Don't overlook the front matter

Here's a poem from a recent collection whose title I adore: Aim Straight at the Fountain and Press Vaporize.

Instructions for Inhabiting a Miniature World

Somewhere in da Vinci’s notebook lies an earth that can’t be flattened. When you find the fairy you must speak to him, in Latin. Demonstrate your expert knowledge of the forest and your urge to decorate his nook with odd-shaped, dimpled pearls plucked from the rings of widows. He will crinkle his small face. “But I am just a mannikin. I don’t like playing games upon the bridge-too-far.” Then you will disappear into the cool sfumato of his vale and the things inside his leery gaze will twitch their iridescent horns. The inflection of his words will do a dance around the crude gleam of your evening English as it rusts in chunky piles. Amo, amas, amat. Flirtatiously, you’ll try to utter sounds that will explode his world into abstractions. But all you have are nouns and birds torn from the sky by winds so strong they turn the recto into verso: a rabbit’s foot, a lake of blood, a root system that dives below the underbrush to penetrate the forest floor bidding us to join the revels in extended metaphors.

--Elizabeth Marie Young