The Folded Heart. Michael Collier

like virtuoso yo-yo tricks.

      The pageant made city news in the morning paper:

      a photograph framed by the ratty proscenium

      of the social hall, in which Mrs. Carrera

      occupies the foreground, holding

      her blue-and-red velveteen

      needlepoint portrait of Kennedy

      (her scapular of gratitude for America)

      while the cast stands by height

      in tiers behind her, and Tito out of sight

      in the wings smokes in his folding chair,

      a hand on the drapery cords, his feet

      propped on the tiny canvas door he made for Alice.

       A Private Place

      I kept you buried in a shallow alley grave,

      a hollowed dirt canoe, in which after having touched

      your legs and breasts and shoulders,

      I rolled you up like a sporting program—

      a telescope or megaphone—through which I could

      see or speak to you when you were gone.

      I dug you up as often as I thought of you,

      though sometimes I’d resist and so my giving in

      was sweeter. And even now I remember