We'll say unbelievable things 
to each other in the early morning— 
  
our blue coming up from our roots, 
our water rising in our extraordinary limbs. 
  
All night I dreamt of bonfires and burn piles 
and ghosts of men, and spirits 
behind those birds of flame. 
  
I cannot tell anymore when a door opens or closes, 
I can only hear the frame saying, Walk through. 
  
It is a short walkway— 
into another bedroom. 
  
Consider the handle. Consider the key. 
  
I say to a friend, how scared I am of sharks. 
  
How I thought I saw them in the creek 
across from my street. 
  
I once watched for them, holding a bundle 
of rattlesnake grass in my hand, 
shaking like a weak-leaf girl. 
  
She sends me an article from a recent National Geographic that says, 
  
Sharks bite fewer people each year than 
New Yorkers do, according to Health Department records. 
  
Then she sends me on my way. Into the City of Sharks. 
  
Through another doorway, I walk to the East River saying, 
  
Sharks are people too. 
Sharks are people too. 
Sharks are people too. 
  
I write all the things I need on the bottom 
of my tennis shoes. I say, Let's walk together. 
  
The sun behind me is like a fire. 
Tiny flames in the river's ripples. 
  
I say something to God, but he's not a living thing, 
so I say it to the river, I say, 
  
I want to walk through this doorway 
But without all those ghosts on the edge, 
I want them to stay here. 
I want them to go on without me. 
  
I want them to burn in the water.

It was a lean-to one could live in 
so long as it never rained. It was 

a grain of salt close up, looking 
like a crystal, growing from itself 

like an outcrop of land. It was a sail 
opened in a storm. A memory lost. 

A coin tossed at the wrong time, 
declaring heads or tails. It had the air 

of an aristocrat or the stench of a skunk. 
No matter who bred it, it couldn’t be fair. 

It wasn’t a buoy. It kept no one up. 
It had the metallic notice of a gong. 

It was a thoroughbred raced too soon, 
or a setting moon, or a button lost or 

undone. It only had one track and 
when it sped up it was sure to derail. 

It had a smile for a satellite 
or a smirk for a son. Everyone 

thought they recognized its face, 
but, one by one, they were wrong.

I drive to the gulf to outrun 
his aura. The neurologist prescribed 
little white pills I place under his tongue 
to stop the seize. The ocean’s grey green 
water is as still as a man before 
he convulses. An aura comes as a breeze 
and the line between this and that 
is unclear. This buoy in the Gulf 
of Mexico, that bird in the sky 
of America, this wave laps the Gulf 
of México, then breaks on the shores 
of America. It’s always mattered 
what we name a body when it’s whole, 
in pieces we name each appendage. 
A foam I’ve never seen collects 
on the sand and I know I can’t go 
for a swim. I want to move water 
with magnets, clean it with charcoal 
and a good net. There’s a woman whistling 
on the beach. Her aura is bright and unforgiving. 
She sings “America the Beautiful.” 
She sings: From sea to every goddamn American sea. 
I walk away but her song follows me, 
carried on by some aura I can’t outrun. 
The sky turns electrical—a zephyr lifts my hair.
You can’t help the epileptic once the seizure
starts. Turn them on their side and let it run.