^{I love you but I don’t know you
               —Mennonite Woman}

When I was seven, I walked home
with Dereck DeLarge, my arm
 
slung over his skinny shoulders,
after-school sun buffing our lunch boxes.
 
So easy, that gesture, so light— 
the kind of love that lands like a leaf.
 
It was 1963.  
We were two black boys
 
whose snaggle-toothed grins 
held a thousand giggles.
 
Remember? Remember
wanting to play
 
every minute, as if that 
was why we were born?
 
Those hands that bring us
shouting into this life
 
must open like a fanfare 
of big band horns.
 
Though this world is nothing
 
like where we’d been, 
we come anyway, astonished
 
as if to Mardi Gras in full swing.
There must be a time
 
when a child’s heart builds 
a chocolate sunflower
 
while katydids burnish the day
with their busy wings.
 
This itching fury that 
holds me now—this knowing
 
the early welcome
that once lived inside me
 
was somehow sent away:
how I talk myself back
 
into all the regular disguises
but still walk these streets
 
believing in the weather
of the unruined heart.
 
My friends, with crow’s feet
edging their eyes,
 
keep looking for a kinder
city, though they don’t
 
want to seem naïve.
When was the last time
 
you wrapped your arm
around someone’s shoulder
 
and walked him home?

Little things I’ll give to you—
Till your fingers learn to press 
Gently 
On a loveliness;

Little things and new—
Till your fingers learn to hold
Love that’s fragile,
Love that’s old.

The lamp is like a capsized ship

——or like a lantern gone drunk
 

And she’s to sleep by it

——or stare wide-eyed at its light askew
 

And she’s to read to it

——to put it to sleep
 

And she’s to dream in it

——warmly aglow as a leopard
 

whose body is shadow and light

——Whose body isn’t?
 

She’s missing again

——Where did she go?
 

Curled-in

——Is she spiraling?
 

Less energy than that…

——Will the bedsheets accommodate her?
 

She’s alone in them, alone where she can

easily breathe
 

——despite the horrors the stretchers the gasping …?

How can anyone

——breathe easily …. She must
 

be still as a Bradford Pear in uneasy shadow…

——That tree that self-destructs that tree that neuters the real pear trees

What a blow it was so beautiful and erect at first—

——and she so lonely
 

Lonely as a cup

——Here is a card:

She needs the Lion today, the one who leaves

gold footprints in the marsh

Hello Leander, tucked into cloth, tiny lion
who yawns through the virus and tear gas.
You are a new scent of heat.
Before any scar grazes your legs
I would show you the rows of bicycles
in burned colors, and whistles and cardinals
who pin the cold snow. You hold a small
share of what it means to be here.
When the air shatters around you,
gold and marine, please know you belong.
You are half sky, half butterfly net, alive
to friends and strangers, fast to net
and trust. There is nothing
that is not worth much. Arrayed
in overalls and tackle-box, you should grow
to see the deep green rains, the roads
brushing the clouds. To compass
all you have done from a porch in late life
and listen to the bees who, woolen
and undeterred, have returned. I hope
you stay warm inside the white dusk of
morning. No one stays unscathed
but you have days of summer to grow
into your thoughts and learn the great
caring tasks. You have yards of treelight
to race through under the birds’ low song-
swept radiances. The trills you hear
are glass grace. They are singing.

more than the obvious metaphor
of depth for roots to fully extend
of leaves elevated to eat blue light
of fingers smooshing generative dirt

it’s when I hear myself sing to you
crassula ovata, as I upheave you
croon ballads as I displace you
shawl melody around earthquake 

as if to say to your bright fat leaves
nothing is promised, sweet green girl
I know the terror of unhoming
dance this one with me

                The world is a beautiful place 
                                                           to be born into 
if you don’t mind happiness 
                                             not always being 
                                                                        so very much fun 
       if you don’t mind a touch of hell
                                                       now and then
                just when everything is fine
                                                             because even in heaven
                                they don’t sing 
                                                        all the time

             The world is a beautiful place
                                                           to be born into
       if you don’t mind some people dying
                                                                  all the time
                        or maybe only starving
                                                           some of the time
                 which isn’t half so bad
                                                      if it isn’t you

      Oh the world is a beautiful place
                                                          to be born into
               if you don’t much mind
                                                   a few dead minds
                    in the higher places
                                                    or a bomb or two
                            now and then
                                                  in your upturned faces
         or such other improprieties
                                                    as our Name Brand society
                                  is prey to
                                              with its men of distinction
             and its men of extinction
                                                   and its priests
                         and other patrolmen
                                                         and its various segregations
         and congressional investigations
                                                             and other constipations
                        that our fool flesh
                                                     is heir to

Yes the world is the best place of all
                                                           for a lot of such things as
         making the fun scene
                                                and making the love scene
and making the sad scene
                                         and singing low songs of having 
                                                                                      inspirations
and walking around 
                                looking at everything
                                                                  and smelling flowers
and goosing statues
                              and even thinking 
                                                         and kissing people and
     making babies and wearing pants
                                                         and waving hats and
                                     dancing
                                                and going swimming in rivers
                              on picnics
                                       in the middle of the summer
and just generally
                            ‘living it up’

Yes
   but then right in the middle of it
                                                    comes the smiling
                                                                                 mortician

                                           

After Hanif Abdurraqib & Frank O’Hara
 
It is the last class of the day & I am teaching a classroom of sixth graders about poetry & across town a man has walked into a Starbucks & blown himself up while some other men throw grenades in the street & shoot into the crowd of civilians & I am 27 years old which means I am the only person in this room who was alive when this happened in New York City & I was in eighth grade & sitting in my classroom for the first class of the day & I made a joke about how mad everyone was going to be at the pilot who messed up & later added, how stupid do you have to be for it to happen twice? & the sixth graders are practicing listing sensory details & somebody calls out blue skies as a sight they love & nobody in this classroom knows what has happened yet & they do not know that the school is in lockdown which is a word we did not have when I was in sixth grade & the whole class is laughing because a boy has called out dog poop as a smell he does not like & what is a boy if not a glowing thing learning what he can get away with & I was once a girl in a classroom on the lucky side of town who did not know what had happened yet & electrical fire is a smell I did not know I did not like until my neighborhood smelled that way for weeks & blue skies is a sight I have never trusted again & poetry is what I reached for in the days when the ash would not stop falling & there is a sixth grade girl in this classroom whose father is in that Starbucks & she does not know what has happened yet & what is a girl if not a pulsing thing learning what the world will take from her & what if I am still a girl sitting in my classroom on the lucky side of town making a careless joke looking at the teacher for some kind of answer & what if I am also the teacher without any answers looking back at myself & what is an adult if not a terrified thing desperate to protect something you cannot save? & how lucky do you have to be for it to miss you twice? & tomorrow a sixth grade girl will come to class while her father has the shrapnel pulled from his body & maybe she will reach for poetry & the sky outside the classroom is so terribly blue & the students are quiet & looking at me & waiting for a grown-up or a poem or an answer or a bell to ring & the bell rings & they float up from their seats like tiny ghosts & are gone

The splendid body is meat, flexor
and flesh pumping, pulling, anti-
gravity maverick just standing
upright all over museums and
in line for the bus and in the laundry
aisle where it’s just standing there
smelling all the detergent like
it’s no big deal. So what if a couple
of its squishy parts are suspended
within, like beach-bungled jellyfish
in a shelved jar, not doing anything?
Nothing on this side of the quantum
tunnel is perfect. The splendid body,
though, is splendid in the way
it keeps its steamy blood in, no matter
how bad it blushes. And splendid
in how it opens its mouth and
these invisible vibrations come
rippling out—if you put your wrist
right up to it when that happens
it feels somewhat like the feet
of many bees. The splendid body
loves the juniper smell of gin, loves
the warmth of printer-fresh paper,
and the sound fallen leaves make
under the wheel of a turning car.
If you touch it between the legs,
the splendid body will quicken
like bubbles in a just-on teakettle.
It knows it can’t exist forever, so
it’s collecting as many flavors as it can—
saffron, rainwater, fish-skin, chive.
Do not distract it from its purpose,
which is to feel everything it can find.

Today I will praise.

I will praise the sun

For showering its light

On this darkened vessel.

I will praise its shine.

Praise the way it wraps

My skin in ultraviolet ultimatums

Demanding to be seen.

I will lift my hands in adoration

Of how something so bright

Could be so heavy.

I will praise the ground

That did not make feast of these bones.

Praise the casket

That did not become a shelter for flesh.

Praise the bullets

That called in sick to work.

Praise the trigger

That went on vacation.

Praise the chalk

That did not outline a body today.

Praise the body

For still being a body

And not a headstone.

Praise the body,

For being a body and not a police report

Praise the body

For being a body and not a memory

No one wants to forget.

Praise the memories.

Praise the laughs and smiles

You thought had been evicted from your jawline

Praise the eyes

For seeing and still believing.

For being blinded from faith

But never losing their vision

Praise the visions.

Praise the prophets

Who don’t profit off of those visions.

Praise the heart

For housing this living room of emotions

Praise the trophy that is my name

Praise the gift that is my name.

Praise the name that is my name

Which no one can plagiarize or gentrify

Praise the praise.

How the throat sounds like a choir.

The harmony in your tongue lifts

Into a song of adoration.

Praise yourself

For being able to praise.

For waking up,

When you had every reason not to.

Daughter, the light of
the future is apricot,
and in it you are not
the thigh-child pointing
her earnest index finger
to the yellow balloon clearing
the willows and drifting
higher, you’re the balloon. I’m
the grasping hand. Or I’m
the oo in balloon. I’ll meet you
there. I’m the brown
strings, formerly violets, you
didn’t water. I’m the hole
in the photo, you’re the un-
safety scissors. I’m the lint
in the corners of my purse
after you steal the coins,
brown-bag lunch you pitch
after leaving my house, buttons
you undo after I've okayed
your blouse. Poems
you burn in the sink. Poems
that had to go and use
your name, never mind
that soon you’ll be sixteen, hate
your name. I’m the resemblance
you deny, fat ass
you hope your boyfriends
never see. I’ll meet you
there, that is my promise
and my threat, with this
yellow balloon as my
witness, even if I’m
dead, I’ll meet you there.

^{After Amiri Baraka and Stefania Gomez}

Poems are bullshit unless they are broken 
like a horse, like a dog kicked in the ribs, 
Like your favorite toy that’s missing an arm.

Love can make you feel used.
I want the poem that limps back to me.
Poems should hurt like love,
like ice water on your teeth
like a massage to smooth out a cramped muscle.

Give me the poem that’s like leather.
Give me the poem that smells like gasoline.
I want a poem that is a warning,
a poem that makes me check to see
if I left the shotgun by the door,
a poem that’s a runny nose, a sneeze, a poem
that’s the moment the sky turns green.