^{to Mary Rose}

Here is our little yard  

too small            for a pool  
or chickens   let alone 

a game of tag or touch 
football       Then 

again   this stub-  
born patch  

of crabgrass  is just 
big enough      to get down  

flat on our backs 
with eyes wide open    and face 

the whole gray sky  just 
as a good drizzle 

begins                   I know  
we’ve had a monsoon  

of grieving to do  
which is why  

I promise    to lie 
beside you  

for as long as you like  
or need  

We’ll let our elbows 
kiss     under the downpour  

until we’re soaked  
like two huge nets  
                    left  

beside the sea  
whose heavy old

ropes strain  
stout with fish 

If we had to     we could  
feed a multitude  

with our sorrows  
If we had to  

we could name   a loss  
for every other  

drop of rain   All these  
foreign flowers 

you plant from pot  
to plot  

with muddy fingers  
—passion, jasmine, tuberose—  

we’ll sip 
the dew from them  

My darling                here
is the door I promised  

Here
is our broken bowl Here  

                        my hands  
In the home of our dreams  

the windows open  
in every  

weather—doused  
or dry—May we never  

be so parched 

^{translated from the Spanish by William George Williams
              To Luis G. Monge}

I come from the remote borders
of the land of oblivion. My songs
will not sound beneath your balconies,
I am the singer of the broken sanctuaries.

Artist, dreamer, sensitive and tender,
my music is a voice of affirmation . . .
I am like a winter twilight
in love’s garden.

I love the fire of the sun. My delights are
the flaming rose, the bleeding pink,
and I love the white swans on the lakes
and the blue clouds in the wind. 

I love the sad—for life is Pain—
I love your black half-opened eyes
fixed in an unknown direction
where dead loves are forgotten.

I know full well that love is sleep . . .
and my soul sleepless. You are not
to blame for my sorrow. You are a dream . . .
I call you when I wake and you do not come!

You can come only as does death,
silent and fatal. You are anxiety,
no matter, come; my heart is strong . . .
Shed your petals in my hands, faded rose. 

I knew in my dreams that love is good
and today, impenitent, a rebel against love,
I weep upon the lilies of your breast
and kiss you on the forehead.

Two years into anorexia recovery, 
when I begin to miss dying more than ever, 
my cat begins to hide. 
She disappears for hours and I find her 
hammocked in the lining of my couch. 
She has hollowed it out with her teeth 
and stares at me through cobwebbed eyes. 

I am startled at my own anger. 
After all the time and love I’ve given her, 
I can’t forgive her turning away like this. 
My partner reminds me that cats 
do not know how to be cruel, 
but they do know survival and fear. 
Each day, I reach into the dark 
mouth of the couch and pull her, 
claws and all, back into life. 

Weeks later, she dies with no one home. 
I discover the body and the urge to blame 
myself glows hot in my chest. 
How could I let her die 
in an empty house? 
How could I be so cruel. 

On the drive to donate her body, 
my partner apologizes with every breath. 
We pull over and he cries into my coat, 
How could I let this happen? 
And I know that if he feels guilty too, 
maybe the blame belongs to neither of us. 

This is the person who tried 
to breathe life back into the cat’s corpse, 
without realizing what he was doing. 
He did it because his instincts told him to, 
because every cell in his body is good. 
For weeks, the memory will make him 
shiver, gag, rinse the moment from his mouth. 

This is the person who gave everything 
to keep me alive, when letting me die 
was the easiest thing to do. 
He never stopped looking for me 
when I hid in the hollows of myself and my heart 
became a shadowy hallway of locked doors. 

This is the person who, if I died 
as the doctor said I would, 
would surely blame himself, 
and I would bang my phantom fists 
against the plexiglass of the living world, 
screaming No! 

I did not die. 
And when I was stuck in the hospital, 
sobbing as I pictured him living our life alone, 
I wrote him a letter asking how 
he could ever forgive me. 
He wrote back saying I would 
rather miss you for a while 
than miss you forever. 

In the car now, he asks how 
we’ll ever survive this 
and I say Together. 

as a child, i learned
while killing, do not think about being killed.

            when you are five, you will watch your father,
            while skinning a deer, rip the hide from the muscle
            like pulling apart the velcro on your pink light-up sneakers
            after you get home from your first day of kindergarten.

as a child, i learned
the right body can be resurrected to walk on water.

            it is the summer after second grade and
            insects you will never learn the name of float on top of the river,
            and you watch as they glide and you hold your breath.

            just trust the water, they said.
            trust you will float, and you will float.

            you were always a child that sank.

as a child, i learned
when a rabbit dies, it will scream so loud
you will think of this death-sound with every other death after.
even the quiet ones, as if this loudness could out-wail death,
as if there is no other option but to break open the air
with your grief the same way your father cracked apart the
deer’s ribs to pull its heart out.

            you have never eaten another animal’s heart,
            but you watch your father cut the bottom third off with a pocket knife
            and skewer it along a stick he finds by the edge of the woods.

            when it emerges, gleaming and slick from the smoke of the fire,
            dripping with grease and blood-fat,
            you smell this heart-third
            and even though you can still see your father’s hands
            red and pulped and trembling
            as he pulls out the center of this creature,
            you can’t help but notice your mouth water.

now, you think of which parts of yourself
you will slice off to make a meal from,
how you can rip your girlhood off you
with nothing but the right pair of hands,
which parts you could snap the blood vessels from,
easy as pulling out a weed,
all your good blood shaken loose like so much dirt.

            so consider this a window,
            consider the surgeon a precise and humble butcher,
            who fills the future with your own blood,
            which is, after all,
            the only water you’ve ever found safe enough to trust,
to close your eyes in,
and float.

^{(November, 1918)}

                                             1

Peace now for every fury has had her day,
Their natural make is moribund, they cease,
They carry the inward seeds of quick decay,
Build breakwaters for storm but build on peace. 
The mountains’ peace answers the peace of the stars, 
Our petulances are cracked against their term. 
God built our peace and plastered it with wars, 
Those frescoes fade, flake off, peace remains firm. 
In the beginning before light began
We lay or fluttered blind in burdened wombs, 
And like that first so is the last of man,
When under death for husband the amorous tombs 
Are covered and conceive; nine months go by
No midwife called, nine years no baby’s cry.

                                             2

Peace now, though purgatory fires were hot 
They always had a heart something like ice 
That coldly peered and wondered, suffering not 
Nor pleased in any park, nor paradise 
Of slightly swelling breasts and beautiful arms 
And throat engorged with very carnal blood. 
It coldly peered and wondered, “Strong God your charms 
Are glorious, I remember solitude. 
Before youth towered we knew a time of truth 
To have eyes was nearly rapture.” Peace now, for war 
Will find the cave that childhood found and youth.
Ten million lives are stolen and not one star 
Dulled; wars die out, life will die out, death cease, 
Beauty lives always and the beauty of peace.

                                             3

Peace to the world in time or in a year,
In the inner world I have touched the instant peace. 
Man’s soul’s a flawless crystal coldly clear,
A cool white mansion that he yields in lease
To tenant dreams and tyrants from the brain 
And riotous burnings of the lovelier flesh.
We pour strange wines and purples all in vain. 
The crystal remains pure, the mansion flesh.
All the Asian bacchanals and those from Thrace 
Lived there and left no wine-mark on the walls. 
What were they doing in that more sacred place 
All the Asian and the Thracian bacchanals? 
Peace to the world to-morrow or in a year, 
Peace in that mansion white, that crystal clear.

                                             4

Peace now poor earth. They fought for freedom’s sake, 
She was starving in a corner while they fought. 
They knew not whom they stabbed by Onega Lake, 
Whom lashed from Archangel, whom loved, whom sought. 
How can she die, she is the blood unborn, 
The energy in earth’s arteries beating red, 
The world will flame with her in some great morn, 
The whole great world flame with her, and we be dead. 
Here in the west it grows by dim degrees, 
In the east flashed and will flame terror and light. 
Peace now poor earth, peace to that holier peace 
Deep in the soul held secret from all sight. 
That crystal, the pure home, the holier peace, 
Fires flaw not, scars the cruelest cannot crease.

                                             5

South of the Big Sur River up the hill
Three graves are marked thick weeds and grasses heap, 
Under the forest there I have stood still
Hours, thinking it the sweetest place to sleep … 
Strewing all-sufficient death with compliments
Sincere and unrequired, coveting peace.
Boards at the head not stones, the text’s rude paints 
Mossed, rain-rubbed … wasting hours of scanty lease 
To admire their peace made perfect. From that height 
But for the trees the whole valley might be seen,
But for the heavy dirt, the eye-pits no light
Enters, the heavy dirt, the grass growing green
Over the dirt, the molelike secretness,
The immense withdrawal, the dirt, the quiet, the peace.

                                             6

Women cried that morning, bells rocked with mirth,
We all were glad a long while afterward,
But still in dreary places of the earth
A hundred hardly fed shall labor hard
To clothe one belly and stuff it with soft meat,
Blood paid for peace but still those poor shall buy it, 
This sweat of slaves is no good wine but yet 
Sometimes it climbs to the brain. Be happy and quiet, 
Be happy and live, be quiet or God might wake.
He sleeps in the mountain that is heart of man’s heart, 
He also in promontory fists, and make
Of stubborn-muscled limbs, he will not start
For a little thing … his great hands grope, unclose, 
Feel out for the main pillars … pull down the house …

                                             7

After all, after all we endured, who has grown wise? 
We take our mortal momentary hour
With too much gesture, the derisive skies
Twinkle against our wrongs, our rights, our power.
Look up the night, starlight’s a steadying draught
For nerves at angry tension. They have all meant well,
Our enemies and the knaves at whom we’ve laughed,
The liars, the clowns in office, the kings in hell,
They have all meant well in the main… some of them tried
The mountain road of tolerance … They have made war,
Conspired, oppressed, robbed, murdered, lied and lied,
Meant well, played the loud fool … and star by star
Winter Orion pursues the Pleiades
In pale and huge parade, silence and peace.

                                             8

That ice within the soul, the admonisher
Of madness when we’re wildest, the unwinking eye 
That measures all things with indifferent stare, 
Choosing far stars to check near objects by, 
That quiet lake inside and underneath,
Strong, undisturbed by any angel of strife,
Being so tranquil seems the presence of death, 
Being so central seems the essence of life.
Is it perhaps that death and life make truce
In neutral zone while their old feud beyond
Fires the towered cities? Surely for a strange use 
He sphered that eye of flawless diamond.
It does not serve him but with line and rod 
Measures him, how indeed should God serve God?

                                             9

It does not worship him, it will not serve.
And death and life within that Eye combine,
Within that only untorturable nerve
Of those that make a man, within that shrine
Which there is nothing ever can profane,
Where life and death are sister and brother and lovers,
The golden voice of Christ were heard in vain,
The holy spirit of God visibly hovers.
Small-breasted girls, lithe women heavy-haired,
Loves that once grew into our nerves and veins,
Yours Freedom was desire that deeper dared
To the citadel where mastery remains, 
Yours to the spirit … discount the penny that is 
Ungivable, this Eye, this God, this Peace.

                                             10

All in a simple innocence I strove
To give myself away to any power,
Wasting on women’s bodies wealth of love, 
Worshiping every sunrise mountain tower;
Some failure mocked me still denying perfection,
Parts of me might be spended not the whole,
I sought of wine surrender and self-correction,
I failed, I could not give away my soul.
Again seeking to give myself I sought
Outward in vain through all things, out through God, 
And tried all heights, all gulfs, all dreams, all thought. 
I found this wisdom on the wonderful road,
The essential Me cannot be given away,
The single Eye, God cased in blood-shot clay.

                                             11

Peace to the world in time or in a year, 
But always all our lives this peace was ours. 
Peace is not hard to have, it lies more near 
Than breathing to the breast. When brigand powers 
Of anger or pain or the sick dream of sin 
Break our soul’s house outside the ruins we weep.
We look through the breached wall, why there within
All the red while our peace was lying asleep.
Smiling in dreams while the broad knives drank blood,
The robbers triumphed, the roof burned overhead,
The eternal living and untroubled God
Lying asleep upon a lily bed.
Men screamed, the bugles screamed, walls broke in the air, 
We never knew till then that He was there.

          ^{We are preparing for the wrong disaster. —Chris Begley, The Next Apocalypse}

The year I was born, the Soviet Union’s  
early warning radar system malfunctioned,  
reporting five intercontinental ballistic  
missiles in flight: a preemptive nuclear  
strike. You may have heard this story.  

How a single lieutenant colonel dismissed  
the signal as the false alarm that it was …  
but had he made a different call  
in that moment? Had he seen those five  
ghost fingers as a fist? A mushroom cloud:  

the most dangerous cliché. I hold it
in my hands on my fortieth birthday and  
it becomes a bouquet: a thousand stems  
leading to a thousand worlds in which cooler  
heads did not prevail, to a thousand  

alternate universe versions of me, born  
in the year of the apocalypse. I see myself …  
dead via radiation poisoning. Dead via  
the shutdown of the supply chain, the failure  
of the water system, the reemergence  

of previously preventable diseases. Dead  
in such manly ways: via an unlucky fall  
in a fistfight over nothing. Via a scratch,  
ignored and infected. I plucked petals, looking  
for a version of me who survives. Hoping  

to find that … you know: leather jacket,  
black motorcycle, katana strapped to my back  
version. That warrior poet, lone vessel of  
vengeance, keeping the wasteland’s unending 
tide of razor-clawed mutants at bay version.  

All these dead worlds, and he isn’t out there. 
All these visions of who I could have been, 
and not a single hero: folk, super, anti 
or otherwise. In one life, I wore a suit of armor 
and drowned in the river. In one life, I hoarded  

food and choked on it. In one life, the basement 
was so full of boxes of bullets—a tornado came 
and I had nowhere to go. No shelter. I emptied 
clip after clip into the wind. All these dead 
worlds, and we tell the same stories.  

Which is not to say that I never survive. Just 
that my survival, in every reality where it is 
possible, never belongs to me. I see myself: 
forty. Not a dual-wielding bandit warlord. Just a
neighbor, sitting in another endless community  

meeting. And how many of our ancestors have
already taught us: even after the world ends, 
there is work to do. I see myself in that work: not 
the leader, not a lone wolf, just another part of the
pack. Because in every universe in which  

I am alive, it is because of other people. And I 
don’t always like them, but I love them. In every 
universe in which I am alive, it is less because I 
could fight, and more because I could  
forgive. Because I could cooperate. Because  

I could apologize. Because I could dance. Because 
I could grow pumpkins in my backyard and leave 
them at my neighbor’s door, asking for nothing in
return. In every universe in which I am alive, I am
holding: a first aid kit, a solar panel, a sleeping

cat. Never a rusty battle ax or rocket launcher—
sure, maybe sometimes a chainsaw, but only for 
firewood. I am holding: a cooking pot, a teddy bear, 
a photo album, a basketball, a bouquet of flowers.
Survival is not a fortress. It is a garden. 

Survival is not a siren. It is a symphony. And
yeah, we fight for it sometimes, but survival is not
the fight. It is the healing after: the soft hum of
someone you trust applying the bandage, the
feeling of falling asleep in a safe place.

in the beginning was the gold rush. a time to strip sunlight from our temples.
suffering & its technology summoned a feeling. for the sake of resemblance & record,
yes, i was sick with consumption. paratactic again. made without worry as the water
(always the water) curdled. rose like a myth. as all is said was done. underneath
anesthetics, ordinary clamor, who will translate: reader, i opened onto his fist &
therein was the poem. my confessional self. ran through, rendered f/or rent. another
music could should accommodate me, meanwhile.

radiant with need, i watch the men—Kendall, Marty, Don—manifest then sob in the
sand. what was done as done. an industry of inertia in their shoulder blades. let me tell
you as i was told: days call for a citizen, darling. of emaciated retinas, a soft sight.
imperial optimism—chic. had i known what quotidian would cost. would i lie first.
wrench cardamom from between my teeth. amble towards intention. what kind of
denial could i be a wife to. allow to hound the seams. because, after it was taken i gave
it away. an urge to repeat oneself remains.

Eyes damper than before I hate EGOS. 
More THAN People 
More THAN Cars 
I hate people 
like how an ant hill does 
that’s at the bottom of the stairs 
I hate silver ears
quick to listen but never want to hear
never want to here
I MUST SPEAK SO LOUDLY TO YOU 
I mustn’t burden your thoughts any longer
I mustn’t hesitate to ask for space
because honestly it’s killing me 
backing me up in balance
where I can’t stand to fall 
placing deep deep trenches
inside of me 
I HAVE NEVER BEEN WHOLE 
Never stop to glorify
my art and assets 
I’ll hold my tongue in place 
a hole in my Pace
my words rotting my breath
biting my lips in the face of adversity
I am that anthill. 
Deeply woven and dug into ground
without even a shovel or spade
I wish I had more GRIT 
more GRIT to say I’m tired 
of being 
an ant hill 
under your boot
anticipating the thunder between each step before
I feel your soles coming to crush my foundation 
more GRIT to say
I may be small 
but damn I want a house
a condo a mansion 
one my tiny body can ache 
after reaching the top of the staircase 
I want a house that says home on the outside
and smells like one on the inside. 
I want to be a person. 
Treated, looked at, and cared for 
LIKE ONE WOULD A PERSON.
cared for like when you don’t step on that…. 
It took years for your mother to leave the abuse 
EGOS weighing down on your mother’s spine
her calcium tilting her crown
she only looks up at her king
it’ll break your mama’s back the way she cares for you like that. 
Through her eyes;
This Anthill Is Best She’s Got! 
And no matter how many soles break the foundation 
she’s rebuilt this anthill for you. 
So you can one day be 
the corporal ant in charge
conducting the search for Life, 
the meaning of curiosity. 
Be that corporal ant in the cupboard
leading the way along. 
All along your mother trying to 
piece together her anthill
in the back of the line. 
I am that anthill smooshed and spread so thin. 
striving to be that mansion
to be the best and biggest version of myself
the version of myself that has grit
my Foundation has never been solid
it is a fact I’ve come to accept. 
My anthill blooms between the crevices
of the east side
slightly tilted from childhood 
My anthill was always dug up, 
pranced apun,
fried, 
drowned, 
leaked, 
stomped, choked, 
before I had the awareness 
The sun beamin’ on my skin 
slowly adding September to my width and my anthill 
My thoughts, creations, and vibrations, 
carrying little pieces of earth 
to the surface to birth me. 
A sliver of sunlight touches my pupils every time
A piece of thought flows
in and out 
I am burying so deep but it’s never deep enough 
I can barely scratch the surface 
before I get close to my mother
Swallow me up again 
maybe 
if I dig deep enough My Foundation 
will not only be My Sanctuary
maybe
I could hear mother’s gentle song 
while I drift into sleep and play

In my middle, small submarine, pigeon pea 

               housing hormones. A star was born beside it, 

grew, then blued & popped. An angel appeared 

               before me, said, God will send a flood. Set 

my bush to burning, there I saw the future 

               blood. Marched animals onto my ark, two by two, 

they knew me by the amber stripe in my eye. 

               The wolf in me paced the deck, the serpent 

slept & bobbed for apples, the doves & ravens 

               circled, the birds of prey prayed, but, worried, 

none would land. Their sounds a frenzied 

               symphony, so loud the panther felt compelled 

to know the path & so stretched a long 

               periscope toward the multiplying horizons, 

saw the new earth & instinctively knew, 

               to make it through the density, the beasts would 

have to give up something: maybe memory, 

               surely hunger. And so, like any good God 

-mother, I laid back, unzipped myself 

               from lip to heel, I let them feast.

^{Pain—has an Element of Blank—
                        —Emily Dickinson}

there is a herald a messenger a teacher’s aide
making proclamations 
about the ins and outs of the pupils’ bodies, the holes
the wounds, let’s quantify
the historical significance of your eczema
she says, waving lasers at my scaly elbows 
why use ordinary blood, she says, when you can use strange blood
why use blood in ordinary ways when you can use it in 
surprising ways!
when you can use blood in such a way that it makes you 
aware of just how weird and malleable
how goofy and ridiculous    how bizarre it is that our
bodies are made of the ugliest simplest things

************************************************

because in the end    the teacher’s aide says 
life is about words   you say a bunch of words 
and if you don’t like them you “cross them out” 
and say a bunch of new words
it’s kind of simple if you think about it (poetry!)
you use one kind of word
and not another
one kind of blood
and not another
one kind of blank
and not another 

************************************************

teacher’s aide sits us on the ground and “puts on her poetry hat” 
repeat after me 
“pain”, “blank”, “PAIN”, “BLANK”, “Pain?” “Blank?”
“painblankpainblankpainblank”
she makes us repeat the words until they are just sounds
“painblaaaaaankpainblaaaaaankpainblaaaaaank”
until they have no meaning anymore and then slowly she says
“Pain”…………………….”Blank”……………….”Pain”……………..”Blank”
she nurtures that pause so we can feel in our skin and bones how time is passing 
and she commands us to think about the relationship between “P” and “B”
between “ain” and “lank” 
because whether you know it or not
she says
you will think about the relationship between pain and blank
between ain and lank    for the rest of your lives 

************************************************

“painblank,” she says
“painblank painblank painblank”
the kids clap their hands, whooping 
“painblank! painblank! Painblank!”

************************************************

in unison we sing:
we have no future but ourselves
our infinite realms contain our past
all we will ever feel are
New Periods of Pain!  

^{translated from the Spanish by the Benedictines of Stanbrook}

         Vivo sin vivir en mi.

I live, but yet I live not in myself, 
For since aspiring to a life more high
I ever die because I do not die.

This mystic union of Love divine,
The bond whereby alone my soul doth live, 
Hath made of God my Captive—but to me 
True liberty of heart the while doth give.
And yet my spirit is so sorely pained 
At gazing on my Lord by me enchained, 
That still I die because I do not die.

Alas, how wearisome a waste is life!
How hard a fate to bear! In exile here
Fast locked in iron fetters lies my soul,
A prisoner in earth’s mournful dungeon drear. 
But yet the very hope of some relief
Doth wound my soul with such tormenting grief, 
That still I die because I do not die.

No life so bitter, none so sad as mine
While exiled from my Lord my days are spent, 
For though to love be sweet, yet hope deferred 
Is wearisome: from life’s long banishment,
O God, relieve me! from this mournful freight 
Which crushes with a more than leaden weight,
So that I die because I do not die.

I live, since death must surely come at last;— 
Upon that hope alone my trust I build,
For when this mortal life shall die, at length 
My longings then will wholly be fulfilled.
Come, Death, come, bring life’s certainty to me, 
O tarry thou no more !—I wait for thee,
And ever die because I do not die.

From “Glosa”

Vivo sin vivir en mi,
Y tan alta vida espero,
Que muero porque no muero.

Aquesta divina unión 
Del amor con que yo vivo,
Hace á Dios ser mi cautivo,
Y libre mi corazón:
Mas causa en mí tal pasión 
Ver á Dios mi prisionero,
Que muero porque no muero.

       ¡Ay! ¡ qué larga es esta vida! 
¡Qué duros estos destierros, 
Esta cárcel y estos hierros 
En que el alma está metida! 
Solo esperar la salida 
Me causa un dolor tan fiero,
Que muero porque no muero.

       ¡Ay! ¡ qué vida tan amarga 
Do no se goza el Señor!
Y si es dulce el amor,
No lo es la esperanza larga: 
Quíteme Dios esta carga,
Mas pesada que de acero,
Que muero porque no muero.

Solo con la confianza 
Vivo de que he de morir,
Porque muriendo el vivir 
Me asegura mi esperanza:
Muerte do el vivir se alcanza,
No te tardes, que te espero,
Que muero porque no muero.

Once loyal to a cruel master,
the dog moves like a man who
not so long ago weighed a lot less
and is still figuring the difference,
what if anything to make of it.
It doesn’t matter, whatever
tenderness she’s known since;
the dog, I mean. They’re called
hesitation wounds, the marks
left where the hand, having meant 
to do harm, started to, then 
reconsidered. As if a hand
could reconsider. The dog 
wants to trust, you can see it 
in her eyes, like that part in the music 
where it still sounds like snow 
used to. There were orchards, still;
meadows. She’ll never be free.

                       The cool light turns
everything gray—my fingers settle

in the grass. Wingless cicadas sleep
beneath leaves curling like ribbons

Now is the time to feel alive. Clouds
rear back until light is the holy word

The grass blades under me come to
patterns of rest. Pendulous branches

and fibrous bark make a crown. If
I cannot be a mother I still want no

life but this one pocket of air rising
through the water like a rosary bead

I pray to a God who keeps me here
Soft light from the foliage shatters

I can give up happiness. I’ll go bury
my dreams first thing in the morning