The corpses weigh nothing, nearly nothing, even your breathis breeze enough to scatter themWe steamed them in tupperware with a damp spongethen we tweezed the stiff wings openThe wing colors would brush off if you touched them3,000 butterflies raised and gassedand shipped to Evolution, the store in New Yorkrented by an artist hired to design a restaurantHe wanted to paper the walls with butterfliesEach came folded in its own translucent envelopeWe tweezed them open, pinned them into rowson styrofoam flats we stacked in towers in the narrowhallway leading to the bathroomEvolution called itself a natural history storeIt sold preserved birds, lizards, scorpions in lucite, bobcatswith the eyes dug out and glass ones fitted, head turnedAlso more affordable bits like teethand peacock feathers, by the registera dish of raccoon penis bonesThis was in SpringThe sidewalks swarmed with bare-armed peoplethere to see the cityYou could buy your own name in calligraphyor written on a grain of riceSouvenir portraits of taxis and the Brooklyn Bridgelined up on blankets spread over the pavementThe artist we were pinning for had gotten famousbeing first to put a dead shark in a galleryFor several million dollars each he sold what he describedas happy pictures which were rainbow dotsassistants painted on white canvasesI remember actually thinking his art confronted death,that’s how young I wasWe were paid per butterflyThe way we sat, I saw the backsof the other pinners’ heads more than their facesOne’s braids the color of wine, one’s puffy headphones, feather cutand slim neck rising from a scissored collar, that onebought a raccoon penis bone on lunch breakMostly we didn’t speakAnother life glimpsed in a detail mentioned, leaving or arrivingShe lived with a carpenter who fixed her lunchesBy fall I’d be in collegeI smelled the corpses on my fingerswhen I took my smoke break, pressed againsta warm brick wall facing the smooth whiteheadless mannequins in thousand-dollar shift dressesThe deli next door advertised organic toast and raisins on the vineMornings, I tried to learn from eyelinerand shimmer on faces near mine on the trainWarm fogged imprint on a metal polewhere someone’s grip evaporatedEveryone looking down when someone walked throughasking for helpAt Evolution, talk radio played all dayA cool voice giving hourly updateson the bombing of another city which it calledthe conflictThe pinner in headphones sometimes hummedor started a breathy lyricselfish girl—I watched my tweezers guide the poisonousexquisite blue of morpho wingsTheir legs like jointed eyelashesFalse eyes on the grayling wingtipsto protect the true faceThe monarch’s wings like firepouring through a lattice