In any case, by the time I realized I hadn’t spoken to my father 
           for many, many years, I was distracted. It was snowing

and I was stuck on page 157 of a biography of Casanova 
           who may have slept with multitudes, but lost 

a fortune investing in a silk factory. I dreamed 
           about that story. I maintained my silence

in my cold room there, in Iowa, where industries 
           disappear the fingers and feet of its workers, a cohort

among which my dad might have been counted 
           had his travels led him farther north. Is there hazard pay

in the feeding of America? I have traveled so far from God,  
           my dad might have quoted if he kept diaries.

But who was I kidding? It was not the season of fathers.  
           It was the season of asylum. My uncle told me so. 

While I sat there, in the gauzy twilight of snowy Iowa,  
           he traveled to the edge of Arizona

where he walked himself, hands in pockets, to border patrol. 
           When I was a child, he was also a child. 

He held me down, poured wax on my neck  
           from hot devotional candles. I read in my room 

when Juan Diego bailed on his meeting with the ghost 
           of Mary, she chided him for worrying

about his terminal uncle. Am I not here, she asked, 
           I, who is your sanctuary? I dreamed about that story 

when the snow first began falling in Iowa. I was warmed  
           by the wax that tore like an arrow through my skin.

The ache, the depth, motion and all things 
            that change, am I
Being too broad here, the horizon 
            and the myth
Of infinite regression, of gravity (which was once
            called music)
And passion, like flowers in an electro-

            magnetic field
Which ripple out & spark, the grand illusions
            and the tiny
Ones alike, the indifference of strangers
            to the flight
Of birds, can you hear me now, do you want me
            to be more specific

About outer space, the quantum particles
            that swerve
Along the vertex, where two bodies (heavenly
            or otherwise)
Intersect, the minor tasks and major 
            efforts that lend life
A narrative, a geometric center, the appalling

            beauty of the abstract, 
Can you hear me, should I trace from X to Y
            a downward
Slope, the ache & depth, can I parse the grammar 
            of agony, the wheel
And pulley, the wedge, all our inventions: maps,
            poetry, drones.

The family I’m staying with,  
because my father is working,  
have called their dog Darkness,  
and it is a beautiful name.  
I’ve decided to camp.  
And out here in an old tent  
on the edges of their property,  
Darkness encircles me.  
I burrow my back into the field,  
strangely soft with a grass I don’t  
know the name of. I should know  
the names of grasses, and of trees,  
and of so many things.  
                                    Soon, the thick  
wind loosens into coolness and the light  
begins to dim. As I look up into Darkness,  
the underside of her tongue is spotty  
with inky-on-pink constellations.  

Her body makes me think of my own body,  
my fingertips dry as match heads 
that will light this nameless grass if I’m  
not careful. 
                  Darkness is a good teacher,  
and she guides me to be gentle with myself.  
With a nuzzle of her head into my hand,  
she says, in her way, that I am ok.  
I stroke her so long that the heavy night  
settles, and all that is left is the white blaze  
on her chest. 
          Soon, my eyes, and I, will adjust.  
But for now, I’m suspended,  
in this moment that is the sum  
of all moments.  
The grass, it occurs to me,  
is bluestem. The air is amniotic.  
And I cry a good cry as the great dog  
keeps on guarding me. 

The best ones 
I ever ate I ate

that summer, him dead 
six months, me not yet

forevered again 
to anyone. Tomatoes

the only fever, many- 
chambered, jelly-seeded

—probably slicers, 
nothing rare. Dissected

into the same glass bowl 
night after night for a dinner

date with the pulpy sun 
on its way through

my yard. Fayetteville, 
Arkansas, city of wreckage.

Mozzarella, basil, salt. 
Oil, the August air

humid, nearly liquid. 
One evening I sat

on my back stoop 
in a puddle of light

and knew I could live 
without him, and was. 

I ate the same dinner 
from the same bowl

until the decision 
ceased to be a decision.

I’m sorry I’m taking the car to the airport that is closer to,
rather than farther away from, the oncoming hurricane. 
In the parking garage of my love for you, I circle around
quietly, looking for a space to put the day’s best guesses, 
one not too far from the kiosk of you, standing mute and 
ready to hand me a small slip of paper that reads  I’m sorry
I can’t tell you what I want.  So we’re both mildly apologetic 
all the time, which is a small courtesy, two pulsars fanning
light at one another in bursts detectable years later. Why
won’t you take this bundle of daffodils. Why have the 
daffodils turned into dirty forks. I’m sorry about my socks.
See, there I go again. In the backyard, a vine from next
door has crawled up and over the fence and has flourished
there, a great nest of green six feet off the ground. I’d
trim it, but you’re holding the hedge clippers against your
hair. You’re saying that your hair is morning glories and 
you’d like to keep the morning glories if possible. I don’t 
even know what morning glories are exactly; my mother
is an excellent gardener but I have neither her memory for
color nor your cataloguing tendencies and it’s late in the day
and I’m sorry for that. It’s difficult to hold you in this
shaft of light when you keep taking three steps away and 
sitting down in the nearest chair, one hand on each knee
like a monument. It’s difficult to feel your body against
my side in sleep, the desires it holds distant and tired, 
like an animal that has walked too far in an inhospitable
climate. I am full of water but as thirst is a form of 
suffering, I would not wish it upon you. Instead, I will
work my way through your dreaming, which I know is of
endless snow fields. I will wait in this puddle of melt. 
Perhaps, one day, you will come to me with your skin 
near to brittle from the cold you love so much. Perhaps on 
that day we can begin to think together about the seasons, 
about how spring can also arrive in precision, if you let it.

As if weightlessness were aspirational―
what nonsense―

                                  your death,

        a stone 

I can only hope to shoulder forever. Imagine
it gets better―

                                  what nothing

        am I left with

then? Even despair carries a particular
charge: that fantastic

                                  last whiff of lavender

      detergent

imprinted on the collar of a holiday sweater―

                                    mama,

the mourners are assembling. March me 
up that hill …

My swimmer’s body a slash at the door,
I listen to you thrash against the shore of sleep
I think we owe this to each other, to never dream
Alone again, to come home when asked. You would
Say I want for you the world, its favors. But the world
Is ending, its favors few. I want for us a future
No longer wrecked against the animal love made of us
I want to say I bore witness to the world
And mean I did not flinch when it felled you
I tried. I didn’t, not really. I held my hand out
Shielding only my face from the sun.
The most American disease is the dis-
ease of self-obsession. In its ruins I find
there are questions I never quite learned to ask:

How can I help?
What did you need?
How will I know?

^{—after Frank O’Hara and Katy Porter}

Dear, I wished you heavens.
If not heavens, earths.
And if a little hell, I prayed the tears
I hid as wet, incandescent smiles
were an ocean on brimstone.
You are one of one.
I never said: Good morning, my heart
but I was the indigo in your hair.
I was keeping time when you danced.
I was stillness and tremor,
break and breach, 
your pen and your cane.
No, I never said: I’m in love with you. 
I said: I dreamed of a child
with your eyes, with your hands.
You are one of one. 
The unrenounceable.
Do not fear death.
You’ll be beautiful 
in the grave.
You’ll be beautiful 
in the Judgment line,
the sun recounting sins 
against our siblings for eons. 
And the shadow I cast
standing outside your garden
will be our cover. 
Dear, I was never lonely. 
I was never cold. 
I was wreathing our canopy.
Some day you’ll love Ladan Osman.
After the hours. After all light.

^{for Kojo}

There is the fickle shadow, the dialect 
of my body; me standing before myself—  
as if the framing of this ordinary mirror,  
is the small light of a window, 
and see this naked man, no longer shy,  
move me with the muscle 
of thighs and the flattery of shoulders—  
this is a kind of art; perhaps 
the only art there is, my body 
still able to seduce me to tenderness.

My calculus of pleasure or contentment 
is the way my older self, 
that brother of mine who faced 
the wars, four years ahead, 
the blasted sight, the kidneys’ 
decay, the atrophy of bone in his 
spine. To think I found comfort  
in the slow calculation. He was 
broken long before, and I have survived 
another curse. This is as ugly 
as all love can be. And, so, I give 
thanks for this body walking 
towards the trees, away from me 
the machine of me, my backside 
a revelation.

There is no rest for the mind 
in a small house. It moves, looking for God, 
with a mysterious eye fixed on the bed, 
into a cracked egg at breakfast, 
looking for glory in an arm-chair, 
or simply noting the facts of life 
in a fly asleep on the ceiling. 
The mind, sunk in quiet places, 
(like old heroes) sleeps no more, 
but walks abroad in a slouch hat 
performing adultery at violent street corners; 
then, trembling, returns, 
sadly directs its mysterious eye 
into a coffee-cup. There is no rest 
for there are many miles to walk in the small house, 
traveling past the same chairs, the same tables, 
the same glassy portraits on the walls, 
flowing into darkness.

There is no victory in the mind, 
but desperate valor, 
shattering the four walls, 
disintegrating human love, 
until the iron-lidded mysterious eye 
(lowered carefully with the frail body 
under churchyard gardens) 
stares upward, luminous, inevitable, 
piercing solar magnitudes 
on a fine morning.

Count me among the noon risers who stumble,
dazed and bad-haired, from the nest midday,
pecking the crazed dirt for half-torn moth, 
pear’s white core, severed worm. I’ve never 
been one to trill at chink of dawn, to hop, 
skip, chirrup before full sun. I’m better 
at picking over crumbs, stitching a quilt
from what’s left, remaindered, given up
for gone. Better at betting the careless 
will miss the best. Count me among
the nightbirds who sip starlight, a guitar’s
fading strains. Find me where moondust 
swirls in streetlamp glow and stray dogs sleep.
What clings to the bone is most sweet.

My boyfriend will eat
an entire apple in one sitting.
Peel, pulp, core. Hands me
the stem when he’s done.
Seeds in his gut. The calyx
a dank star. An orchard grows
inside him. The tongue
that slicks the skin. Hands
perfumed with bruised sugar.
His kisses a tender lament.
The heart that glows. How he takes
everything the fruit offers
and leaves nothing
but the stem. I let my body
follow. Set my jaw soft.
Rapt, greedy, this devotion.
Tough armor. Red glow. Yellow
flesh. Every bite a fall
from grace.

What are these strangers 
sitting on the table in their ruffled
collars. They open, close, open,
emit the scent of cracked pepper 
and honey. Magenta punctuation marks 
at which to pause. Pink commas 
against the green scrub. 
I would trade ten goats for one whiff 
of peonies opening in a vase. 
An ancient proverb says 
you should not let a woodpecker 
see you plucking a peony 
lest it peck out your eyes. 
We are afraid of happiness. 
Peonies are to loneliness 
what wind is to the trees. 
Are they animal? Mineral? 
Vegetable? They move 
as the sun moves. When I 
brought them home 
they were dark. Now, 
a whisper, balletic tulle. 
They are not diminished 
even as they turn to smoke. 

That summer in Alaska you shape-shifted 
into Midnight Sun Woman, inhabiting 
your name like a constellation while 
endless blaze made you feel as though 
you had flown through your skin, 
a flamboyance of star birds singing 
the stories of you into myth. Enthralling 
the tundra. Entrancing the mountains. 
Flamelike the fjords bordered by glaciers. 
That summer Midnight Sun Woman 
speaking soft as candlelight to full moons 
awaiting winter in a black wolf’s eyes, 
to bears and many ravens also black, 
to bull moose grazing by a valley lake 
in the Brooks Range. That summer 
the heart you had lost returned the way 
fireweed burst forth where wildfires left 
gray ghost spruces and charred forest floor. 
Summer ended, plague raged, in October 
you flew home to Catskills in a world 
still going mad. Back in your own bed 
you tumbled to sleep in darkness, 
around midnight waking to what seemed 
like fireflies at the sliding door. Squinting 
confused eyes, you realized it was 
the Great Bear, keeper of dreams 
and memory, so near the glass the stars 
of his medicine body lit your shadow face 
as if it were summer again, as if to say 
“You, my mate, Midnight Sun Woman.”

Maybe it ruins the story to say at the start that no one was hurt
the day Scotty Forester swung open the door of the family car,
climbed up, put one hand on the wheel and, then, while pushing
and pulling on buttons and knobs, he found and released 

the brake, and it started, the silver-blue Mercury, to roll 
down Robin Street, best street in the neighborhood for sledding, 
for coasting on a bike with arms waving above your head, 
Scotty gaining speed on the long sweep of that block, heading 

toward the intersection, then into it, then speeding 
through, the car beginning to slow as the street leveled out,  
although, toward the end, Scotty going fast enough 
to jump the curb before stopping, three feet from a gas pump. 

Maybe knowing the ending ruins this story, but sometimes 
we need a break from dread. We need to know that the car 
did not crash, the child did not die. We need to briefly forget 
that we live in a world where a car is gaining speed, and 

no one seems to be at the wheel. We need to be more 
like the dog Scotty drives past, who barks, and runs in circles 
as he barks some more, driven by some circuitry we have lost 
for loving this dangerous life, living it.

^{translated from the Western Armenian by the author}

^{for Dr. Haroutune Armenian}

Estranged from my tongue 
Words dissolve to drops 
Until meaning remains fluid 
Until my self becomes  
              M  i  r  r  o  r 
Without reflection 
Without light 
Only shadow remains 
Only the search 
Toward nation 
Toward land 
Toward being 
Toward …

My tongue is a foreign traveler  
Living in my mouth 
Without invitation 
An unfamiliar kindred.

My tongue is an ocean 
Home to a sailboat  
Filled with exiles 
Who, one-by-one, create 
Sounds, sayings, 
Sentences,  
Poems,  
Until the sail rips.

My tongue  
Is a memory of the past 
A promise to the present  
A path toward the future. 

Լեզու

Օտարացած եմ լեզուէս 
Բառերըս կաթիլներու կը քայքայուին 
Մինչեվ իմաստը կը մնայ հեղուկ 
Մինչեվ անձնավորութիւնս կը դարնայ 
               Հ  ա  յ  ե  լ  ի 
Արանց արտացոլում 
Արանց լույս 
Միայն շուք կը մնա 
Միայն փնտռտուքը 
Դեպի ազգ 
Դեպի հող 
Դեպի էութիւն 
Դեպի ...

Լեզուս օտար ճամբորդ է 
Բերանիս մեչ ապրող 
Արանց հրավերի 
Անծանոդ խնամի մը:

Լեզուս ովկիանոս է 
Ուր կա առագաստանաւ մը 
Լեցուն աքսորականներով 
Որոնք մեկ-մեկ կը ստեղծեն 
Ցայներ, խօսքեր, 
Նախադասութիւններ, 
Բանաստեղծութիւններ 
Մինչեվ առագաստը կը պատռի:

Լեզուս 
Հիշատակ է անցեալին 
Խոստում է ներկային 
Ճանապարհ է դեպի ապագայ:

You like to fight. You desire sweat  
and snap of bicep,  
thick resource of thighbone,  
shouldering aside obstacles. 
You like to thrust your way in and find 
something hard and real to go up against— 
call it a wall, call it 
your brother. Call it the angel  
who came to wrestle 
but was forced to bestow  
a blessing. Strength is a woman  
with her hand knotted in a lion’s mane.  
Yours to claim or disavow.  
I wield no gun,  
slingshot, nor lightning bolt.  
Only the memory  
of membrane and synapse, 
how you once had to belly-crawl 
through my very body 
to get into the world.  
I live in you as beauty,  
call it spirit or flesh, 
call it a swift elbow strike  
to will the wall DOWN 
that separates—let mine be the blow  
that wakes the castle 
from its dream of parapets and spikes.  
Let mine be the courage  
of the trembling tongue 
that confesses its true need, 
so you can lie in my arms, a cub again 
at last, a sheaf of immortal flowers.

with the shock of hospice behind her  
and her ashes scattered on her cherished Pacific.   
She’s flipped the hourglass and stopped it at 29,   
when her hair was still chestnut and waving  
to her waist. And because it’s November and nighttime  
she’s wearing one of those vintage wool coats,  
wide lapels, no buttons or belt, a blue nearly gray  
in the foggy noir light of the streetlamps.   
It’s cold enough she has to hold it tight   
against her body. Too cold for the emerald   
silk teddy, or her long tanned legs in b-ball shorts,  
ready for some serious one-on-one. I’m dying   
to stop my steep climb home, turn around and ask her   
if she’s really here, but Orpheus is in my ear,  
warning me not to make that old mistake.  
It’s about trust, I think. Keep moving  
through the gloom of a spinned myth:  
let those you’ve loved come back   
when they’re ready, when you’re ready,   
as if no one were lost to begin with.

The wind has come up  
and now there is a cloud behind the mountain.   
How many times did she tell me the story   
of my birth? The story ended when she’d say,  
and that was the happiest day of my life, and  
I’d feel a little sad because I’d had no child  
and would never have a day like hers. Sometimes,  
I can see the river bottom and its glitter  
of stones. Then a fish leaps in sunlight rippling  
the surface. Sometimes, I listen to the birds,  
our seers, the pileated always laughing. I’ve read  
the dead in dreams are never dead,  
and yes, it is their aliveness that is reassuring,  
their going on even as they leave us here. Just now  
the shadow of wings, and a far-off child’s voice  
shouting  Hey, Mom.

^{(Inventory, 1950–present)}

We were the dream of convenience, the permanent press. 
We were the yogurt cup you spooned empty at dawn, 
the blister-pack popped for a single white pill, 
the slick, sterile innards of the IV that saved you.

We were the unbreakable toy in the 1962 sandbox, 
the fleece that wicked your first marathon sweat, 
the photo-bright banner that welcomed you home from a war 
you only understood through our lens.

We are the hangover of that dream. 
We are the lint in your deepest lung pocket, 
the bright shard in the albatross’s gullet, 
the glint in your daughter’s first meconium.

We are the polymer of your placenta’s print, 
the slow, milky bead in your grandfather’s cataract lens 
through which he sees a world softening at the edges.

We do not arrive as invasion. 
We are issued at conception, 
like a social-security number, 
like a name you cannot change.

We perform the trophic math: 
krill eats colorful flake, 
salmon eats krill, 
you eat salmon, 
we pay compound dividends in your marrow fat.

Our half-life is a new form of forever. 
Every birthday candle is a small, bright flare 
against the petrochemical balance sheet 
you carry inside your own body.

We are the derivative that never degrades, 
the toxic asset sliced thinner than sunlight, 
securitized and repackaged 
until the valuation is your own vasculature.

Your 1950-cutoff is a fairy tale. 
We were waiting in the womb’s warm lobby to disprove.

We are the call coming from inside the house.

We are the house.

We are the mortar in its very cells, 
the silent, synthetic hinge 
on which your own heart swings.

We are the heirloom you did not ask for, 
the inheritance that cannot be refused, 
the future fossil of your present, 
already here.

What if I told you he wasn’t that bad? 
That you couldn’t smell it on his breath 
after all, & that he wasn’t one of the loud ones 
the way he is in all my poems? Not at all 
like the viral headlines made him seem? What if 
I told you he smiled in PTA meetings & never spoke first? 
That he sat on the sidelines at little league games 
& laughed with other parents? That he loves to sink 
his soft hands into soil & clip the crisped 
edges of dog-tongue rhododendron leaves because 
they make him feel small? What if I told you 
he sits in church basements with other white-whiskered 
men to talk about how proud they all are of their 
gay sons? & the whirling manic I cartoon him to be 
in line at the rehab hospital, or barking through 
car windows with an open Sauv Blanc bottle 
cinched between his khakis—what if I said 
that was all mostly for me?