But what do they know of endlessness? In Los Angeles
it is as though someone has copy-pasted the same 
morning over and over and over and over and over

three-hundred-and-sixty-five fucking mornings 
in a row. I wake to the same sun and stucco and slate
blue sky. If sunlight is the best disinfectant

why do seasonal birds migrated for winter choose 
my patch of sidewalk to die on? There’s no dignity
in the corpse left lying to collect sand and Snickers

wrappers in its feathers. Where I’m from, storm 
clouds and cold span entire seasons. Our sun is
an incandescent bulb that does nothing to keep us 

warm. We smother its glow when we want to
feel our shadows, elastic. Here, I get tired 
just looking at the agave outside my window. 

How it holds its shape. How it’s never allowed
to wilt. Some days I draw the bathroom blinds
and stand beneath my shower, pretending rain,

but even I can’t resist wandering outside, again,
passing, again, the turnstiles of my life, its sharp
and spiteful gardens, my face craned up for a light

that promises and promises and promises.

^{(written in her fifteenth year)}

Life is but a troubled ocean, 
     Hope a meteor, love a flower
Which blossoms in the morning beam, 
     And whithers with the evening hour. 

Ambition is a dizzy height, 
     And glory, but a lightning gleam; 
Fame is a bubble, dazzling bright, 
    Which fairest shines in fortune’s beam. 

When clouds and darkness veil the skies, 
    And sorrow’s blast blows loud and chill, 
Friendship shall like a rainbow rise, 
    And softly whisper—peace, be still.

There is music, deep and solemn 

   Floating through the vaulted arch 

When, in many an angry column, 

   Clouds take up their stormy march: 

O’er the ocean billows, heaping 

    Mountains on the sloping sands, 

There are ever wildly sweeping 

    Shapeless and invisible hands. 

Echoes full of truth and feeling 

   From the olden bards sublime, 

Are, like spirits, brightly stealing

   Through the broken walls of time. 

The universe, that glorious palace, 

    Thrills and trembles as they float, 

Like the little blossom’s chalice

     With the humming of the mote. 

On the air, as birds in meadows—

   Sweet embodiments of song—

Leave their bright fantastic shadows 

    Trailing goldenly along. 

Till, aside our armor laying, 

    We like prisoners depart, 

In the soul is music playing 

    To the beating of the heart.

^{Sestine Enchainée}

When autumn cloudlets fleck the sky
    Straying southward like birds o’er the sea,
      When the flickering sunlight on the dunes
          Is pale, as seagrasses kissed by the spray,
           Seagrasses that knew the summer of yesterday–
             Sweet are the dreams on the breeze-blown strand!

Sweet are the dreams on the breeze-blown strand!
   When cloud skiffs skim athwart the sky
       And like a phantom of yesterday
          The light house shimmers out to sea
             Pale as the sand and the sea-worn spray
               And the straggling sunlight on the dunes.

Like straggling sunlight on the dunes,
  Like opal surges that wash the strand
    With briny fragrance, adoom with the spray,
        Like wander-birds that career the sky
          To flowerlit isles of some Southern sea-
            Such are the dreams of yesterday!

Alas, our dreams of yesterday,
   Frail as the fragrance of the dunes,
     Vain as dark jewels of the sea
        Cast up on some glimmering strand,
          They vanish like cloud sails on the sky,
             Pale as seagrasses frowsed by the spray.  

Pale as seagrasses kissed by the spray,
   Is all this life of yesterday,
    All our longings for clear blue skies
       For the low cool plash on autumn dunes,
          All our musings on tide-left strands
             While birds wing southward o’er the sea.

Like birds winging southward o’er the sea
   Scattered in air-like wasteful spray,
     Sea-fancies fading on lonesome strands
       Weary of storm drifts of yesterday,
           Thus our thoughts on the sea-scooped dunes
              When autumn cloudlets fleck the sky.

Oh, autumn-sea under a cloud-flecked sky
   As caressed are thy dunes with opal spray
      So shimmer in dreams on the breeze-blown strand
         Sweet long-lost summers of yesterday.

Scent of Plumeria, and the smell of burning.
Not one or the other, but both. Destruction, and the blossom.
Sweetheart, I'm afraid. That boy with the rifle breaks
the catechism in two. And in two. Let me
see us whole, beside the sea. My body
busy, paying attention to yours. Already

we rock each other with our voices. Already
we're braiding the invisible cord. That burning
hut on T.V. isn’t ours, but could be. My body
could be hers, child at dead breast. That blossom
of blood and bone could be your face. Let me
say truth: no place, no one, is safe. The breaking 

of vows, we know, is a given. Sweetheart, you’ll break
my heart. I’ve broken yours, but look: already
you love me again. Destruction and the blossom: let me
say it another way: that soldier, burning
to become fabulous, torches the thatch (see blossomy
flame) of the enemy’s hospital: cut to my body,

clay taking shape in your hands. Body by body,
war piled on war: when will the heart break
all the way open? Thunder of mortar, blossom
in the gutter. The soldier firing the mortar already
dead. How we live: running from the burning
field, into each other's arms. Let me

lie along your side. Give me something to hold. Let me
ride those waves pouring from your fingers. The bodies
of the disappeared toll like bells. Our koan burns:
it cannot be solved. The whole and the broken,
dream and nightmare: your hand in my hair, already
familiar, could be the torturer's. Vase and its blossoms

camouflage for the bomb. You love where you can. Blossom:
a thing of promise. That's us. Now: let me
let this go. Our glass, half full—already
there's more—swells toward the rim. Ours the bodies
the death squads passed by. The refugees make a break
for the fence, running for their lives, crossing this burning,

broken, blossoming Century. They've already
paid our dues. Sweetheart, let me show you how,
hand on the body's book, now swear the burning vow.

I forget where some of their fingers started, how softly 
some of them ended. But I remember, in particular, 
the fingers of one man. We tumbled in simmering grass 
and he hooked all five behind my bottom teeth, 
then further in, like he was trying to drag a lake. 

Under the rustling sky of a Pennsylvania 
I won’t see again, his shadow was much larger 
than mine—wasn’t it? In the orchards, pale-green fruits 
were starting to ripen, lush as petals. Lush as petals, 
which is a way of saying easily pierced.

Love is not like water I can see the bottom of. 
It’s a mountain’s crags I climb, searching for a vantage point. 
I recall what I’ve let go slack in my palms, the way he bit 
his lip, then mine, how in the best photographs 
of horses, all of their legs hit the air at once.

The bark of a dog in the distance is a rusted door 
as it closes. The gray of the sky outside becomes 
the gray of the sky inside. I forget where some 
of their fingers started, how softly some of them ended.
I light a cigarette and sip my tea. The smoke mingles with the steam.

In the very early morning 
Long before Dawn time 
I lay down in the paddock 
And listened to the cold song of the grass. 
Between my fingers the green blades, 
And the green blades pressed against my body. 
“Who is she leaning so heavily upon me?” 
Sang the grass. 
“Why does she weep on my bosom,
Mingling her tears with the tears of my mystic lover?
Foolish little earth child! 
It is not yet time. 
One day I shall open my bosom 
And you shall slip in—but not weeping. 
Then in the early morning 
Long before Dawn time 
Your lover will lie in the paddock. 
Between his fingers the green blades 
And the green blades pressed against his body . . . 
My song shall not sound cold to him 
In my deep wave he will find the wave of your hair 
In my strong sweet perfume, the perfume of your kisses. 
Long and long he will lie there  . . . 
Laughing—not weeping.”

We take from life one little share,
   And say that this shall be
A space, redeemed from toil and care,
   From tears and sadness free.

And, haply, Death unstrings his bow,
   And Sorrow stands apart,
And, for a little while, we know
   The sunshine of the heart.

Existence seems a summer eve,
   Warm, soft, and full of peace;
Our free, unfettered feelings give
   The soul its full release.

A moment, then, it takes the power
   To call up thoughts that throw
Around that charmed and hallowed hour,
   This life’s divinest glow.

But Time, though viewlessly it flies,
   And slowly, will not stay;
Alike, through clear and clouded skies,
   It cleaves its silent way.

Alike the bitter cup of grief,
   Alike the draught of bliss,
Its progress leaves but moment brief
   For baffled lips to kiss.

The sparkling draught is dried away,
   The hour of rest is gone,
And urgent voices, round us, say,
   “Ho, lingerer, hasten on!”

And has the soul, then, only gained,
   From this brief time of ease,
A moment’s rest, when overstrained,
   One hurried glimpse of peace?

No; while the sun shone kindly o’er us,
   And flowers bloomed round our feet, —
While many a bud of joy before us
   Unclosed its petals sweet, —

An unseen work within was plying;
   Like honey-seeking bee,
From flower to flower, unwearied, flying,
   Laboured one faculty, —

Thoughtful for Winter’s future sorrow,
   Its gloom and scarcity;
Prescient to-day of want to-morrow,
   Toiled quiet Memory.

’Tis she that from each transient pleasure
    Extracts a lasting good;
’Tis she that finds, in summer, treasure
    To serve for winter’s food.

And when Youth’s summer day is vanished,
   And Age brings winter’s stress,
Her stores, with hoarded sweets replenished,
   Life’s evening hours will bless.

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 burned my life, that I might find 
A passion wholly of the mind, 
Thought divorced from eye and bone, 
Ecstasy come to breath alone. 
I broke my life, to seek relief 
From the flawed light of love and grief.

With mounting beat the utter fire 
Charred existence and desire. 
It died low, ceased its sudden thresh.
I found unmysterious flesh—
Not the mind’s avid substance—still
Passionate beyond the will.