Histology

for Marianne Moore

Perched on a clawfoot

tub eating leftover sardines

your mother, prime source 

of nutrition, never fed you

but roosters in the water

closet eat amity, oyster shells

while a smokeless furnace,

arms without thumbs, seethes

like a smoldering cigar 

smirch on the handrail stop

and Alectryon pinches a sun

bowl of getaway fare – you,

by omission, lie humidly 

thwarted, unfixed by wonder.