PoetryRepairShop MM.01:012 BARBARA F. LEFCOWITZ Another Grammar Lesson More devoutly each day I believe I'm a dangling modifier a queen without subjects the piano in a school for the deaf When mornings bait me back to sleep with dream-hooks I add to my list the black pearl that Cleopatra crushed in her wine the arm that fell off the Venus de Milo all of which surpass being an adjective stuck like a burr to its noun a subject still searching for Queens wherever Brooklyn ends or begins deaf in the presence of a piano Venus de Milo ogled by flashbulbs but fall well short of life as a transitive verb ordering all of its objects my hands pressing into song that piano's keys releasing the Venus de Milo from chisels and hammers her marble still warm.

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