A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

Well-fed seagull. Geilston Bay, October 2010.

Far be it from me to cast aspersions on an entire genus, but it seems to me that your average seagull looks decidedly shifty. In fairness, they sit closer to the ‘devious’ side of the spectrum, than they do the ‘deceitful’.

Perhaps they need a shift gleam in their eye in order to psych-out their opponents over a stray chip. Perhaps it is an indication of their intelligence?

Missing Persons, by Rae Armantrout

God and Mother
went the same way.

* * *

What's a person to us
but a contortion
of pressure ridges
palpable
long after she is gone?

* * *

A thin old man in blue jeans,
back arched, grimaces
at the freezer compartment.

* * *

Lying in the tub,
I'm telling them—

the missing persons—

that a discrepancy
is a pea

and I am a Princess.