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And the speaker
in the next poem,

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which is called "The
Thousand and First Night,"

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is of course Scheherazade,
who for 1,000 nights

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told stories every
night to the sultan who

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was going to marry her and
then on the wedding night

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kill her, strangle her as
he had done previous wives.

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And she saved herself,
as you recall,

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by telling these
stories and saving

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the end until the next night.

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And he was so interested in
hearing the ending of the story

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that he always let her live one
more night so he could find out

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the end-- he could find out
the ending and then, of course,

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she started a new
story that same night.

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Well, the presumption is
that after the 1,000 nights

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that she lived happily
ever after with him.

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But I wonder--

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"I did what the rug makers do--

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begin at the edges, leave
no gaps, tie all loose ends,

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connect everything.

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I have worked us into the
center, king and queen enclosed

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by the fantastic hedge
of animals and plants

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I invented to keep me alive.

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My husband points to
his newly acquired heart

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which shows bright as
glass through the skin

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and beats as fast as a
cuckoo's against my cheek.

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Oh, the mercy of language whose
spellbound figures inhabit

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the walls of the mind
until the monster

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finally dreams
his human origins.

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Tonight no one dies
in this kingdom.

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By morning I will have
turned into a character,

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stripped of foresight,
ignorant of connections,

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and the only story
I cannot invent.

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A tale of horror perhaps,
bloody and short.

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It may cancel all
benign transformations.

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I look at my husband,
the strangler's hands:

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lunar, disarmed by sleep,
perfumed by my skin.

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I cannot imagine
how this story ends.

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