Carrie Etter lives in London. Her poems have appeared most recently in Seneca Review, Meridian, Nedge, Salamander and The East Village. In 1998, Potes & Poets published her chapbook Subterfuge for the Unrequitable. Under beer and on the humid Under beer and on the humid sounds like distance stretching into itself though, in unmeasured moments, identifiable as semis on the interstate. Looking away at the overgrown and the equilibria lose novelty. Fecund names the loss. Pinioned relative to the imaginable, pines never taller on either side of the field. Lavender sachet and nightly dose. Yes, yes, the gnaw. Tonight the barmaid refuses to apologize. Goldenrod foot by yard Goldenrod foot by yard overtakes the horizon to forestall aghast, tremulous, sublime "Wretched mother!" the translation flashed "Abandon my son!" The catholicity of my wine-spun revelations embarrasses even who would say egalitarian Who overtakes grief in a sprint across the field, here and no further This is how a birthday nears, neglecting chianti Younger sisters conceive and conceive The picture instead presented buttercups, yellowed orange and catching Mme Butterfly with her hair uncoiling Who teeters on the gulch's precipice and laughs at the short height Any rhetoric necessitates a certain diffusion, and that of fallenness Who can shrug I nearly envy The orphan as he who experiences the death of his nativity The orphan as he who remotely senses the death There is no grief in putting my finger on it Months succeed where one neglects the sublime, refuses to acquiesce if indifference can deny The world's efficacy lies in its torque Could I yield to apoplexy, to apology, to apocalyptic How far can regret bear reason John Paul I reigned 34 days, Lady Jane Grey a relative lifetime Four, five days rendered me ultimately effable Wretched mother, praise that torque Estate Management                 from Christine de Pizan's The Treasure of the City of Ladies war or crusade leaves behind manors, fields, and fieldhands how ladies who live on ought to all the responsibility of administration (revenue) by persuasion the details and a standard of living at the study of lease and contract – nothing dishonourable nothing dishonourable in familiarity to oversee (revenue) servant, sheep, furrow to market to market to sell a rich to preclude undersight, i.e. deception (loss of revenue) (poor prices) sometimes renders more profit, e.g. the Countess of Eu felt no shame in the perfectly respectable work profit (nothing dishonourable to women) The Return the ache that keeps for the sake of the moment's thrall as though to shift were sacrilege to thought to the complete sentence period new sentence until punctuation wanes in the glow profuse and almost tangible I court it sans regret for skinfast days sense-bound the revels the ferry there in no time true enough no time at all though the tick was heard was attended a lapse self-suturing I revisit and therein the ken we are circumnavigators all there arises our rest and anxiety from there to beckon in the ache kept for the sake of the moment's thrall ache and grip