i think a good one would be:
the sky is petty enough without us
pestering it for stars. or, relatedly:
a good star is hard to find. or somehow
under an orange rind you’ll rustle up a star. or: betelgeuse
is a hell of a way to spend a night. or
better a cluster of stars than another bad sleep.
you cannot dream with your mouth
open and catch the light of the right star.
if you stretch across a bed you will find the light
of it still across your arm like lotion.
if i exaggerate, and call attention to nothing,
it is because as of late, i’ve become 
a hard star out of focus. to catasterize, to place
among the stars, is to curse a foe with darkest ink.
imagine the galaxy as a fable of spilled milk. picture
wanting lemonade. i suppose some of these
are more idioms of space. a shame that any time of year,
whatever you are feeling, the sky at night 
remains the same. or what i mean to say is i’m never sure
the season, but yes, i dream of her.

You won’t feel like this forever, unless

           forever is here. Follow the dark blue

blades of kale, the flat dials of sunflowers

           leading back to speech, or its underside.  

Love translated you across an ocean

           & now you cannot really come away 

or say how, exactly, your love began. 

           Was it music in the mouth, or weeping

in the blood? The ancestral body splits
           
           into water & seeds, pure syllables.  

^{translated from the German by Babette Deutsch and Avrahm Yarmolinsky}

She sits upon my bed at dusk, unsought,
And makes my soul obedient to her will,
And in the twilight, still as dreams are still,
Her pupils narrow to bright threads that thrill 
About the sensuous windings of her thought.

And on the neighboring couch, spread crepitant, 
The pointed-patterned, pale narcissus fling 
Their hands toward the pillow, where yet cling 
His kisses, and the dreams thence blossoming,— 
On the white beds a sweet and swooning scent.

The smiling moonwoman dips in cloudy swells,
And my wan, suffering psyches know new power, 
Finding their strength in conflict’s tortured hour.

Sphinx

 Sie sitzt an meinem Bette in der Abendzeit 
Und meine Seele tut nach ihrem Willen, 
Und in dem Dämmerscheine, traumesstillen, 
Engen wie Fäden dünn sich ihre Glanzpupillen 
Um ihrer Sinne schläfrige Geschmeidigkeit. 

Und auf dem Nebenbette an den Leinennähten
Knistern die Spitzenranken von Narzissen,
Und ihre Hände dehnen breit sich nach dem Kissen
Auf dem noch Träume blühn aus seinen Küssen,
Wie süßer Duft auf weißen Beeten.

Und lächelnd taucht die Mondfrau in die Wolkenwellen
Und meine bleichen, leidenden Psychen
Erstarken neu im Kampf mit Widersprüchen.

Being a cult figure is the essence of being 
a paradox in which someone 
has managed to get themselves linked

to the theoretically real while 
simultaneously getting themselves tied 
to conventional assumptions about being

this close to being a deity. They may, 
in that cryptic state, serve as both 
an extra without lines and the sole reason

center stage was invented. A cult figure 
can’t die, clearly a plus. Likewise, 
they get to be objects, playthings

of intellectual exchange between like minds 
and antagonists. That said, these icons  
are never merely after-the-fact abstractions.

No. Although anyone can hope 
to have a dahlia named after them—
wrongly assuming that nature will then

be forced to remember their name—
that path ignores the fact that nature 
is yet another meaningless conceit

over which people gush and go on and on 
about. “Using one’s imagination” 
is a far better way of gaining possession

of a new reality. One simply denies 
reality in favor of believing 
whatever one wants reality to be. It is this

that makes it possible to turn a ‘special girl’ 
into a cult figure—one that can be either 
a virgin, or, you know, “like a virgin.”

Such as the lobster 
cracking loose 
from its exoskeleton 
after moons of moulting,  
or the viper that squeezes 
out of the skin 
of its remembrance, 
this oracle invites you
to rewild yourself,
to unbox, detox, and de-
clutter your blood. 
Break free from the mold
you made for yourself, 
for the animal 
in you that craves 
routines like sugar,
addicted to the stress 
of your comforts. Sling 
your arm around the waist 
of your discomfort
like it’s a new lover
in these uncharted 
seas and distances 
untraversed. Take
and give glee. 
Summon surprise.
Something whim-
sical this way comes. 
It smells something 
like wishes wrapped 
in wind as you
trod the winding path 
through 
the forests 
of your interior. 
Be warned. You will
bewilder beloveds. 
Hush. Some 
events are better
experienced than 
explained. Take soul.
Your joy is your job;
and yours alone. 
Hire your
self every day. 
Climb into your traveling
shoes knowing that
there, too, will 
be dancing.

Over the screech of the morning 
traffic of Eagle Rock Boulevard
I thought I heard the rooster 
from my parents’ backyard,
calling. They lived close enough,
it could have been. I’d been
awake for hours but was still 
in bed looking out the window
where a flock of red-crowned parrots
skated through the blue. 
The Echo Park Parrots. 
The Pasadena Parrots. The Silver-
lake Parrots. Everyone wants 
to own the birds, yet
here they were this morning,
serenading me. 
They come and go, they came
and went. In my dreams, I’m sometimes
a chicken. I fly from one man
to the next, hoping their arms
are strong like guava branches,
strong enough to roost 
in for the night, ripe with seeds. 
I’m malnourished in my dreams
because there are no trees, just birds
in nonstop flight and song.

When we were birds,
we veered & wheeled, we flapped & looped—

it’s true, we flew. When we were birds,
we dined on tiny silver fish
& the watery hearts
of flowers. When we were birds

we sistered the dragonfly,
brothered the night-wise bat,

& sometimes when we were birds

we rose as high as we could go—
light cold & strange—

& when we opened our beaked mouths
sundown poured like wine
down our throats.

When we were birds
we worshipped trees, rivers, mountains,

sage knots, rain, gizzard rocks, grub-shot dung piles,

& like all good beasts & wise green things
the mothering sun. We had many gods
when we were birds,

& each in her own way
was good to us, even winter fog,

which found us huddling
in salal or silk tassel,
singing low, sweet songs & closing
our blood-rich eyes & sleeping
the troubled sleep of birds. Yes,

even when we were birds
we were sometimes troubled & tired,

sad for no reason, 

& so pretended we were not birds
& fell like stones—

the earth hurtling up to meet us,
our trussed bones readying
to be shattered, our unusually large hearts
pounding for nothing—

yet at the last minute we would flap
& lift, & as we flew, shudderingly away,

we told ourselves that this falling—

we would remember. We thought
we would always
be birds. We didn’t know.

We didn’t know
we could love one another

with such ferocity. That we should.

Opened
between
void and
recognition.
The not
vivid.
Color
empty,
casual.
Unlike
memory,
bliss in dark-
ness, an
announcement.
Movement
outlined
not
contained
—a small
feeling, I
can’t, like
happiness
outlived.
A month.
The trim
clock.
The same
indignity:
elevator,
groceries,
an armload
of August
wildflowers.
My friend,
nowhere.
Duration.
To this
collapsing
hall, this
charging late
gold in summer,
my color.
—Eyes
close,
the answer
between
everything.
Peony.
Chamomile.
Marigold.
The flagrant
underworld
opened now
against
metaphor …
The moral
of the flower
is the
flower.

^{translated from the Chinese by Ezra Pound}

While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead
I played about the front gate, pulling flowers 
You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse, 
You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums. 
And we went on living in the village of Chokan: 
Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.

At fourteen I married My Lord you.
I never laughed, being bashful. 
Lowering my head, I looked at the wall. 
Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.

At fifteen I stopped scowling, 
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours 
Forever and forever, and forever. 
Why should I climb the lookout?

At sixteen you departed, 
You went into far Ku-to-Yen, by the river of swirling eddies, 
And you have been gone five months. 
The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead. 
You dragged your feet when you went out. 
By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses, 
Too deep to clear them away! 
The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind. 
The paired butterflies are already yellow with August 
Over the grass in the West garden, 
They hurt me. 
I grow older,
If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang,
Please let me know beforehand,
And I will come out to meet you, 
                              As far as Cho-fu-Sa.

My daughter says six is her favorite year ever
though she suspects that seven will be better.
Her dress spins down the corridor.
It’s made of butterflies and billowing
like the memory of a chocolate souffle.
Was I ever more like her than like me,
shoulders not flagging, breath hot
with awe as I sidestepped each stone,
the promise of age like a helium balloon
dragging me behind it on a flouncy string?
My daughter tries to show me everything
she’s left a mark on: painted clay,
a smiley-faced cotton ball perched on a stick.
her name in all-caps on an envelope.
Does she already somewhere in her spleen
or pancreas, in the soft tissues and marrow, sense
that the impossible goal is, for all of us,
just to keep going? No, she is not grieving
over Goldengrove whatever. Six is her favorite 
year ever, I feel not so much nostalgia
as Sehnsucht, the desire for something
missing, vertigo under the infinite sky. 
We crane our twin heads as a falcon or drone
pierces the cloud cover into the future.
How to get closer to the mystery.
Older, she will do whatever: name a new nation,
isolate a microbe, hear the whales mutter
the muscadine water. Every time the regimes change
she will dance Swan Lake, bending her knees
at the requisite intervals. Attagirl, daughter! 
The economy continues to show resilience
in the face of despair and mass depredation.
My daughter is swan. Is crab grass run riot.
Meanwhile, I am becoming unrecognizable
to everyone except myself, and it does not matter:
before it is time to resemble no one
I have had the mixed fortune to resemble most things.
My shadow lingers in the corner of the photo of the painting.
I may not know more than a bedraggled llama
craning its neck past the impregnable fence. Still,
I participated in the world. I wore the ceremonial
knee breeches required by protocol.
Led her through ferry boats and Ferris wheels,
this ardent daughter clinging to my hand
as though it was God’s hand on a church ceiling.
We took turns licking the strawberry ice cream.
In this knowledge, I feel content.

                Between letting go and setting free
There was a difference I assumed
                I was. Graceless. Arrogant. Venomous
As a point. Horsehair slacking. Bow
                Shaking from deep within. Air cut
Without a trace. There was faith, a drawing
                Close, closer, close enough, then

Too close. Hoping, missing, resuming—
                Into the shadows I had taken me
As far as I could. Soul. Soil. Silt. Sullied current
                I proved I could step into once
More. Forest. Mountain. Desert. Blood,
                My resource and recourse. While at war
In my mind, I went farther than I thought—

                Archer, I am my errors. Arching, I erred
In desire. Am I my target? Expect no mercy.
                For better or worse, whatever happens,
I’ll be even better. I’ll be even worse—
                Let’s go. Nobody is expecting us. Get ready.
Gone is the hour of ghosts over the gulf
                Like whales, a memory, breaching surface

From depths unknown, stuck in between
                Land and what is and what if and sea and
I suppose for air. A moment that wasn’t
                This, we turned on. Resplendent. Meet me
At the shore. I aim with my life to prove
                We can be happier than the ones we love.
The difference is distance, set. Crossed. Freed—

^{for J.}

Afloat out on the starlit water
where ordinary life’s a dream
as to two figures in a frame,
I touch the moon, and watch it shatter.

But when I touch you, you remain,
my body weightless in your arms
while quietly your hand conforms
to the hard griefs along my spine.

Beneath the sky’s unseeing eyes
I let my head rest in your palm,
making a little world of calm
for luck and longing to revise 

scenes too early to recall—
the frightened mouth, the soured breast,
abandoned den or splintered nest
resurfaced in the Lovers’ Pool.

Where our bodies intersect
like children whose fingers cross
to make a promise promise less
and guard this moment from the next.

And now before you disappear,
I’ve brought us once again to soak
in sulfur, salt, and arsenic,
so that in here, we’re always there.

^{translated from the Italian by Will Schutt}

You pursue me with a thought, are a thought 
that comes to me without thinking, like a shiver 
you slowly scorch my skin and lead my eyes 
toward a clear point of light. You’re a memory 
retrieved and glowing, you’re my dream 
beyond dreams and memories, the door that closes 
and opens onto a wild river. You’re something 
no word can express, and in every word you resonate 
like the echo of a slow exhale, you’re my wind 
rustling the spring foliage, the voice that calls 
from a place I do not know but recognize as mine.
You’re the howl of a wolf, the voice of the deer 
alive and mortally wounded. My stellar body.

Corpo Stellare 

Mi segui con un pensiero, sei un pensiero 
che non devo nemmeno pensare, come un brivido 
mi strini piano la pelle, muove gli occhi 
verso un punto chiaro di luce. Sei un ricordo 
perduto e luminoso, sei il mio sogno 
senza sogno e senza ricordi, la porta che chiude 
e apre sulla corrente di un fiume impetuoso. Sei una cosa 
che nessuna parola può dire e che in ogni parola 
risuona come l’eco di un lento respiro, sei il mio vento 
di foglie e primavere, la voce che chiama 
da un posto che non so e riconosco e che è mio.
Sei l’ululato di un lupo, la voce del cervo 
vivo e ferito a morte. Il mio corpo stellare.

^{translated from the Croatian by James Meetze}

^{Cork, Ireland}

is like a church bell 
in some remote village 
tolling mutely in the evening
through the musty provincial air 
self-obliviously 
and quite self-sufficiently  
—one might add—
if it weren’t for the pair of those 
ragged sheep 
huddled before the rain 
on the empty lot 
in front of a stone barn 
bobbing their whitish little heads 
here and there 
just to let you know 
that regardless of medium 
the message will always 
arrive at the destination.

Poezija u malom jeziku

^{Cork, Irska}

poezija u malom jeziku
je kao zvono
u zabačenom selu
što tuče muklo s večeri
kroz memlu provincije
samozaboravno
i poprilično samodovoljno
—reklo bi se—
da nije tih par kuštravih ovaca
skutrenih pred pljusak
u oboru
ispred kamene pojate
što malo-malo
trznu bjelkastim glavama
da ti daju do znanja
da bez obzira na medij
poruka uvijek
stiže na odredište.

^{To a Friend.}

The shrine is vowed to freedom, but, my friend, 
Freedom is but a means to gain an end. 
Freedom should build the temple, but the shrine 
Be consecrate to thought still more divine. 
The human bliss which angel hopes foresaw 
Is liberty to comprehend the law. 
Give, then, thy book a larger scope and frame, 
Comprising means and end in Truth’s great name.

^{translated from the Spanish by Janet Hendrickson}

That year, we knew the sky existed 
because we believed in the storm, 
but we never saw the sky.

Shut in from morning until night, 
we couldn’t stop talking about what we’d do after. 
The sea hanging from our tongues. Extinct horses 
went up and down the hills we claimed to know.

After a while, the wind changed, 
it went from west to east and didn’t stop, 
the street filled with rooks and wild dogs, 
and the light became a cliff at day’s end.

And we were each afraid, 
afraid of the noise of the neighbors  
and the absence of noise, 
of the huge tail of the rat descending from the roof, 
of the fighting of the rooks outside

afraid of the children’s insistent question, 
which was always the same, and afraid of memory, 
since we had started to confuse the old days 
with what we imagined lie ahead 
and soon, we no longer knew whether life was just a wish.

We lived a day that went beyond its limits 
like a train longer than the city where it stops.

That year, we survived for seven hundred days. 
Thousands of hours of cold for a single night.

Invierno

Aquel año sabíamos que existía el cielo  
porque creíamos en la tempestad, 
pero jamás veíamos el cielo. 

Encerrados de la mañana a la noche,  
no dejábamos de hablar sobre lo que haríamos más tarde.  
El mar pendía de la lengua. Caballos extintos 
bajaban y subían las colinas que decíamos conocer.

Luego de un tiempo, el viento cambió,  
fue del oeste al este sin detenerse, 
la calle se llenó de grajos y perros salvajes, 
y la luz se volvió un precipicio al final del día.

Y cada uno de nosotros tuvo miedo,  
miedo del ruido de los vecinos y la ausencia de ruido, 
de la cola enorme de la rata que bajaba del techo, 
de la pelea de los grajos afuera, 

miedo de la insistente pregunta de los niños,  
que era siempre la misma, y miedo de la memoria, 
pues empezamos a confundir los días antiguos 
con lo que imaginábamos para más adelante, 
y pronto, ya no supimos si la vida era solo un deseo.

Vivíamos un día que se salía de sus márgenes  
como un tren más extenso que la ciudad a donde llega.

Aquel año, sobrevivimos por setecientos días. 
Miles de horas de frío para una sola noche. 

^{translated from the French by the author}

Who crosses into you when you cross 

Who crosses when you don’t cross 

Who doesn’t cross when you cross 

Who crosses when you can’t cross 

Who doesn’t cross when you don’t cross 

Who doesn’t want to cross 

Who thinks they’re crossing 

Who doesn’t look at you while crossing 

Who might take the time to look at you. 
 

Poème du 24 septembre

Qui traverse en toi quand tu traverses  

Qui traverse quand tu ne traverses pas  

Qui ne traverse pas quand tu traverses  

Qui traverse quand tu ne peux pas traverser  

Qui ne traverse pas quand tu ne traverses pas  

Qui ne veut pas traverser  

Qui croit traverser  

Qui ne te regarde pas en traversant  

Qui prendra peut-être le temps de te regarder. 

^{translated from the Italian by Gioia Guerzoni}

In the middle of a winter night 
my father who was not yet dead 
came to visit me in a dream as if dead. 
Wake me up I asked him but he hesitated 
and the terror that he liked death paralyzed me. 
Lift our eyelids—I said without a voice, 
let’s open our eyes wide on what is real. 
Tiredly—I knew he was struggling—I tightened his fingers 
around a dirty-green railing that needed repainting. 
Only then, I think he could feel my hands 
or maybe understand the work that remained: 
the iron to scrape the spatula the paint to choose 
he attempted his usual half smile. He let go 
and made me move on to another dream.

2022, gennaio

Nel mezzo di una notte d’inverno 
mio padre che non era ancora morto 
venne a trovarmi in sogno come morto. 
Svegliami gli chiesi ma esitava 
e il terrore che la morte gli piacesse mi paralizzava. 
Apriamo le palpebre—dissi senza voce, 
spalanchiamo gli occhi su quello che è reale. 
Con fatica—sapevo che faceva fatica—gli strinsi le dita 
intorno a una ringhiera verde-sporco da riverniciare. 
Solo allora credo sentendo le mie mani 
o piuttosto capendo il lavoro che restava: 
il ferro da scrostare la spatola la vernice da scegliere 
abbozzò il suo mezzo sorriso abituale. Lasciò la presa 
e mi fece passare a un altro sogno.

^{translated from the Vietnamese by Phương Anh}

to whisper.the flowers await eagerly 
night holds onto the traveler’s feet.a wafting scent
butterfly wings flash.moon echoes.wind rises
a shadow is growing.the lingering agarwood? 

you bend to pick up your shadow that was dropped 
sky and earth convulse in all directions
destruction weighs on my shoulders.endless
human lives have left behind sediments.a bud of scent

that night.was it the final night?
i lie, listening.to the trees and leaves call each other 
the flock of small birds on the branches.stop.singing
hiding in the heart forever a soul enchanted!

Đêm tận tuyệt (final final night)

kể gì.những bông hoa ngóng đợi
đêm cầm chân lữ khách.một làn hương
cánh bướm chớp.vang lừng trăng.gió nổi
bóng ai về vời vợi quá. trầm vương?

em cúi nhặt bóng mình vừa rơi xuống
đất trời như kính động khắp nghìn phương
niềm hư hoại oằn vai.vô lượng
kiếp người vừa đọng lại.một chồi hương

đêm hôm ấy.có là đêm tận tuyệt?
tôi nằm nghe.cây lá gọi nhau về
bầy chim nhỏ trên cành.thôi.không hót
giấu trong lòng mai mãi một hồn mê!

In placid hours well-pleased we dream
Of many a brave unbodied scheme.
But form to lend, pulsed life create,
What unlike things must meet and mate:
A flame to melt—a wind to freeze;
Sad patience—joyous energies;
Humility—yet pride and scorn;
Instinct and study; love and hate;
Audacity—reverence. These must mate,
And fuse with Jacob’s mystic heart,
To wrestle with the angel—Art.

My father read a mountain aloud.

Opened to a page 
where a green bird lands on a thunderclap.

Named for the billowing hands of 
brittle blue flowers.

As if the unfinished poetry of the paraffin

is pulled aside like scenery, 
so that I may write by the only light I know.

My father read only his one life and recited 
the last line over and over.

The book is written in giant letters of fog 
that wander like goats across the alpine pastures.

The moon is dog-eared as if the treetops looking up 
have studied the idea of love too much.

On a page with some scattered pine needles, 
a voice goes on calling out to me.

My father learned to read 
in a one-room schoolhouse,

and never read a poem.

A little herd of lightning 
gets spoken out loud in the dark.

Change 
is scenic and sudden.

One year, I came home 
and all the leaves fell off my father.

After that, 
he was winter.

Fall fell wind-wise today—
trembles of dried lilac stalks, dead
hydrangea that couldn’t reach
water, all the finches and wrens
boldly on the move. Fall fell, my friend.
It ended summer like the last page
of the last chapter of your life.
What can I do about the turbulent
underneaths impossible to tamp down—
my yard stripped to incidentals—
sifted and judged, rearranged?
If work is sacred, as we both believed,
it also exacts a tax: the rake’s
black splinter in the heel
of my thumb, a few new blisters.
I still can’t accept life’s abandon,
how the leaves are our lives
and not at the same time,
or that the fence, its posts bearing
so much weight, are a symbol
of my own manhood
beginning to rot. I’m sorry if some
of these images aren’t tried and true.
The best pictures I’ll ever make
(and man, I wish I could text them to you)
were taken today in my yard,
my finger touching a white digital button
to capture some delight amidst
death itself, Olivia hiding inside
the great mound we gathered
despite the whipping wind, her face
bursting with joy—as she emerged
from our quarry and kicked
the leaves out, as she tossed up armfuls.

I walk the world with a locked box
Lodged in my chest. Doctor, it hurts
But not as much as it should. In Bucha,

On the roadway of the Street of Apples
A woman lay four weeks straight
Unburied even by snow. They saw her red

Coat and rolled right over, Russians,
Tanked and vigilant in their to and fro. 
Doctor, there’s nothing wrong with me

That isn’t also true of many others. 
At night I sleep under a vast epiphany
That hasn’t descended upon me,

Pinpricks that shine a white writing 
I can’t read. I don’t want to know 
Yet. Instead I ask to stay here, greedy 

For the smell of autumn. Before 
Leaving, I’ve made a miniature of me
To witness the raising of the sea, 

To watch over the unimaginable,
To greet this revelation of a future 
With those new names it will need.  

I don’t know what carried me here 
to Monterchi, perched above mountain bulges 
shaped like the side-bellies of well-fed sheep. 
Or why, when taken in 
to view Piero’s fresco of the Madonna del Parto,
I feel like an intruder
walking in on a girl—tangled in teenhood—
loosening the buttons of her faded lapis robe. 
Flanked by two boy-angels, she is heavy 
with child, anchored in a tent of light-grey fur, 
drapes the color of dried blood. 
Her oval eyes, downcast, direct my gaze 
to her right hand, hanging above a slit 
of white cloth that covers from breast-bone
to navel. Her fingers are soft but gnarled, 
perhaps from twisting and untwisting her hair 
late at night. Does she believe no one 
will notice the crooked fingers of her left hand 
curled into hip, as if trying to hide 
the fingernails’ insatiable need to fidget, pick? 
Her hands pull me back to the pouty nineteen year-old
I once was: dressed in baggy denim cut-offs, 
cream-colored peasant blouse, my fingers tapped 
uncontrollably on invisible piano keys
lining my outer thighs. Walking home
I was petrified my mother—who knew I was too young 
to be a mother—would notice my skin-glow, 
feigned half-smile. Now, fifty years later, facing 
the Madonna, I wonder how Piero knew  
to mute most of the fear on her face 
with shades of pearl. She looks serene
yet distracted—like when something 
has already happened without announcing itself.
Like the low, faint hum of a hymn 
that stays long after an angel leaves. Like the newfound
power she did not choose, but one that will be 
hers forever after she is drained dry.

Hold on, they said, but she was tiny and let
the kite go flying above tears and treetops.
The kite had a will of its own, and its will
was wind which carried it the way love carries
surrender and forgiveness. I was right behind
and watched until hope was a speck and gone.
I’d have let it swoop me up the way a bird
of prey lifts a rabbit or a mouse, not afraid
to rub my nose in sky and roll about in deep
fields of snow far above cirrostratus.
Not afraid to let bliss devour me whole.
Or grief, if I must live my forever in orbit
with the Wolf Moon as it prowls night
after night howling for the wilderness we lost.

Even though it stands: the biggest sky of my life
remains above that strip mall parking lot,
I don’t think I could ever go back.
The blurry drives with no destination,
reaching for something, who knows what, beyond
the sunroof. Dragged a couch onto a frozen lake.
Chased small things into the corners.
Swiped at it with a broom. Dreamt 
of my dead & was made of that dreaming.
If asked now what keeps my attention,
I’d point to the stage where some queen
trapped in time, mouths the words
to a song only she knows.
Something gray saps the back of my throat.
What saves my teeth from my teeth
is a piece of gum older, I think, than millennia.
Before I even realize he’s gone, my lover returns
& hands me a cup of water.
More & more it means something to be alive.
It’s important that I write this now before I forget,
this now which has happened so suddenly
I have to rub my eyes to join it, this now which might
seem insignificant for those of you reading
over my shoulder as I type this out on my phone
in the middle of the dance floor.
The rude & sudden light, for which I apologize.

I do not know the ocean’s song, 
    Or what the brooklets say; 
At eve I sit and listen long, 
    I cannot learn their lay. 
But as I linger by the sea, 
    And that sweet song comes unto me, 
It seems, my love, it sings of thee.

I do not know why poppies grow, 
    Amid the wheat and rye, 
The lilies bloom as white as snow, 
    I cannot tell you why. 
But all the flowers of the spring, 
    The bees that hum, the birds that sing, 
A thought of you they seem to bring.

I cannot tell why silvery Mars, 
    Moves through the heav’ns at night; 
I cannot tell you why the stars, 
    Adorn the vault with light. 
But what sublimity I see, 
    Upon the mount, the hill, the lea, 
It brings, my love, a thought of thee.

I do not know what in your eyes, 
    That caused my heart to glow, 
And why my spirit longs and cries, 
    I vow, I do not know. 
But when you first came in my sight, 
    My slumbering soul awoke in light, 
And since the day I’ve known no night.

You drag the boat across the tallgrass, shake out 
the black snakes that made a provisional home under the bow 
through the length of winter. The rope undone 
for the first time in months, it slews behind you 
through dirt, then shallow water, a thin trail 
that follows you deeper into the afternoon, submits to the pull 
of you, or perhaps the pull of the other shore. So sure you are 
in your solitude, and I am startled to sit here, witness it. 
How smooth is your sailing away, this measured 
but steady drifting under pink, penumbral light. When we first met
you portioned your stories, or they came brash, a light tower’s 
unpredictable beam. Resolving to muteness the year your father 
could no longer hear you, then woodwork, then a decade
of travel. Tulum. The Mont Blanc where the five-foot two French guide 
hauled you out of a crevasse. The Norwegian girl you met at a bar 
in Cambodia who followed you back, wanting 
to show you the ring on her labia. Her Janis Joplin tattoo. I follow you now 
with my late summer eyes. Why do I love watching you like that, 
cruising away from me? As if you are teaching me something 
about love and distance. Two red-tailed hawks surrender 
their shadows to the thicket of spruces. You stare up, 
then past your left shoulder. I think, at me. The wind tugs at every 
boat in our world. A hushed push and pull, a measure of faith 
travels the distance between us. Buoyant as day, thin as light.

Wakening in the night, the pain that slumber 
Strikes with her mace of silence dead and dumb 
Loomed over me and, formless, said, “I come! 
Bringing illusions lost beyond all number. 
Rigid you lie, yet for a little cumber 
This flaming world, where some die proudly, some 
Glitter like granite, or dream millenium.” 
It left me toiled in mountainous clouds of umber.

I lay sustaining all the old emotion, 
Numbed as beneath the blows of iron cars. 
Then slowly, slowly some supreme devotion 
Crept down, and drew me out of ageless wars, 
Like a dear voice heard over darkened ocean 
When all dim heaven is trembling into stars.

Isn’t it hard to see light’s bearing 
against the wall? The animals know where heat
is going. All I care about is holding a story 
in my hands. The square, the smell, 
the movement. When I fly my throat into a morning, 
the lint molts off in ceaseless presents. No witch, 
no word, that’s how dull the smoke was, two stories 
up, holding my head above my foot. Isn’t saying 
Now  hard? The after of the stain 
becomes juice, or medicine, and the sun is like the sun 
in a movie, how it slants across the bed.

One bridge and then another over the fisherman’s net  
of steel water and high, secreting grasses. 

Here the bare cypress trees throw themselves from the banks 
like wailing women, their hands scraping at the sky’s silent faces  
in the grey rags of Spanish moss. 

This home is always shifting, the water reaching up to take 
what it will. There are days I cannot find myself  

between the steps of my parents’ home and the long sigh  
of afternoon rain. Each time I leave 

it is the last time. Time passes faster when I am not there 
so now she does not know my face 

and the house has sunk further into unkempt green.  
How far can we carry memory before it is something else? 

How long can a man at sea call himself her husband 
and not someone who is lost? 

Between here and what’s not, I come, as all strangers,  
to the door to wait for the stranger who answers.

If you come up the path through time’s   
protensity you’ll find me  

in this yellow November, a muddle of sun  
beside me on the ground. I’ll be lost  

in thought, unhappy with the common   
marigold’s heavy stink, dreaming of feathery things 

with berries. Come intently up the path   
through extensities of space. 

Tough zinnias come up & find me. Why not you?  
They are loud flowers that bear witness 

to past waterings by blooming   
through drought. I’ll be thinking I must  

become something that thrives   
in dry weather. Come calmly up the path.  

Be so present even eyes dimmed by bitters   
can track you into the pastel asters.  

Don’t make me wait. I’ll be fidgeting   
with the unrest brought on by fatal weather.  

What will become of us? I think  
our attributes will be engraved inside a promise  

ring in a script too small to read.   
Come quietly and be undimmed.  

When I see you, my eyes will fill   
with “really?” I’ll stand there 

trying to decide if you are cool enough   
to make any trace of warmth  

seem welcome or warm enough   
to make any residue of cold  

negotiable. I’ll say if you’ve come   
to tell me you’re going, please go.

I who, conceived beneath another star, 
Had been a prince and played with life, instead 
Have been its slave, an outcast exiled far 
From the fair things my faith has merited. 
My ways have been the ways that wanderers tread 
And those that make romance of poverty— 
Soldier, I shared the soldier’s board and bed, 
And Joy has been a thing more oft to me 
Whispered by summer wind and summer sea 
Than known incarnate in the hours it lies 
All warm against our hearts and laughs into our eyes.

I know not if in risking my best days 
I shall leave utterly behind me here 
This dream that lightened me through lonesome ways 
And that no disappointment made less dear; 
Sometimes I think that, where the hilltops rear 
Their white entrenchments back of tangled wire, 
Behind the mist Death only can make clear, 
There, like Brunhilde ringed with flaming fire, 
Lies what shall ease my heart’s immense desire: 
There, where beyond the horror and the pain 
Only the brave shall pass, only the strong attain.

Truth or delusion, be it as it may, 
Yet think it true, dear friends, for, thinking so, 
That thought shall nerve our sinews on the day 
When to the last assault our bugles blow: 
Reckless of pain and peril we shall go, 
Heads high and hearts aflame and bayonets bare, 
And we shall brave eternity as though 
Eyes looked on us in which we would seem fair— 
One waited in whose presence we would wear, 
Even as a lover who would be well-seen, 
Our manhood faultless and our honor clean.

You held the fire in your hands.

You watched the embers burn, held the memories in your hands, held the silences, their emptiness.

You were braiding the sky with flame. You were listening for the cry.

Time was a hunger swallowing despair, desperation, and always the strange colonies of cloud overhead, time speaking in tongues.

You were driving right into the storm.

You were asleep at the wheel, or aiming your father’s gun, halting thought with your own blood.

You were childless, you were yourself a child

waiting for the muzzle’s flash and still, for the eternity of light, star in the eyes, for the simple, impossible brilliance and afterimage billowing out

as you were thrust into that secret dark where no one escapes, no one remembers,

where you’ll remain, in the end, frightened and alone, 

holding the fire in your hands.

a ghost garden      last year’s      still blooms 
              on the patio             an undying marigold 
lanky rosemary                 rose-scented

geranium       all having survived this 
           unsown year 
                                           and a shadow moves 
among those leaves       fleet in rising sun

I turn to it        and it has gone 
                       pancakes cool on my plate     I’m reading 
          and eating alone 
                                               my husband having taken 
a last October ride      he says           I could bundle up

but I don’t see any reason to 
                                                                        there 
          another pass of        I don’t know what 
door panes squaring its flit

that ghost is the second     possibility I consider 
            is telling      telling              I say to myself 
I could not believe in ghosts       but I don’t see

any reason to 
                                              a bird materializes 
               on the chair outside           wholly in shadow 
there and not there

                                                  I want to have you again 
as ghost even          to keep you with me 
             glimpse or glance 
                                                                  corporeal 
bird                  a perfect explanation 
fine then                                 I want to have you 
as a bird                     I will tell you 
           what I have to say      in bird language 
I think I could learn it 
                                              like eternal vows I’ve made 
if eternity       is a shadow that flickers 
           a bird away               a ghost 
in the corner of my eye

I love the silent hour of night, 
  For blissful dreams may then arise, 
Revealing to my charmèd sight 
  What may not bless my waking eyes.

And then a voice may meet my ear, 
  That death has silenced long ago; 
And hope and rapture may appear 
  Instead of solitude and woe.

Cold in the grave for years has lain 
  The form it was my bliss to see; 
And only dreams can bring again 
  The darling of my heart to me.

Tomorrow’s but a dream, dear Alice, 
In truth, it never appears; 
The past, a tenantless old palace, 
Where hope lies tombed in tears; 
The urn is broken, Alice, 
Whence incense rose above; 
But you may see, if you will, today, 
The magical haunts of love.

My fancy sees a chalice, 
A harp all strung, attuned, 
A famed, enchanted palace, 
Where Cupid oft communed; 
The theme of his dreaming, Alice, 
In waking or sleeping the same, 
A glory that ever dazzles, 
Till it sets the soul a-flame.

Like the burning bush on Horeb, 
Or lit phosphoric seas, 
The dream is metamorphosed, 
And Cupid makes wild pleas, 
For a glance of your dark eyes, Alice, 
And a touch of your lips, my dear, 
For all the bliss of caressing, 
Laughter, and song, and cheer.

’Tis to you and none other, Alice, 
My thought reverts in its flight, 
A little perhaps out of ballas’, 
Perhaps with too much delight; 
So crude, so humble and callous 
That a message it scarce can bear, 
From a heart that wears your image, 
And the passion that fixed it there.

Come thou with me, dear Alice, 
To where there’s building for thee 
A loved, charmed, magical palace, 
Hard by the Mexic sea; 
Where date, and spice and lemon 
Doth blow perpetually, 
By that enchanted palace 
That looks out over the sea.

Tomorrow? That’s cruel, Alice, 
Why speak of a day that is not? 
That spoils the bliss of living, 
Makes mine a miserable lot, 
And love’s enchanted palace 
A wild and desolate place; 
No land of dates and flowers 
Wert blessed without thy grace.

Ears are the eyes on the sides of your head. 
Memory lives here, between these apostrophes. 
As if to predict music, the ear contains a drum.

A musical note calling out for the shape of music. 
For the coin in the slot to unlock the gears. 
For the egg with a horse in it.

Some people are born addicted to sense. 
Some are born infected with silence. 
Poetry is an-ant-ant-anti-antibiotic.

“A horse pill.” 
Yes, there is an actual horse in this pill. 
Imagine it like a fetus pressed to the shell.

The reason there are no unicorns is just that. 
This is the egg tooth. 
And you, what did you pay to enter this world?

^{translated from the Sioux by Frances Densmore}

When I was but a child
I dreamed a wondrous dream.
I went upon a mountain;
There I fell asleep.
I heard a voice say,
“Now will I appear to you.”
A buffalo said this to me, dreaming.
When I was but a child
I dreamed this wondrous dream.

Naked carp swim upstream    and spawn in fresh water,
then fry return     to this 3,260-meter-high saline lake—

we stroll past black sheep      chained by their necks; 
later, our Yi host invites us    to join him at a low table:

boiled mutton, intestines, potatoes,     and red chile 
powder are set in red-swirling,     black lacquer bowls.

Closing my eyes,     I see wind turbines along a ridge, 
transmission lines     that arc from tower to tower 

across green hills;     a herder opens a gate, and black 
yaks slip through—when I walk    to a stream 

that feeds the lake, I follow     a path lined with red
and orange marigolds in pots,     wonder

who surrenders to reach     a higher plane of existence?
At a temple built and rebuilt     since 307 CE, 

I see a persimmon tree     alongside a cypress,
where lovers,     whetted by prayer, leave plaques

with dangling red strings.     Boating on this lake,
we make an oval track     on the surface; and, gazing 

at rapeseed     flowering yellow along the shore, 
we suspend but do not dissipate     the anguish of this world.

I’m afraid I was wrong about the world ending.
The man sitting on the bench—is simply a man on fire.
His fingers; reaching for solitude, something 
brief. The day becomes a sigh of pigeons digging 
For stones. I stand near the station
Too sick to notice the bench—or the man—or fire
Or whether I’ve been spared from grief.
Even the roadkill, coveting concrete, stands 
And walks. Where are those left behind? 
I thought I knew something 
About Armageddon. I apologize, 
But when the world pauses, I will sing naked 
In the heat and grow a forest of sycamores. 
Who can survive an apocalypse 
And live? I made the roadkill a god 
But I’m not allowed to speak for god 
So I wait.

^{If I die, I want a loud death. I don’t want to be just 
breaking news, or a number in a group, I want a death
that the world will hear, an impact that will remain
through time, and a timeless image that cannot be
buried by time or place. 
         —Fatima Hassouna, Gaza photo journalist,
         on April 15, before her death on April 16, 2025}

Like the sound waves in space that tear 
the remnants of supernovas, and twist the paths
of light
           so maybe this is why some spiral galaxies 
like Messier 77 resemble ears. 
                                                   But also when  
sunset splinters its light over the ridgeline and 
the fireflies in this ravine cry desperately to save it,
  
or when the embers from last night’s crackling 
campfire tremble, 
     or when our dog begins to fear
the sounds we do not hear,
        then we know those waves
have touched us too.
                         For it is the silence after 
the plane’s screech or the missile’s strike,
a kind of voiceless scream
                                           that her photos captured
even as she stood among the rubble looking up
as if those waves could also signal a moment’s
desperate hope.
                        There is so much we do not hear—
the rumble of shifting sand dunes, the purr and drum 
of the wolf spider, the echoes of bats, the explosions 
on the sun, the warning cry of the treehopper, but

it’s the cry of those buried alive we so often refuse
to hear as too distant or beyond our reach to help,

yet even an elephant’s infrasound, which can be 
detected by herd members as far as 115 miles
brings them to safety,
which tells us, well, 
tells us what?
                             It was Jesus (Luke 19:40)
who said if these keep silent, then the very stones
will cry out.
                      Here, the news moves on to the next
loudest story,
                      or some chat on the phone blares
the latest scandal, score or personal interest.
In Gaza, 
one journalist warned, a press vest makes you a target.

In one photo a hand reaches through the rubble is if 
it were reaching to speak, 16 April 2025, from Al-Touffah.

In the end, it was the sound of her home collapsing.

In the end, we are all targets in our silences.

In the end, we know her absence the way each syllable 
shouts its lament, pleading from inside each of these words.

It was a tropical landscape, much like Florida’s, which he knew. 
(Childhood came blazing back at him.) They glided across a black
And apathetic river which reflected nothing back
Except his own face sinking gradually from view
As in a fading photograph.
                                             Not that he meant to stay,
But, yes, he would play something for them, played Ravel;
And sang; and for the first time there were tears in hell.
(Sunset continued. Years passed, or a day.)
And the shades relented finally and seemed sorry.
He could have sworn then he did not look back,
That no one had been following on his track,
Only the thing was that it made a better story
To say that he had heard a sigh perhaps
And once or twice the sound a twig makes when it snaps. 

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
   Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
   And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son
   The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
   The frumious Bandersnatch!”

He took his vorpal sword in hand;
   Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
   And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
   The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
   And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
   The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
   He went galumphing back.

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
   Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
   He chortled in his joy.

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
   Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
   And the mome raths outgrabe.

How like a star you rose upon my life, 
   Shedding fair radiance o’er my darkened hour! 
At your uprise swift fled the turbid strife 
   Of grief and fear,—so mighty was your power! 
And I must weep that you now disappear, 
   Casting eclipse upon my cheerless night— 
My heaven deserting for another sphere, 
   Shedding elsewhere your aye-regretted light.

An Hesperus no more to gild my eve, 
   You glad the morning of another heart; 
And my fond soul must mutely learn to grieve, 
   While thus from every joy it swells apart. 
Yet I may worship still those gentle beams, 
   Though not on me they shed their silver rain; 
And thought of you may linger in my dreams, 
   And Memory pour balm upon my pain.

We roam but see nothing of the moss-colored divine 
while noon throws a redwood shadow on the plaza.  
On the screen: two sallow-skinned children embrace. 
Their bodies say, fight; their bodies say, hide. 

While noon throws a redwood shadow on the plaza; 
summer flecks by, and you are almost gone.   
Your body says, fight; your body says, hide.  
You speak to a girl in the wind-swept garden.

Summer flecks by, and you are almost gone. 
You donate your secret to June’s long days. 
You speak to a girl in the wind-swept garden. 
The color of my suffering is green unaware.

You donate your secret to June’s long days. 
I retrieve my guilt and confess it to the sky.  
The color of my suffering is green. Unaware,  
you touch me like sunset on granite.

I retrieve my guilt & confess it to the sky.  
This solstice may be the end of me, I say. 
You touch me like sunset on granite. 
Sometimes, I giggle at the drama of our age.

This solstice may be the end of me, I say. 
Your eyes turn Maine Coon, choked, lionlike. 
Sometimes, I giggle at the drama of our age.  
Whose unmooring prowls in us now?

Your eyes turn Maine Coon, choked, lionlike. 
Why do we short the long of desire? 
Whose unmooring prowls in us now? 
We roam but see nothing of the moss-colored divine.  

Sitting deeply in grief,  
in deep grief and mourning  
morning and night.

The knights nowhere  
to be seen. Sight  
is a witness, complicit. 

From minarets and church pits,  
we illicit faith. The eve  
of Christ’s birth 

almost here. Hear the Earth  
as it receives the body’s  
soft and exposed tissues, the heart 

hard as a rock, the rock no longer 
figurative. We lost even  
the figures of our children. The outline 

of a body, jagged front line,  
bulldozed memory. Our eyes open  
to the mouth of a weapon. 

Someone, somewhere, is playing  
the violin in the background  
of violence.

Before all of this, we didn’t think    
too often of heaven. We wanted to fly  
through clouds, not above them. 

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.

Doom is dark and deeper than any sea-dingle.
Upon what man it fall
In spring, day-wishing flowers appearing,
Avalanche sliding, white snow from rock-face,
That he should leave his house,
No cloud-soft hand can hold him, restraint by women;
But ever that man goes
Through place-keepers, through forest trees,
A stranger to strangers over undried sea,
Houses for fishes, suffocating water,
Or lonely on fell as chat,
By pot-holed becks
A bird stone-haunting, an unquiet bird.

There head falls forward, fatigued at evening,
And dreams of home,
Waving from window, spread of welcome,
Kissing of wife under single sheet;
But waking sees
Bird-flocks nameless to him, through doorway voices
Of new men making another love.

Save him from hostile capture,
From sudden tiger’s leap at corner;
Protect his house,
His anxious house where days are counted
From thunderbolt protect,
From gradual ruin spreading like a stain;
Converting number from vague to certain,
Bring joy, bring day of his returning,
Lucky with day approaching, with leaning dawn.

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.

^{Alliterate often equals anyone can stutter.
—Louis Zukofsky}

CLASSROOM

Backpack. Back to school. A bookworm. Late nights book-warmed. Tall tales. Tell-Tale Heart. Stone soup. Mike Fink. A pink eraser. Ser & estar. A star atop the page. A typed page. Cut & paste. Sometimes I’m slow paced. Trace a wave. Cursive. Cursor. Sine curve. Frogger goes kerplunk. We speak & spell. Read & write. I do a rewrite. Rhyme by rote. Hey Diddle Diddle. Digits double. In my textbook I doodle. Sketch pad. Scotch tape. Scratch & sniff. Pear-fect. Berry good. Grape going. Study group. I glue some goop. A great big gooey glob. We spin the globe. Hong Kong. Fiji. Cancún. New York, New York. Blue ink. Half inch. Fluid ounce. I ace the exam for once. Pop quiz. Pop fizz. Scissors. Seat sore. Stegosaurus. From my seat paper planes soared. Chalkboard. I’m stark bored. The chalk broke. Pop Rocks. Pop cans. I can’t. You can. Pop-top. Twist the tab & crush. Orange Crush. Secret crush. Love letter. Origami amore. Already going steady. Valentine-vexed. Doodle-doted. Dimple-dappled. You’re dumped. Humpty Dumpty. We play pin the tail on the donkey. Mountain Dew. Scooby Doo. Dewey Decimals. Dutifully I return The Snowy Day by the due date. Dried dates. Damp day. Windowsill. Pencil. Pen swell. Pen pals. Pentagons. Going, gone. The bus is gone. Let go. Lego. Logo turtle. Or. Are. Oreo. Oregon Trail. Homework. Homeward. Sidewalk. The sign says walk. All week.

^{—after Pedro Pietri}

We were      nocturnal players, 

Bats in ball,      & ever since Don Pedro said 

There are Puerto Ricans      on the moon 

The night is      my cousin      & the clustered stars 

My cousin      & Saturn’s little ring of smoke      my second cousin 

Though not the same ring      as a freshly snapped Medalla bottle      which

My abuelo      also named Pedro      apparently liked too much 

But back to the moon      the first rock      dollop of sugar  

& slinging hoop in the dark      which we learned was a game

      of approximation

Less math      more muscle memory      less Mozart      more Machito 

Like descarga      more riff      more wrist. 

We set our eyes      on not seeing      but feeling a thing through, indeed

From elbow to hip      wherever the orange lip might lead

On the road home the tide is rising.

Riding the road-tide is dangerous 
but it’s not safe to stand still. 
Hang on the verge & you drown.

I’m going along for the tide. 
I may see more riders further on. 
Drowning must wait till I get there

and who knows who might be waiting 
with a flashlight, a thermos, 
even a raft or canoe. 

I wear my grandmother’s teeth on my wrist. She mostly  
used her teeth for smiling. Hi gang! Big and open, her whole 
arm scribing overhead in joy as we approached. Seems  
almost caricature, but it was real. She was real. I miss her. I don’t 

know how she stayed, after all her losses, so cheerful, alone.  
Decades alone, widowed young, alone by choice 
in her bed. The teeth I wear are not from her mouth, but  
from a jaw older maybe even than humans: walrus, fossilized, 

bought before I was born that time she and her husband 
flew a small plane they could borrow cheap, thanks to  
his job at Boeing—details, details, the small gold chain 
that double-checks the bracelet’s clasp, how much security

the details give us—to Alaska. My goodness, the romance,  
the time, their lucky, white, poor and upwardly mobile, just- 
post-depression, educated selves. Those teeth of hers  
I wear are not recently of ocean or ice, and absolutely not 

of this new ocean, this new thin ice, but dug from earth  
and browned by earth, the rest of their original life gone. The  
nerves and blood, the soft gums, the sensitive, broad 
mystacial pad and its seeking whiskers. My grandmother 

wasn’t like a fossil, which is what some people get called  
when they get old. In the care home where she lived  
for a few years or months (time blurs), they said her smile hid  
her decline. I think again about the pass politeness, rote

manners, can give—their grace or shroud. Inside my mouth,  
all my teeth sit still in their sockets, minus little bits which, in some  
cases, are filled with expensive compounds my grandmother’s 
daughter could afford and which I did not tend or value

enough when their care became mine. I know how loose  
teeth can be when a life hasn’t held them or when life’s flush  
fades, when the flesh sags off. I’ve found so many seal jaws,  
dolphin jaws, porpoise jaws on the beach, in dunes, and, 

whether I pocket anything or not, I always wiggle them  
in their ragged sockets, count the cusps, touch each point, which  
tells me not what they said but who, as a species, they were.  
Are.  Hi, gang!  So sweet, so eager to see even our shitty, selfish 

teenage selves. Inside my mouth, there’s a whole lot  
of impolite, but I know how to close my lips around it.  
The teeth on my wrist from my grandmother might  
be fragile. I don’t know and can’t unless I try to break 

them. She was such a joyous force. She was such a joyous  
force. It makes me afraid to pull the bracelet over the knob  
of my wrist, to stretch the old elastic, because I have lost  
so much joy already, which is entirely my fault. She seemed, 

to me, to always be vibrant with care. The teeth are loose  
on my wrist. Once, someone put her finger on the small  
spur no one notices below the last knuckle of my hand and  
that is why I bought a different bracelet that touches me 

where she touched me, with the same, delicate precision.  
I hardly ever wear the other bracelet, the teeth, which  
are really little squares, like lozenges to ease a throat, and 
haven’t I been sore-voiced?  Hey, gang!  Her arms waving

like she was guiding a plane to the gate. The way  
she would love whoever saw her. Really. Whoever.

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.

I am a child  
of wonder again and 
rain tells me to watch 
for snails and slugs. 

I gather dirt, sand, and sticks 
for the terrarium 
where I make a safe home 
away from footsteps, fast cars, and ditch water.

I don’t want them to die  
so I make them  
a space for living. 

I ask my ma to buy lettuce 
because in the book I got from the library 
I learned they will eat lettuce.

I am  
greedy to learn  
what keeps everything alive.

Their spiral shapes leave shiny trails behind. 
I imagine I am a snail leaving  
magic everywhere I go.

The wave yearns at the cliff foot: its pale arms   
    Reach upward and relapse, like down-dropped hands;   
The baffled tides slip backward evermore,   
    And a long sighing murmurs round the sands . . .  

My heart is as the wave that lifts and falls:   
    Tall is the cliff—oh! tall as that dim star   
That crowns its summit hidden in a cloud—   
    Tall as the dark and holy heavens are.  

The sad strange wreckage of full many ships   
    Burdens the bitter waters’ ebb and flow:   
Gold diadems, like slowly falling flames,   
    Lighten the restless emerald gulfs below;  

And withered blossoms float, and silken webs,   
    And pallid faces framed in wide-spread hair,   
And bubble-globes that seethe with peacock hues,   
    And jewelled hands, half-open, cold and fair.  

Sea creatures move beneath: their swift sleek touch   
    Begets sweet madness and unworthy fire—   
Scaled women—triton-things, whose dark seal eyes   
    Are hot and bloodshot with a man’s desire.  

Their strange arms clasp: the sea-pulse in their veins   
    Beats like the surf of the immortal sea—   
Strong, glad and soulless: elemental joys   
    Bathe with green flame the sinking soul of me.  

Downward and down—to passionate purple looms,   
    Athrill with thought-free, blurred, insatiate life,   
Where the slow-throbbing sea-flow sways like weed   
    Dim figures blended in an amorous strife—  

I am enclasped, I sink; but the wave lifts,   
    With all its freight of treasure and of death,   
In sullen foamless yearning towards the height   
    Where the star burns above the vapour-wreath; 

And a deep sob goes up, and all the caves   
    Are filled with mourning and a sorrow-sound.   
The green fire fades: I rise: I see the star—   
    Gone are the triton arms that clipped me round. 
   
Hope beats like some lost bird against the cliff—   
    The granite cliff above the burdened wave,   
Whose fleeting riches are more desolate   
    Than gems dust-mingled in a nameless grave . . . 

When all the wordless thirsts of Time are slaked,   
    And all Earth’s yearning hungers sweetly fed,   
And the Sea’s grief is stilled, and the Wind’s cry,   
    And Day and Night clasp on one glowing bed—  

Oh! in that hour shall clay and flame be blent—   
    Love find its perfect lover, breast on breast—   
When dream and dreamer at the last are one,   
    And joy is folded in the arms of jest. 

^{Prince tour, Public Hall, November 21, 1982}

By the time I got here, the album
            was already history. 1999 dropped in 1982, 
when I worried about what I’d do with my life

after high school, and as I fretted over 
            how my hair looked on mornings 
before I left for school; though, sadly,

my worries were not in that order. 
            But when I faced the end of the century, 
I realized I knew little more then than I did when I sang

along with Prince at the Coliseum in Cleveland.
            On that night, I didn’t know a concert could be history. 
Me, just living in a moment of not recalling any moment

before this one, which must be what joy
            was, but what did I know? No one understood 
what a new century would look like,

and I didn’t gather that I’d lose loved
            ones, soon after the pages of the calendar tore away.
Back then, I didn’t understand what I’d be

if Prince had not been. Now, years later, 
            “life is just a party, and parties weren’t meant to last.”
His lyrics weigh on me, as I grow older and ill,

and years later I’ll barely remember this moment 
            of simply remembering, just another day called today.
But this time, even now, I know more:

I know, for instance, even as I hum a tune 
            and bring forth memories of that night, 
I’ve already become a point in history

before I even finish this song.

The sun had not yet risen  
the stars made their way to the center of the sky  
congregating on the throne of tomorrow.

The commandment of two breaths: 
Live and Pray 

            The seen and unseen.

My child reminds me 
there were once whales  
here in this expanse of sand.

            The seen and unseen.

Like the dormer that cuts through the ceiling  
and perches a body in the sky 
for the looking.

             The seen and unseen.

We float in whatever ways we can  
knowing our suspension in the sky brings us closer to our own yearnings.  
Mediates the tension of our body’s desire for earth  
and our spirit’s desire for sky. 

            The seen and unseen.

This was understood.  
Implicated in the pinnacle  
at the point of the pyramid. 

            The seen and unseen.

This was never thought of by the grave diggers  
who left their spirits to deepen their flesh into earth.

Who gave their way to the “partition of finds.”

Blinded by the seeing 
collapsing the centuries 
into cold marble halls.

If ever you see my hands in cuffs 
know that somewhere near 
a museum is burning.
 

Is it love that drifts your head toward your white, cool shoulder, heat-smitten rose too tense for the white throat? Is it love that paints the eyelid ledge with iris; the weariness of days I dare not know you suffered? Is it love that hurts or thought?

Has sleep conquered love? Have you spent your love on the white cytisus ridges, the Nereid-blue water, the wing-dip of the hills?

Are my own limbs but a sheath for your intensity, my love. 

1.   
She was no taller than the children, 
who would eventually be able to look down  
upon the oiled braids tied with black cloth, 
and greased strings threading her earlobes. 
If she’d worn jewelry, it would have been to a church. 
Still, we couldn’t imagine her in those churches, except 
to see her brother off, laid in land the Methodists owned.   
Or for her wedding—but that had been a small gathering 
at the wooden shack whose dark rooms promised adventure. 
In one corner, the iron bed surfaced in daylight, pulling  
all the worn contents of the room toward it, then sank again  
in evening, like our astral bodies dragged by an undertow.   
Grandmama, little pirate, burying the children  
under quilts and old coats, weighting our slumber with 
leftover clothes of the stubborn dead, seeding our dreams with  
haints hiding under the house, pacing the yard, perching in trees.

2.    
The green truck poised over roiling traffic  
beneath the bridge’s guardrail,  
father dead drunk, wedged behind the wheel. 
Whispers as we feigned sleep—hurt deciphered from garbled cries. 
Grandmama and mama’s prayers that brought him back  
despite ours.

^{—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.

must look so small, undetectable even,
from the vantage point where I imagine 

a god could see me, and I do sometimes  
imagine a god like a sentient star

out beyond where our instruments 
could find it, then I talk myself 

out of the image. Out of the concept
entirely. From a distance, I know 

I’m an ant tunneling my way 
through sand between plastic panels, 

watched—or not—from outside. 
My puny movements on this planet, 

all the things I’ve done or built 
with my own body or mind, seem 

like nothing at all. But from the inside 
this life feels enormous, unlimited 

by the self—by selfness—
vaster even than the sparkling 

dark it can’t be seen from.

inertia’s at the front door lobbying for a way into the funk
           but packed the wrong tools, left
blues back where bebop jumped over the hammer.
           sold God’s imagination short.
now we’re here dancing again, Bessie’s song got my hips loose
           & what goods a revolution without a two-step?

beloved, there’s a party tonight & everybody gon’ be there

tonight, in Oakland, we carve up maplewood in steel-toe boots,
           stomp keys into the myth of whiteness. uncle sam’s teeth
rattle. Huey clinks the bars with Plato’s Republic between
           here and LA, conjures the one & three count. american chaos.
bass haunts the dichotomy, counterproduces the violence. troubles
           innocence. tonight in Oakland, the party is everywhere
& we cant distinguish one riff from another. black smoke funnels
           out the attic & the lamp shade’s crooked from the kickdrum—

beloved, (i said) there’s a party tonight & everybody gon’ be there

i’m trading in my gold tooth for a hand grenade
           at the back door: morning glory, milkweed, poppy.
the rest have names too, distinct & communal as sin.
           would you believe me if i told you miracles were small
enough to hold? scorched amber. night blooms. forgive me,
           sometimes the light blinds me to the light.

beloved, it’s a party tonight. everybodys here

^{i.m. Paula Merwin}

All this time, I felt like I had to describe 
the things I did, and what was done to me,
how I had to wander a strange world for years, 
needing to be busy, sleeping in strange beds, 
searching through cities for chapels to weep in, 
learning the stitches that keep a ripped heart 
together for a while, when what I really need 
to say is that it rained all night and morning, 
and the drops were a percussion on the trees,
and after the sun rose, I saw an insect land on the railing 
and take shelter, and a bird drank from a leaf. 
Wild pigs exploded from the bushes where they’d hid,
and the sage in the bowl smelt of memory and musk.
A toad sat—still as any god—on the wet stone.