It’s easy to invent a life,
God does it every day —
Creation but a gambol
Of His authority.

It’s easy to efface it,
The thrifty Deity
Could scarce afford eternity
To spontaneity.

The Perished Patterns murmur,
But His perturbless plan
Proceed — inserting here
A Sun—
There — leaving out a Man.

I cautious scanned my little life,
I winnowed what would fade
From what would last till heads like mine
Should be a-dreaming laid.

I put the latter in a barn,
The former blew away —
I went one winter morning,
And lo! my priceless hay

Was not upon the “‘scaffold”’,
Was not upon the “beam”,
And from a thriving farmer 
A cynic I became.

Whether a thief did it —
Whether it was the wind —
Whether Deity ’s guiltless
My business is to find.

So I begin to ransack —
How is it, Heart, with thee?
Art thou within the little barn
Love provided thee?

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.

Da ocean like us know we all going die.
She stay keeping all our bones.
I seen da wave take ’em
den bring ’em to da shore
den take ’em back out again.
Plenny bones, 
and inside da bones—mana.¹ 

One day, da ocean all quiet,
da waves all calm, den alla sudden
all kapakahi.² 
Da waves wen straight up,
alla way up, 
up to da sky
fo’ real kine was all spiritual like
like I was at church
and everybody all quiet.  

I wen³  look up
up at da stars, and das when,
inside da stars
I seen all da bones
all da answers 
to everything.   

Our fren Herman, 
way up high in da blue waves
he not evah going come back.
Way up high, 
his bones, his mana
da ocean stay keeping ’em 
so lucky da ocean 
fo’ keep Herman fo’ evah
cause only she can. 

If I have a gender, let it be a history learned from orange
Freak            Sun Sucker           Queer            Orange Boy

Rumor of 6th grade sunrise, dressed in you I was a child
of unspeakable obsession. Archaic language, Giolureade

Until Margaret Tudor, Queen of Scots. Her lips unlocked
your sarcenet line, my fingers knew taste before the orange

Dared on Norwood apartments, Dutch colonies
hunted man straight into your family crests of orange

Scraped from dust to crown our bruises, warriors we
stared directly into the sun, Tainos dyed in orange

As if we always knew we were history. Amber hardened into gold
tricking mortals, mortals tricking gods asking Was it the fruit or the color?

First, Tibbets’ grove, millions of fruits grafted
instead of born, from two parent orange trees

The key to a philosopher’s stone: Colormen flirting
with volcanos to retrieve your arsenic orpiment

Forever in danger of sliding into another color, I ran
after you, tracing rivers and creeks and streams of citrus

The Washington Navel Orange, a second fruit protruding:
not a twin, nor translation, but a new name every season.

^{—after Ocean Vuong}

I have lived around the corner from the houses of jinn,
held collapsed stars in my hands like I could reopen them.

Outside, the street is littered with acorns and the bodies
of dead parables—tell me, do you know where to lay a hurricane

to rest? The old women who interpreted
nightmares and the migration patterns of birds

died last Thursday in her sleep—collect azaleas, minor
keys, other debris of this life. All things return home—

pollen born of dahlias and the last syllable
on your tongue, a night sky with exit wounds.

The whispers of wind chimes cling to the morning
and the bronze I broke off the edge of the sun. In the garden,

the honeyed insides of figs are sunk into earth
to wash over all the death held in this soil.

Look, I couldn’t tell you what the blue jays
grieve, only that they live, so they must

mourn. And I recognize in fire its hunger
or love, maybe I felt that once

in a dream I don’t remember now. It was a
dream of nightjars and a grove of sequoia trees

and other omens of danger. I wake to the sea,
brimming with salt and sleep, mottles the shore.

The sound has slept long years inside the mouths
of bells, and I want to coax it out, the way blood longs

to leave these veins or these scraps of language settle in dense air.
No one sees the bullets streak the sky softly in the dusk,

and every unanswered prayer, splintered on broken clouds,
returns to these hands I hold out for your name.

    Let all the flowers wake to life;
  Let all the songsters sing;
Let everything that lives on earth
  Become a joyous thing.

    Wake up, thou pansy, purple-eyed,
  And greet the dewy spring;
Swell out, ye buds, and o’er the earth
  Thy sweetest fragrance fling.

    Why dost thou sleep, sweet violet?
  The earth has need of thee;
Wake up and catch the melody
  That sounds from sea to sea.

    Ye stars, that dwell in noonday skies,
  Shine on, though all unseen;
The great White Throne lies just beyond,
  The stars are all between.

    Ring out, ye bells, sweet Easter bells,
  And ring the glory in;
Ring out the sorrow, born of earth—
  Ring out the stains of sin.

    O banners wide, that sweep the sky,
  Unfurl ye to the sun;
And gently wave about the graves
  Of those whose lives are done.

    Let peace be in the hearts that mourn—
  Let “Rest” be in the grave;
The Hand that swept these lives away
  Hath power alone to save.

    Ring out, ye bells, sweet Easter bells,
  And ring the glory in;
Ring out the sorrow, born of earth—
  Ring out the stains of sin.