Of course, she was not chosen to deliver
any of the official hail-and-farewells. Would, in fact,
have skipped the whole pomp and circumstance crap
if the principal had not threatened to hold her diploma hostage,
if her parents had not pleaded with her to celebrate
the milestone for their sakes—so she donned
the rented robe, the dorky mortarboard, and paraded
down the auditorium aisles with her beaming so-called peers.

Lots of introductions. Lots of momentous occasions
and memories—many of which Ms. S was already
eager to forget. But she listened politely to the usual
promises of new beginnings, the exhortations to follow
dreams and change the world—even got a bit teary eyed
at the prospect that one of them actually might.
Then the ritual flipping of the tassels, the alma mater
one last time off-key, the filing out to hugs and congratulations
and vows to stay in touch she knew she’d never keep.

Ms. S had her eye on distant horizons, some vague
anywhere-else-but-here place where her brief past
could be erased and all the potential her teachers had,
for years, claimed she was wasting, would be realized,
where she would finally hear her life’s calling
calling her into the life she was meant to have.

The world, she thought, is my oyster.

Of course, being an inland girl, she had never
actually seen an oyster up close. Had yet to discover
how hard the damn things were to crack.

I hope to God you will not ask me to go anywhere except my own country. If we go back, we will follow whatever orders you give us. We do not want to go right or left, but straight back to our own land.

          —Barboncito

I hope to God you will not ask

Me or my People to send

Postcard greetings: lamented wind

Of perfect sunrisings, golden

Yes, we may share the same sun setting

But the in-between hours are hollow

The People fill the void with prayers for help

Calling upon the Holy Ones

Those petitions penetrate and loosen

The binds you tried to tighten

Around our heart, a tension

Blocking the wind, like a shell

Fluttering inside, fluttering inside

 after Jacqueline Rose / after Chen Chen

she fed me 

clothed me

kept me

safe albeit

in excess

five layers

in spite of 

subtropical 

winter heat

so much to

eat I needed

digestive pills

to ward off

the stomach’s 

sharp protest

how not to

utter the un- 

grateful thing: 

that I am 

irrevocably

her object

that the

poet who 

wrote this

saved my life: 

Sometimes, 

parents &

children

become

the most

common of 

strangers 

Eventually,

a street 

appears

where they 

can meet 

again

How I

wished

that street

would appear

I kept trying

to make her 

proud of my 

acumen for 

language

these words

have not

been for

nothing

I wrote

to find

the street 

where we

might meet

again & now

there is relief

guilt or blame

but they are 

nearly always 

misplaced

you are born 

into the slip-

stream of

your mother’s 

unconscious

if someone

had told her

that the last 

thing a young 

mother needs

is false decency

courage & cheer 

she might not 

have hurt us

both but what

to do with 

remorse &

love that comes 

unbidden like a 

generous rain

how to accept

her care after

the storm is there

a point at which

the mother is 

redeemed the

child forgiven

can the origin

story be re-told

transfigured into

the version where

the garden is always 

paradise & no one 

need ever fall

out of grace

begins with its subject,

          which is the sentence.

Track the sentence

          to find out what happens

or how it will act. It is

          the subject, after all. To track,

meaning keep an eye on,

          which is synecdoche,

part representing the whole

          of a thing. One

may track a package if he pleases.

          One may track a person,

though you’d probably want

          the whole of him, not only

an eye, or perhaps

          only an eye. Look how

the sentence is so capable

          of embracing contraction.

A him may function

          as a subject, but that depends

upon the sentence, i.e., A man

          is subject to his sentence.

You understand.

          Such syntax renders it like

a package showing evidence

          of having been tampered with—

And whom do I call my enemy?

An enemy must be worthy of engagement.

I turn in the direction of the sun and keep walking.

It’s the heart that asks the question, not my furious mind.

The heart is the smaller cousin of the sun.

It sees and knows everything.

It hears the gnashing even as it hears the blessing.

The door to the mind should only open from the heart.

An enemy who gets in, risks the danger of becoming a friend.

Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the star’s stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is.
Remember the sun’s birth at dawn, that is the
strongest point of time. Remember sundown
and the giving away to night.
Remember your birth, how your mother struggled
to give you form and breath. You are evidence of
her life, and her mother’s, and hers.
Remember your father. He is your life, also.
Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth.
Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their
tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,
listen to them. They are alive poems.
Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the
origin of this universe.
Remember you are all people and all people
are you.
Remember you are this universe and this
universe is you.
Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.
Remember language comes from this.
Remember the dance language is, that life is.
Remember.

The light of a candle
               is transferred to another candle—
               spring twilight.

Admit it—
you wanted the end

with a serpentine
greed. How to negotiate

that strangling
mist, the fibrous

whisper?

To cease to exist
and to die

are two different things entirely.

But you knew this,
didn't you?

Some days you knelt on coins
in those yellow hours.

You lit a flame

to your shadow
and ate

scorpions with your naked fingers.

So touched by the sadness of hair
in a dirty sink.

The malevolent smell
of soap.

When instead of swallowing a fistful
of white pills,

you decided to shower,

the palm trees
nodded in agreement,

a choir
of crickets singing

behind your swollen eyes.

The masked bird
turned to you

with a shred of paper hanging
from its beak.

At dusk,
hair wet and fragrant,

you cupped a goat's face

and kissed
his trembling horns.

The ghost?

It fell prostrate,
passed through you

like a swift
and generous storm.

Say tomorrow doesn’t come.
Say the moon becomes an icy pit.
Say the sweet-gum tree is petrified.
Say the sun’s a foul black tire fire.
Say the owl’s eyes are pinpricks.
Say the raccoon’s a hot tar stain.
Say the shirt’s plastic ditch-litter.
Say the kitchen’s a cow’s corpse.
Say we never get to see it: bright
future, stuck like a bum star, never
coming close, never dazzling.
Say we never meet her. Never him.
Say we spend our last moments staring
at each other, hands knotted together,
clutching the dog, watching the sky burn.
Say, It doesn’t matter. Say, That would be
enough. Say you’d still want this: us alive,
right here, feeling lucky.

When I talk to my friends I pretend I am standing on the wings 

of a flying plane. I cannot be trusted to tell them how I am. 
Or if I am falling to earth weighing less 

than a dozen roses. Sometimes I dream they have broken up 

with their lovers and are carrying food to my house. 
When I open the mailbox I hear their voices 

like the long upward-winding curve of a train whistle 

passing through the tall grasses and ferns 
after the train has passed. I never get ahead of their shadows. 

I embrace them in front of moving cars. I keep them away 

from my miseries because to say I am miserable is to say I am like them. 

My pants could maybe fall down when I dive off the diving board.
My nose could maybe keep growing and never quit.
Miss Brearly could ask me to spell words like stomach and special.
     (Stumick and speshul?)
I could play tag all day and always be "it."
Jay Spievack, who's fourteen feet tall, could want to fight me.
My mom and my dad—like Ted's—could want a divorce.
Miss Brearly could ask me a question about Afghanistan.
     (Who's Afghanistan?)
Somebody maybe could make me ride a horse.
My mother could maybe decide that I needed more liver.
My dad could decide that I needed less TV.
Miss Brearly could say that I have to write script and stop printing.
     (I'm better at printing.)
Chris could decide to stop being friends with me.

The world could maybe come to an end on next Tuesday.
The ceiling could maybe come crashing on my head.
I maybe could run out of things for me to worry about.
And then I'd have to do my homework instead.

are the open way of thinking

that use the patterns of the way

I motion with language

breathe like the way I amass

sometimes air

in my insides

carry heavy weight

like the having to good

ideas write

don’t like boy’s really

moving body of questions

that form tower of answers

eagerly want

to beat

the others

forge

toward

others

go

yonder

hang

impact

the wanting

words

jump from one

thought

to the next

kettle

like

fish

lavish like talking

people if they doctor

the words

master

language

openly

navigate

words toward

meaning

operate the machine

landing the thoughts amazing

that they don’t fall apart

pave

the wanting

road

question

wanting

really ask

more

questions

slant

with peeving

typing

tire to something

that rolls

with the road

use

people

to answer

vortex the void

and assembles

gathering words

water

thoughts

like rain

exit the door of cold

raying water

other is the way

yesses

the yonder  

zoning the word and

uses the idea

to language everything

One for tree, two for woods,        

                                                            I-Goo wrote the characters           

                               

                                               out for me. Dehiscent & reminiscent:

what wood made

                                               Ng Ng’s hope-chest

that she immigrated with

                                                                     —cargo from Guangzho

to Phoenix? In Spanish, Nana tells me

                                                           hope & waiting are one word.

                                        _____

In her own hand, she keeps

                                         a list of dichos—for your poems, she says.

Estan mas cerca los dientes

                      que los parentes, she recites her mother

& mother’s mother. It rhymes, she says.

                                                         

                                   Dee-say—the verb with its sound turned

down looks like dice

                                              to throw & dice, to cut. Shift after shift,

she inspected the die of integrated circuits

                                       beneath an assembly line of microscopes—            

the connections over time

                                                        getting smaller & smaller.

                                          _____

                                                                        

                                                To enter words in order to see

                                                                             —Cecilia Vicuña

In the classroom, we learn iambic words

                                          that leaf on the board with diacritics—

about, aloft, aggrieved. What over years

          accrues within one’s words? What immanent

                                                                        sprung with what rhythm?

Agave—a lie in the lion, the maenad made mad

by Dionysus awoke to find her son

                                    dead by her hand. The figure is gaslit

even if anachronistic. Data & river banks—

           memory’s figure is often riparian.  I hear Llorona’s agony

echo in the succulent. What’s the circuit in cerca to short

          or rewire the far & close—to map

                                                   Ng Ng & I-Goo to Nana’s carpool?

                                         ______

I read a sprig of evergreen, a symbol

                                               of everlasting, is sometimes packed

with a new bride’s trousseau. It was thirteen years

                                             

before Yeh Yeh could bring

                                                Ng Ng & I-Goo over. Evergreen

                     

& Empire were names of corner-stores

                                             

where they first worked—

                                             stores on corners of Nana’s barrio.

Chinito, Chinito! Toca la malaca—

                                                             she might have sung in ’49

after hearing Don Tosti’s  

                                    recording—an l where the r would be

in the Spanish rattle filled with beans or seed or as

                                                                         the song suggests

change in the laundryman’s till.

                                         ______

I have read diviners

                       use stems of yarrow when consulting

                                                                                    the I-Ching.

What happens to the woods in a maiden name?

Two hyphens make a dash—

                                                the long signal in the binary code.

                                             

Attentive antennae: a monocot

—seed to single leaf—the agave store years

                                             for the stalk. My two grandmothers:

                                                         

one’s name keeps a pasture,

                       the other a forest. If they spoke to one another,

                     

it was with short, forced words

                                    like first strokes when sawing—

                                             

                                              trying to set the teeth into the grain.

Breakfast rained on again,

and I’m lifted up the stairs

on the breath of what

the dark of the day

might promise in its

perfect silence. The light

in my daughter’s room

has been on all night

like every night,

but the sun shifting

changes the shape

of the space from

a square into an unfolding

universe. I had always

imagined a different type

of fatherhood before

fatherhood found me, but if you

asked me to describe it now,

I don’t think I could

find the words. Try to find

a way to describe living

a few different ways at once.

For a while I imagined

there would be more attempts

at trying out what I’m still

trying to see in the room

that’s gone power out,

but the weeds in the yard

grow too quickly to be left

alone for long. I had forgotten

the strangeness of a humid

February. I had forgotten

all that makes up the memories

that need me to exist. It was

easier to carve out a place

before I had words to describe

it. Now looking back feels

like looking forward. I am 

drawing a self-portrait

and trying to remove the self.