[Lie-Light; Bill Jensen, 1989-90]

My tutors and I passed the hours watching rain gather its bubble in the saltshakers our ancestors placed on the limestone altar behind the stables. I discovered that salamander is not a language you can learn in a reflecting pool. Their itinerary was neither heroic nor glittering, and they preferred to congregate in the muddy lanes encircling the arsenal. When you are made of invisible ink, I told my last bodyguard, you are pursued by vexations, but you are not yet the sordid creation you will one day inhabit, comfortable as fur wrapped in muslin and carried down from the mountains. I became the animals that appeared in my dreams, their longing remains my guide.

Listen, Little Magdalena Snowdrop, don't you think it's time we prepare another canvas?

--from 'In the Fourth Year of the Plague'; John Yau