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“Gallery” in the petrie dish: I'm a little bit perverse, and I just hate doing the thing that's the most obvious. I wrote this poem in public with people sitting all around me. Maybe the setting is interesting in relationship to the content, which one might think of as private. I wrote the poem with a stolen pen on an appropriated piece of paper. The present elements wormed their way in, some in obvious ways, some obscure. I could say: I was listening...I am not trying to protect the name of the innocent; I can't remember the name of the innocent. Lateness approached. I didn't have anything but a Halls throat lozenge. All of the elements present—But that's just the superficial stuff. Most of the poems I write are leading me toward a knowledge of life that is utterly mysterious to me. Maybe it's a middle-class hang-up, but I prefer the abstract concept of incoherence in the face of (great) feeling to beautiful, full sentences that convey little emotion. The parentheticals after indefinite and personal pronouns began as notes to specify what I thought I meant, and also, as a way to converse with the poem. The poem hooked them in an apparent, necessary, lesser dose. The poem is more literal than metaphoric; the lozenge is a lozenge and the painting. My forthright aim: For nothing to "become" something else. One can always hope...