Poetry. NOTES TO THE BELOVED is full of the physical world, illuminated by a dynamic narrative sensibility, a vision of down-to-earth love, an active yearning to understand the world, and plenty of kick-ass images, metaphors, and "You make a matchstick of your finger, / dunk the tip in Bombshell Red. / Then your lips are two flickers, / in the shadows of your ears, smoldering / flowers. You draw a smoky line / between lid and lash and dash out."