It coats the clouds over 
Glendale in steel. Now 
I hear, in memory, Eye 
of the adulterer for dusk– 
  
that verse in a voice that must  
be my mother’s–hushed, earnest 
as the burn of the streetlights as they 
shutter to life outside. 
  
But, my only love, I live 
in the dusk of a model’s body– 
in its glow, pose and transubstantiation 
to the other life of a photograph. 
  
It breaks the eye free 
of city lights, free 
of our fever for each other. 
You who own my sight–in your lens, 
  
in its tension, correct my overcorrections– 
lead me to rose water 
of the darkroom–though I am numb to you.