How free and lush the bamboo grows, the bamboo grows and grows
Shoots and morasses, fillies and lassies and shreds and beds and rows
O phloem and pistil, nodes and ovules
The bamboo grows and grows
Her release, her joy, her oil, her toil, her moxie, her terror, her swirl
Dig deeper into soil, deeper into her soul, what do you find in my girl
Thrash of black hair and silken snare, face in the bottom of the world
Bound by ankles, poor deer, poor sow, O delicate hooves and fascicles
Dead doe, dead doe, dead doe
Wrists together, searing red tethers, blood draining from her soles
O choir, O psalm, O soaring fearsome tabernacle
The bamboo grows, the bamboo grows and grows
Through antlers and eyeholes, O sweet soul, O sweet, sweet soul

Thin green tails, purple entrails, the bamboo grows and grows
She flailed and wailed through flimsy veils, through bones and hissing marrow
Nobody to hear her, but wind and chaff, a gasp, then letting go
They loved her, then stoned her, buried her near her ancestors
My mother, my sister, my soul

Shimmering mesh, a brocade sash, hanging on a distant oracle
Springboks dance on shallow mounds, echoes, echoes, echoes

The river is high. I'd love to smoke pot 
with the river. I'd love it if rain 
sat at my table and told me what it's like 
to lick Edith Piaf's grave. I go along thinking 
I'm separate from trash day 
and the weird hairdo my cat wakes up with 
but I am of the avalanche 
as much as I am its tambourine. 
The river is crashing against my sleep 
like it took applause apart and put it back together 
as a riot of wet mouths 
adoring my ears, is over my head
when it explains string theory 
and affection to me, 
when it tells me to be the code breaker, 
not the code. What does that mean? 
Why does lyric poetry exist?
When will water open its mouth 
and tell us how to be clouds, how to rise
and morph and die and flourish and be reborn
all at the same time, all without caring
if we have food in our teeth or teeth in our eyes
or hair in our soup or a piano in our pockets,
just play the damned tune. The river is bipolar 
but has flushed its meds, I'm dead 
but someone has to finish all the cheese 
in the fridge, we're a failed species
if suction cups are important, if intelligence
isn't graded on a curve, 
but if desperation counts, if thunderstorms 
are the noise in our heads given a hall pass 
and rivers swell because orchestras 
aren't always there when we need them, well then, 
I still don't know a thing.

In the burned house I am eating breakfast.
You understand: there is no house, there is no breakfast,
yet here I am.

The spoon which was melted scrapes against
the bowl which was melted also.
No one else is around.

Where have they gone to, brother and sister,
mother and father? Off along the shore,
perhaps. Their clothes are still on the hangers,

their dishes piled beside the sink,
which is beside the woodstove
with its grate and sooty kettle,

every detail clear,
tin cup and rippled mirror.
The day is bright and songless,

the lake is blue, the forest watchful.
In the east a bank of cloud
rises up silently like dark bread.

I can see the swirls in the oilcloth,
I can see the flaws in the glass,
those flares where the sun hits them.

I can't see my own arms and legs
or know if this is a trap or blessing,
finding myself back here, where everything

in this house has long been over,
kettle and mirror, spoon and bowl,
including my own body,

including the body I had then,
including the body I have now
as I sit at this morning table, alone and happy,

bare child's feet on the scorched floorboards
(I can almost see)
in my burning clothes, the thin green shorts

and grubby yellow T-shirt
holding my cindery, non-existent,
radiant flesh. Incandescent.

^{translated by The Friend}

It’s a massive spider who can’t move;
a colorless spider, whose body—
a head and an abdomen—bleed.

Today I saw her up close. And with what effort
all along her flanks
her innumerable feet stiffened.
I have thought of her invisible eyes
the fatal pilots of the spider.

It’s a spider that trembled stuck
at the edge of a stone;
abdomen to one side,
to the other the head.

With so many feet the poor thing, she still can’t
work herself out. When seeing her,
stunned in some trance,
what grief this traveler gave me today.

An enormous spider who blocks
the abdomen from following the head.
I’ve thought about her eyes,
considered her numerous feet...
What grief this traveler’s given me today.

La Araña 

Es una araña enorme que ya no anda;
una araña incolora, cuyo cuerpo,
una cabeza y un abdomen, sangra.

Hoy la he visto de cerca. Y con qué esfuerzo
hacia todos los flancos
sus pies innumerables alargaba.
Y he pensado en sus ojos invisibles,
los pilotos fatales de la araña.

Es una araña que temblaba fija
en un filo de piedra;
el abdomen a un lado,
y al otro la cabeza.

Con tantos pies la pobre, y aún no puede
resolverse. Y, al verla
atónita en tal trance,
hoy me ha dado qué pena esa viajera.

Es una araña enorme, a quien impide
el abdomen seguir a la cabeza.
Y he pensado en sus ojos
y en sus pies numerosos...
¡Y me ha dado qué pena esa viajera!