i.           

I’ve pulled from my throat birdsong like tin-
sheeted lullaby [its vicious cold        its hoax of wings]
the rest of us forest folk       dark angels chafing rabbits-
foot for luck     thrum-necked     wear the face of
nothing       we’ve changed       the Zodiac & I
have refused a little planet little sum for struggle & sailed
ourselves summerlong & arbitrary as a moon grave
across a vastness        [we’ve left the child-
ren]      Named the place penni-
less motherhood      Named the place country
of mothers      Named the place anywhere but death by self-

ii.           

infliction is a god of many faces      many nothings     
I’m afraid I’ll never be whole     I’m afraid
the rope from the hardware store [screws for nails]
will teach itself to knot      I’ve looked up noose I’ve
learned to twine but these babies now
halfway pruned through the clean bathwater of childhood
I promised a god I would take to the ledge
& show the pinstripes the pinkening strobe-
lights maybe angels chiseled at creation
into the rock [around my neck] the rock in the river
I would never let them see        I would never let them

iii.

break & spend a whole life backing away from that slip—
Let us fly & believe [in the wreck] their perfect hope-
sealed bodies the only parachutes we need

Smelling of sweet resin the Aleppo pines’
shadows grow taller by the hour. Two identical
twin boys chase each other through the shadows,
the one who’s ten minutes older yelling,
I’m gonna kill you while the younger one
laughs, Kill me, kill me if you can!
Day by day these teatime mortars
keep pecking at the blast wall that the boys
have grown so used to they just keep right on playing.
If they weren’t here in front of me, I’d find them
hard to imagine, just as I sometimes find
my own twin brother hard to imagine.
I’m supposed to be doing a story
on soldiers, what they do to keep from
being frightened, but all I can think about
is how Tim would chase me or I’d chase him
and we’d yell, I’m gonna kill you, just like
these brothers do, so alive in their bodies,
just as Tim who is so alive will one day not be:
will it be me or him who first dies?
But I came here to do a story on soldiers
and how they keep watching out for death
and manage to fight and die without going crazy—
the boys squat down to look at ants climbing
through corrugated bark, the wavering antennae
tapping up and down the tree reminding me
of the soldier across the barracks sitting
still inside himself, listening to his nerves
while his eyes peer out at something I can’t see—
when Achilles’ immortal mother came
to her grieving son, knowing he would soon
die, and gave him his armor and kept the worms
from the wounds of his dead friend, Patroclus, she,
a goddess, knew she wouldn’t be allowed
to keep those same worms from her son’s body.

I know I’m not his father, he’s not my son,
but he looks so young, young enough to be
my son—sitting on his bunk, watching out for death,
trying to fight and die without going crazy, he
reaches for his rifle, breaks it down,
dust cover, spring, bolt carrier with piston,
wiping it all down with a rag and oil,
cleaning it for the second time this hour
as shadows shifting through the pines
bury him and the little boys and Tim
and me in non-metaphorical, real life darkness
where I’m supposed to be doing a story.

turns out
there are more planets than stars
more places to land
than to be burned

I have always been in love with
last chances especially 
now that they really do 
seem like last chances

the trill of it all upending
what’s left of my head
after we explode

are you ready to ascend
in the morning I will take you
on the wing

We walk through clouds
wrapped in ancient symbols

We descend the hill
wearing water 

Maybe we are dead 
and don’t know it

Maybe we are violet flowers
and those we long for 

love only 
our unmade hearts

On attend, on attend

Wait for Duras and Eminescu 
to tell us in French then Romanian

light has wounds
slow down—
memory is misgivings 

Wait until the nails
get rusty 
in the houses of our past.

          how do I admit I’m almost glad of it?

          the way it’s scraped off

          those flash-storms of rage

          I grew delicately-feathered

          luna moth antennae

          to fine-tune your emotional weather:

          sometimes a barometric shift

          in the house’s atmosphere / a tight

          quickening / some hard dark shadow

          flickering glossy as obsidian

          pulled down like a nightshade

          behind your irises / but sometimes

          you struck with no warning at all

          rattlesnaked fang of lightning

          incinerating my moon-pale wings

          to crumpled cinder and ash

          now your memory resets

          itself every night / a button

          clearing the trip odometer

          back to zero / dim absinthe fizz

          of radium-green glow

          from the dashboard half-lifing

          a midnight rollover from

          omega to alpha to omega

          I remember when you told me

          (maybe I was three?)

          I was mentally damaged

          like the boy across the street /

          said you’d help me pass

          for normal so no one would know

          but only if I swore to obey

          you / and only you / forever

          now your memory fins

          around and around / like

          the shiny obsessive lassos

          of a goldfish gold-banding

          the narrow perimeters

          of its too-small bowl

          coming home from school

          (maybe I was fifteen?)

          you were waiting for me

          just inside the front door /

          accused me of stealing a can

          of corned beef hash from

          the canned goods stashed

          in the basement / then beat me

          in the face with your shoe

          how do I admit I’m almost glad of it?

          that I’ve always pined for you

          like an unrequited love / though I

          was never beautiful enough

          for you / your tinned bright laugh

          shrapneled flecks of steel to hide

          your anger when people used to say

          we looked like one another

          but now we compare

          our same dimpled hands /

          the thick feathering of eyebrows

          with the same crooked wing

          birdwinging over our left eye /

          our uneven cheekbones making

          one half of our face rounder

          than the other / one side

          a full moon / the other side

          a shyer kind of moon

          how can I admit I’m almost glad of it

          when you no longer recognize

          yourself in photographs

          the mirror becoming stranger

          until one day—will it be soon?—

          you’ll look in my face / once again

          seeing nothing of yourself

          reflected in it, and—unsure

          of all that you were and all

          that you are—ask me: who are you?

Your ride home complains      the grocery store is freezing

they’d rather wait outside       the burly guy

with the walrus stache asks whether you want your Italian

with the works              You’re not sure what that means

So you ask and he tells you    laboriously surprised

and also do you want tomato              thanks

you lean on the counter and focus     on condensation

the chill on your palm and forearm    and under the glass

the meats in trays and butcher paper beds

some sausages            sad stacked-up tongue

a leathery souse or loaf            so out of it

that when he wants to know if that’s your order

and calls out loud         Is that your order ma’am

you startle and then apologize            for taking up his time

but he called you ma’am          so you don’t mind

 I

small victories                                  small wars

a famous person

played chess in the woods

whatever repeats                  whatever

input we have          a disappearing

that knows how to proceed                                    

local realities            made up

exclusively                 of their own grammar         

but only if their grammar

is voluntary               

victorious feelings                 without victory         

sam calls                     our teams are playing         

we are getting older             can only hope           

for a beautiful result

II

                                            activity

is a truth that conveys

no information                              a local

threat                                               a distant                    

possibility                                       autoplay                    

tabs on tabs on tabs

I buy the hat              that my bitmoji had

in a threat of forests             a savant

of anger                      a savant of nothing

to be angry about

a hierarchy                of satisfactions

the next activity                   

the best distraction              

it’s never too late                  to stay the same  

III

                           very few things

are not

                           warnings

                           cultural

                                      touchstones             

                                      parlor

tricks

the body reacts

                           to what reacts

                           to it

a sort of           

            leverage

             a kind

                       of loyalty

Every turn I took in the city

pressed me deeper into the warren

of what I hadn’t said, the words

thickening, constricting like a throat

as I moved through the streets,

oblivious to traffic and high walls,

the rain gutters’ crooked mouths

staining the pavement, human faces

mooning past me, indifferent,

eclipsing my silence

with their phones, their apparitions

floating—where?—and everyone,

everyone talking to the air.

Until around a new corner

on a narrow street I’d never seen

a piano began to play from above

a window-muffled music

at odds with itself, the rush of notes

splintering like glass across a floor

then picked back up, piece

by piece—first one hand sorting

along the keys, then the other

joining, out of step, irreconcilable,

unpunctuated by frustration,

or shame, but stung with the urgency

to make what couldn’t yet

be made. How could anyone learn

their way out of such blunder,

how could any song be gathered

from those shards grating

like something lodged in a shoe.                

My ear cocked into the air,

I thought of floating up, balloon-like,

to look. I felt cartoonish,

a marvel of the last century’s

animation already out of date.

I could have gone on like that,

listening, loosening into the song,

but then the piano stopped.

My ears filled with waiting—

car horns and chatter, the wheeze

of a stopping bus, the city going

about its filthy exclamations,

its abandon. The window

darkened as the player shut

the light over the sheet music,

and it reflected another window

across the street that in turn

reflected a bit of sky, a plane’s

bright sideways thought

trolling across the pane 

music once broke through—

delirious and awful and unabashed,

and so unlike what I’d wanted to say

swollen now, a contrail

coming extravagantly undone,       

or a balloon full of glass.

Wouldbelove, do not think of me as a whetstone

until you hear the whole story:

In it, I’m not the hero, but I’m not the villain either

so let’s say, in the story, I was human

and made of human-things: fear

and hands, underbelly and blade. Let me

say it plain: I loved someone

and I failed at it. Let me say it

another way: I like to call myself wound

but I will answer to knife. Sometimes

I think we have the same name, Notquitelove. I want

to be soft, to say here is my underbelly and I want you

to hold the knife, but I don’t know what I want you to do:

plunge or mercy. I deserve both. I want to hold and be held.  

Let me say it again, Possiblelove: I’m not sure

you should. The truth is: If you don’t, I won’t

die of want or lonely, just time. And not now, not even

soon. But that’s how every story ends eventually.

Here is how one might start: Before. The truth?

I’m not a liar but I close my eyes a lot, Couldbelove.

Before, I let a blade slide itself sharp against me. Look

at where I once bloomed red and pulsing. A keloid

history. I have not forgotten the knife or that I loved

it or what it was like before: my unscarred body

visits me in dreams and photographs. Maybelove,

I barely recognize it without the armor of its scars.

I am trying to tell the truth: the dreams are how

I haunt myself. Maybe I’m not telling the whole story:

I loved someone and now I don’t. I can’t promise

to leave you unscarred. The truth: I am a map

of every blade I ever held. This is not a dream.

Look at us now: all grit and density. What, Wouldbelove

do you know of knives? Do you think you are a soft thing?

I don’t. Maybe the truth is: Both. Blade and guard.

My truth is: blade. My hands

on the blade; my hands, the blade; my hands

carving and re-carving every overzealous fibrous

memory. The truth is: I want to hold your hands

because they are like mine. Holding a knife

by the blade and sharpening it. In your dreams, how much invitation

to pierce are you? Perhapslove, the truth is: I am afraid

we are both knives, both stones, both scarred. Or we will be.

The truth is: I have made fire

before: stone against stone. Mightbelove, I have sharpened

this knife before: blade against blade. I have hurt and hungered

before: flesh

against flesh. I won’t make a dull promise.

Vain to fish 
with unbaited hook, 
the proverb says. I fished that way,

at 9, after Sunday School at Trinity Presbyterian, as God said 
(my schizophrenic, periodically 
catatonic uncle and preacher said) 
thou shalt not kill, so I would kill 
neither lake bass nor earthworm, thought the Lord 
was watching that rowboat and testing 
me, like Job or Abraham, to see if I’d break 
some covenant we’d made 
I couldn’t remember making,

dreaded that like Joan of Arc I’d be summoned 
someday in my backyard, under the pecan tree’s 
velvet greenfuzzed litter, to leave 
Alexander III 3rd grade to go 
and raise an Army 
to end the napalm flamethrow jungleburn 
Walter Cronkite told me about

so for hours in the rowboat with my father 
who’d left his own war without ever going to combat 
to Travel Mental Troop to psychiatric 
discharge after six months and told his family 
he’d been the sole survivor 
of a kamikaze-bombed carrier,

my unbaited hook would twitch along the lake bottom’s 
algae slime, my earthworm snuck back into bucket-writhe. 
He couldn’t know I was deceiving him for the Lord, 
humiliated on my behalf 
that hour after hour I got 
not even a line-tug. It 
humiliated me to disappoint that Pacific hero. 
And this is how we did it, outings 
of Father and Son; fishing 
for each other, with unbaited hooks.

They come home with our daughter

because there’s no one at school

to feed them on the weekends.

They are mates, and like all true

companions they are devoted

and they bite. We set their cage

on the kitchen table and wait

for the weekend to end, for our girl

to fall asleep so we can talk

about god while the rats lick

the silver ball that delivers

the water one drop at a time.

There are so many points on which

you and I disagree: the value

of a clean counter, the purpose

of parent-teacher conferences,

what warrants a good cry or calling

you a name so cruel I make myself

whisper it through my teeth. God

is the least of it. When I think

I’m so angry I could hit you

in the face, you turn yours to me

with a look of disbelief. The rats,

meanwhile, have turned up the volume.

Tick, tick, says the silver ball

as their teeth click against it, thirsty

as ever, thirstier still at night

when the darkness wakes them.

And during the day, when they’re curled

together in their flannel hammock,

head to tail, two furry apostrophes

possessing nothing but each other,

paws pressed together as if in prayer—

to what gods do they prostrate

themselves then? God of fidelity? God

of forgiveness? I lied when I said

I didn’t believe. Who—even me,

the coldest of heart—could turn away

from a sea parted, bread that multiplies

to answer need, water transformed

to the sweetest wine, the kind

that tastes better for each year

it’s been left in the barrel?

People always tell me, “Don’t put the cart

before the horse,” which is curious

because I don’t have a horse.

Is this some new advancement in public shaming—

repeatedly drawing one’s attention

to that which one is currently not, and never

has been, in possession of?

If ever, I happen to obtain a Clydesdale,

then I’ll align, absolutely, it to its proper position

in relation to the cart, but I can’t

do that because all I have is the cart. 

One solitary cart—a little grief wagon that goes

precisely nowhere—along with, apparently, one

invisible horse, which does not pull,

does not haul, does not in any fashion

budge, impel or tow my disaster buggy

up the hill or down the road.

I’m not asking for much.  A more tender world

with less hatred strutting the streets.

Perhaps a downtick in state-sanctioned violence

against civilians.  Wind through the trees.

Water under the bridge. Kindness.

LOL, says the world. These things take time, says

the Office of Disappointment. Change cannot

be rushed, says the roundtable of my smartest friends.

Then, together, they say, The cart!

They say, The horse!

They say, Haven’t we told you already?

So my invisible horse remains

standing where it previously stood:

between hotdog stands and hallelujahs,

between the Nasdaq and the moon’s adumbral visage,

between the status quo and The Great Filter,

and I can see that it’s not his fault—being

invisible and not existing—

how he’s the product of both my imagination

and society’s failure of imagination.

Watch how I press my hand against his translucent flank.

How I hold two sugar cubes to his hypothetical mouth.

How I say I want to believe in him,

speaking softly into his missing ear.

The first deer had large teeth and no horns and

were not afraid.

The first deer did not have enough fear

for the men who needed them

to survive.

A woman decided to let the men eat

a grandmother decided her deer shall have horns

and be afraid

someone’s mother decided the men shall eat

and shall be feared.

*

A man thought wolves should be used

to cull the herd.

And we who had been catching water

dripping through stone

in the homes we dug

out of the earth

we licked our long teeth clean

            and set to work.

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.