^{“Pain blesses the body back to its sinner”
            —Ocean Vuong}

Handcuffs around my wrists 
lined with synthetic fur, my arms bound 

& hoisted, heavenward, as if in praise.
Once, bodies like mine were seen as a symptom

of sin, something to be prayed away;
how once, priests beat themselves to sanctify

the flesh. To put their sins to death. Now,
my clothes scatter across the floor like petals

lanced by hail. Motion stretches objects 
in the eye. A drop of rain remade, 

a needle, a blade. Mark how muscle fiber 
& piano strings both, when struck, ring. 

No music without violence or wind. 

I’ve been searching the backs of lover’s hands
for a kinder score, a pain that makes 

my pain a stranger tune. Still, my body aches 
an ugly psalm. All my bones refuse to harm

-onize. Percussion is our oldest form of song, 
wind bruised into melody. Let me say this plainly:

I want you to beat me 

into a pain that’s unfamiliar. How convenient 
this word, beat, that lives in both the kingdoms 

of brutality & song. The singer’s voice: a cry, 
a moan, god’s name broken across a blade 

of teeth. The riding crop & flog & scourge—
a wicked faith. A blood-loud devotion.  

There is no prayer to save me from my flesh. 
You can’t have the bible without the belt.

Batter my heart, transgender’d god, for yours

is the only ear that hears: place fear in my heart

where faith has grown my senses dull & reassures

my blood that it will never spill. Show every part

to every stranger’s anger, surprise them with my drawers

full up of maps that lead to vacancies & chart

the distance from my pride, my core. Terror, do not depart

but nest in the hollows of my loins & keep me on all fours.

My knees, bring me to them; force my head to bow again.

Replay the murders of my kin until my mind’s made new;

let Adam’s bite obstruct my breath ’til I respire men

& press his rib against my throat until my lips turn blue.

You, O duo, O twin, whose likeness is kind: unwind my confidence

& noose it round your fist so I might know you in vivid impermanence.

I jumped against the sky expecting I would find another sky. A subtlety to sky.
I wanted to get to know the sky better. I wanted to breathe in the air. The sky as a blank space.
Or maybe the opening to a decent conversation.
If you’re using a camera you can pose against the sky and people will think that you’re flying.
Which is very dishonest.
Particularly to the sky.
Have you known a sky? I am trying to make its acquaintance.
The sky I am thinking of is a set piece for honesty.

Look into the night sky. All it is is confused.
The sky is revealing to the people what a sky can really look like.
Not day. Not the sky that’s being suspended over the whole state of Texas.
Just estranged populations.
So many populations running away from the earth.
I don’t know what to do about a sky when it’s like this.

I am more a middle of the day. My favorite meal is lunch.
My favorite tree is whatever it is that is happening in the spring, mainly after a strong rain.
Maybe sometimes when the leaves change.
So long as the place I’m living in is conducive to trees.
Their weights and measurements. Their various relationships with a sky.
Is there a place where birds come from? I think it’s the sky.
A tree absorbs sky. It takes it into its lungs.
How sky is sky? say the trees. And that seems to mean something.

I built a house, and I made sure there was one window.
I nailed a tether to the side of that window. On the outside, I put sky.
I was jumping to the outside so many times I forgot what falling is in a sky.
I am coming for you, Sky!
Do not misinform me or take me into account. I was attached to this house for a reason.
Sometimes I jump, and I am air.
Then I am sky.
I think, “And, now, everything else!” Where everything else is the order of sky.
Air molecules. Air molecules existing. All they can do is keep existing.

My mother was transforming
another tough pot roast into meat loaf,
grinding up chunks of gristly beef, bovine scraps
she’d boned off a shoulder blade.

As she bore down on the stiff
crank handle & fed the iron gullet
of the meat grinder, the auger hole, I stood
beside her, a shadow, not yet two,

held onto the counter & cutting board, listened to
the squish & roar of meat pushing through
spaghetti sized holes. I was mesmerized
by those oozing red hamburger strings.

In a flash I reached up & plugged a hole
with my finger to stop the flow, didn’t know about
the slashing, windmilling knives
turning industriously, cleaving all meat.

My mother & I screamed, cried hysterically,
held hands & a dish towel full of blood
while my dad drove the thirty miles of curvy
road, a two lane along the river, cussing,

full throttle. They hustled me through the lobby
of the clinic, brick & glass. I saw wheel chairs,
white gowns running about, watched
an overhead light fade. Finally, at home

I remember sitting on the floor in overalls,
a lemon sucker in one hand & plaster
cast on the other, people laughing, smiling at me:
the fabled “Little Dutch Boy” who survived

the flood. I was the talk of the neighborhood,
the focus of the family. My first memory,
that trauma, was perfect drama. An audience brings
us joy. Our greatest happiness is

the belief we are loved. It’s what we live for,
what we desire most. We learn to tolerate
any pain, risk blood or breath, anything, if
we believe we are loved, right now, forever.

^{for Marcelo}

Some maps have blue borders
like the blue of your name
or the tributary lacing of
veins running through your
father’s hands. & how the last
time I saw you, you held
me for so long I saw whole
lifetimes flooding by me
small tentacles reaching
for both our faces. I wish
maps would be without
borders & that we belonged
to no one & to everyone
at once, what a world that
would be. Or not a world
maybe we would call it
something more intrinsic
like forgiving or something
simplistic like river or dirt.
& if I were to see you
tomorrow & everyone you
came from had disappeared
I would weep with you & drown
out any black lines that this
earth allowed us to give it—
because what is a map but
a useless prison? We are all
so lost & no naming of blank
spaces can save us. & what
is a map but the delusion of
safety? The line drawn is always
in the sand & folds on itself
before we’re done making it.
& that line, there, south of
el rio, how it dares to cover
up the bodies, as though we
would forget who died there
& for what? As if we could
forget that if you spin a globe
& stop it with your finger
you’ll land it on top of someone
living, someone who was not
expecting to be crushed by thirst—

I am the people—the mob—the crowd—the mass.
Do you know that all the great work of the world is done through me?
I am the workingman, the inventor, the maker of the world’s food and clothes.
I am the audience that witnesses history. The Napoleons come from me and the Lincolns. They die. And then I send forth more Napoleons and Lincolns.
I am the seed ground. I am a prairie that will stand for much plowing. Terrible storms pass over me. I forget. The best of me is sucked out and wasted. I forget. Everything but Death comes to me and makes me work and give up what I have. And I forget.
Sometimes I growl, shake myself and spatter a few red drops for history to remember. Then—I forget.
When I, the People, learn to remember, when I, the People, use the lessons of yesterday and no longer forget who robbed me last year, who played me for a fool—then there will be no speaker in all the world say the name: “The People,” with any fleck of a sneer in his voice or any far-off smile of derision.
The mob—the crowd—the mass—will arrive then.

When buffeted and beaten by life’s storms,
When by the bitter cares of life oppressed,
I want no surer haven than your arms,
I want no sweeter heaven than your breast.

When over my life’s way there falls the blight
Of sunless days, and nights of starless skies;
Enough for me, the calm and steadfast light
That softly shines within your loving eyes.

The world, for me, and all the world can hold
Is circled by your arms; for me there lies,
Within the lights and shadows of your eyes,
The only beauty that is never old.

“I have no time for those things now,” we say;

“But in the future just a little way,

No longer by this ceaseless toil oppressed,

I shall have leisure then for thought and rest.

When I the debts upon my land have paid,

Or on foundations firm my business laid,

I shall take time for discourse long and sweet

With those beloved who round my hearthstone meet;

I shall take time on mornings still and cool

To seek the freshness dim of wood and pool,

Where, calmed and hallowed by great Nature's peace,

My life from its hot cares shall find release;

I shall take time to think on destiny,

Of what I was and am and yet shall be,

Till in the hush my soul may nearer prove

To that great Soul in whom we live and move.

All this I shall do sometime but not now—

The press of business cares will not allow.”

And thus our life glides on year after year;

The promised leisure never comes more near.

Perhaps the aim on which we placed our mind

Is high, and its attainment slow to find;

Or if we reach the mark that we have set,

We still would seek another, farther yet.

Thus all our youth, our strength, our time go past

Till death upon the threshold stands at last,

And back unto our Maker we must give

The life we spent preparing well to live.

I wonder 
how it would be here with you,
where the wind 
that has shaken off its dust in low valleys
touches one cleanly, 
as with a new-washed hand, 
and pain
is as the remote hunger of droning things,
and anger 
but a little silence 
sinking into the great silence.

How like the restless beating 
Of our hearts
Is the surge of the sea; 
How like the tumult
Of our souls
Is the lashing of the storm; 
How like the yearning
In our song
Is the wind,
How like a prayer
Is night.

O water, voice of my heart, crying in the sand,
All night long crying with a mournful cry,
As I lie and listen, and cannot understand
The voice of my heart in my side or the voice of the sea,
O water, crying for rest, is it I, is it I?
All night long the water is crying to me.

Unresting water, there shall never be rest
Till the last moon droop and the last tide fail,
And the fire of the end begin to burn in the west;
And the heart shall be weary and wonder and cry like the sea,
All life long crying without avail,
As the water all night long is crying to me.