permission from What is Good Copyright © 1988 by Hilda Raz Thorntree Press

DICTION by HILDA RAZ

"God is in the details," I tell the kids in the public school at Milligan, Nebraska. They wonder what I mean. I tell them to look out the window at the spring fields the mud coming up just to the knee of the small pig in the far pasture. They tell me it's not a knee but a hock and I hadn't ought to say things I know nothing about. I say the light on the mud is pure chalcedony. They say the mud killed two cows over the weekend. I tell them the pig is alive and the spring trees are standing in a green haze. They tell me school is out in a week and they have to plant. The grain elevator at the end of Main Street stretches out her blue arms. The kids say chutes. Reprinted with permission from The Bone Dish Copyright © 1989 by Hilda Raz State Street Press

WIDOW by HILDA RAZ

I have had this lesson, not to care for the bones. The cat in my lap dies, he is replaced, the man who casts me out is cast out, the love that leaves returns as "a wall of water," she kept saying, as if the words were the flood and all she could see she would repeat: "A wall of water." Wipe me out. I have been replaced, supplanted, ignored, cast out, ground down, spat upon, rejected, refused, neglected, soiled, reviled, dismembered. I have lost husband and children, beasts and possessions, I am ashes, an orphan; my dearest self took a gun into himself and died in the fields. My breasts are empty pockets. Pain visits my body; tears my eyes, my mouth is filled with wind, I speak nonsense incessantly, silence is fled from me, wisdom hides her head. A feverish energy holds, then drops me down. My children flee from me. A succession of bruises bloom on the long bones of my body. Oh God of the waters, God of the fragile body, imperfect and weak, watch over me, care for me, raise me up out of the plumes of the dust, the rusty canyons. Rinse and nourish me. In return I have nothing but my great and perfect need. Reprinted with permission from What Is Good Copyright © 1988 by Hilda Raz Thorntree Press