It is not good to think
of everything as a mistake. I asked
for bacon in my sandwich, and then

I asked for more. Mistake.
I told you the truth about my scar:

I did not use a knife. I lied
about what he did to my faith
in loneliness. Both mistakes.

That there is always a you. Mistake.
Faith in loneliness, my mother proclaimed,

is faith in self. My instinct, a poor polaris.
Not a mistake is the blue boredom
of a summer lake. O mud, sun, and algae!

We swim in glittering murk.
I tread, you tread. There are children

testing the deep end, shriek and stroke,
the lifeguard perilously close to diving.
I tried diving once. I dove like a brick.

It was a mistake to ask the $30 prophet
for a $20 prophecy. A mistake to believe.

I was young and broke. I swam
in a stolen reservoir then, not even a lake.
Her prophesy: from my vagrant exertion

I'll die at 42. Our dog totters across the lake,
kicks the ripple. I tread, you tread.

What does it even mean to write a poem?
It means today
I'm correcting my mistakes.

It means I don't want to be lonely.

It is not good to think
of everything as a mistake. I asked
for bacon in my sandwich, and then

I asked for more. Mistake.
I told you the truth about my scar:

I did not use a knife. I lied
about what he did to my faith
in loneliness. Both mistakes.

That there is always a you. Mistake.
Faith in loneliness, my mother proclaimed,

is faith in self. My instinct, a poor polaris.
Not a mistake is the blue boredom
of a summer lake. O mud, sun, and algae!

We swim in glittering murk.
I tread, you tread. There are children

testing the deep end, shriek and stroke,
the lifeguard perilously close to diving.
I tried diving once. I dove like a brick.

It was a mistake to ask the $30 prophet
for a $20 prophecy. A mistake to believe.

I was young and broke. I swam
in a stolen reservoir then, not even a lake.
Her prophesy: from my vagrant exertion

I'll die at 42. Our dog totters across the lake,
kicks the ripple. I tread, you tread.

What does it even mean to write a poem?
It means today
I'm correcting my mistakes.

It means I don't want to be lonely.

                        on my birthday

I want a future
making hammocks
out of figs and accidents.
Or a future quieter
than snow. The leopards
stake out the backyard
and will flee at noon.
My terror is not secret,
but necessary,
as the wild must be,
as Sandhill cranes must
thread the meadow
yet again. Thus, autumn
cautions the cold
and the wild never want
to be wild. So what
to do about the thrum
of my thinking, the dangerous
pawing at the door?
Yesterday has no harmony
with today. I bought
a wool blanket, now shredded
in the yard. I abided by
dwelling, thought nothing
of now. And now?
I’m leopard and crane,
all’s fled.

                        on my birthday

I want a future
making hammocks
out of figs and accidents.
Or a future quieter
than snow. The leopards
stake out the backyard
and will flee at noon.
My terror is not secret,
but necessary,
as the wild must be,
as Sandhill cranes must
thread the meadow
yet again. Thus, autumn
cautions the cold
and the wild never want
to be wild. So what
to do about the thrum
of my thinking, the dangerous
pawing at the door?
Yesterday has no harmony
with today. I bought
a wool blanket, now shredded
in the yard. I abided by
dwelling, thought nothing
of now. And now?
I’m leopard and crane,
all’s fled.

Spokes, spooks: your tinsel hair weaves the wheel
that streams through my dreams of battle. Another
apocalypse, and your weird blondeness cycling in
and out of the march: down in a bunker, we hunker,
can hear the boots from miles off clop. We tend to
our flowers in the meantime. And in the meantime,
a daughter is born. She begins as a mere inch, lost
in the folds of a sheet; it's horror to lose her before
she's yet born. Night nurses embody the darkness.
Only your brain remains, floating in a jar that sits
in a lab far off, some place away, and terribly far.
Your skull no longer exists, its ash has been lifted
to wind from a mountain's top by brothers, friends.
I am no friend. According to them. Accordion, the
child pulls its witching wind between its opposite
handles: the lungs of the thing grieve, and that is
its noise. She writhes the floor in tantrum. When
you climbed the sides of the house spider-wise to
let yourself in, unlocked the front door, let me in
to climb up into your attic the last time I saw you
that infected cat rubbed its face against my hand.
Wanting to keep it. No, you said. We are friends.
I wear my green jacket with the furred hood. You
pushed me against chain-length. Today is the day
that the planet circles the night we began. A child
is born. Night nurses coagulate her glassed-in crib.
Your organs, distant, still float the darkness of jars.

The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The reader became the book; and summer night

Was like the conscious being of the book.
The house was quiet and the world was calm.

The words were spoken as if there was no book,
Except that the reader leaned above the page,

Wanted to lean, wanted much most to be
The scholar to whom his book is true, to whom

The summer night is like a perfection of thought.
The house was quiet because it had to be.

The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind:
The access of perfection to the page.

And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world,
In which there is no other meaning, itself

Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself
Is the reader leaning late and reading there.

Let the seats be plentiful and padded.  
Let the magazines be recent or let the book 
I’ve brought last until we can leave.
Let the TV on its bolted stand be off, 
muted, or showing something I can ignore—
weather, gameshows, CNN.  Let the room 
be mostly empty—no one shouting, sobbing, 
asking about my husband’s health.  
Let everyone be strangers except 
the staff.  Let the walls be freshly painted, 
soothing to behold.  Let my husband 
be there for a physical or routine checkup.  
Let no one comment on my clothes
or unwashed hair, how I can sit 
so calmly while he has staples 
or a catheter removed, his lungs or heart 
or kidneys tested, an infected wound 
debrided.  Under no circumstances 
let me be called into the back by a nurse 
who touches my arm, says I’m sorry but—  
Let my husband walk out whistling 
before I’ve finished my book, looked 
at my watch too many times.  Let the news
be good or benign, his next appointment 
not for months.  When the waiting is over, 
let us walk outside feeling better,
or at least no worse, than we did before.

I thought it was the neighbor’s cat back
to clean the clock of the fledgling robins low
in their nest stuck in the dense hedge by the house
but what came was much stranger, a liquidity
moving all muscle and bristle. A groundhog
slippery and waddle thieving my tomatoes still
green in the morning’s shade. I watched her
munch and stand on her haunches taking such
pleasure in the watery bites. Why am I not allowed
delight? A stranger writes to request my thoughts
on suffering. Barbed wire pulled out of the mouth,
as if demanding that I kneel to the trap of coiled
spikes used in warfare and fencing. Instead,
I watch the groundhog closer and a sound escapes
me, a small spasm of joy I did not imagine
when I woke. She is a funny creature and earnest,
and she is doing what she can to survive.

When Sleeping Beauty finds the spindle
& pricks her finger & falls into her hundred-
year sleep, everyone around her falls as
well—her handmaids, her grooms, the cooks.
Dogs collapse in the courtyard, horses fold
in on themselves in the hay . . . . I’d forgotten
all that. Even the fire returns to embers,
fire’s version of sleep. In some tellings all
this sleep is a blessing, a solution to grief—
no one will miss her because they will sleep
as long as she sleeps & they will wake
when she wakes, no one having felt
a thing. Is this what we want, to take
everyone with us, to leave no one behind?
To find a way not to feel all the days you
are not here? Some days I wish I could
sleep for a hundred years, other days
I wonder if I’ve ever really been awake.
In one version the curse is uttered by
a crone, in another by a fairy. The castle,
in both versions, as everyone falls &
almost at once, becomes overgrown—
wild roses, thick with thorns, surround its
walls, so thick they will tear the flesh of
anyone who dares come close. When I
tell you I’m a wounded animal this is what
I mean—I am the thorn & I am the spindle
& I am the curse . . . no one will remember
the years they felt nothing.

There is the room I will pretend does not exist,
for now. For now that room does not exist.
Really remember colors reflected in pools of water.
The marshaling of evidence. Cats of what colors.
A spectrum. Color to describe the cat that is down.
That cat that is to the side. With one eye. What is
scratch made up of? A florescent rhibisom is working
on figuring it out. Figuring it out in a mouse's mind.
I break up all the leaves into bits. I am hard at summer.
Let the music loud! I can have a color in my mind
and I cannot make it. How do you make a mirror?
I want you to understand. Do you understand me?
I understand. They understand. You understand.
I hope your summer is being a good summer.
Grasses and radios. Get archaic. A hunter looking
for a streaming blue. You were in the weather.
You idea. A not new idea. A room. I got home
and my door was blue. It was a fox and a picture
of you.

I have just realized that the stakes are myself
I have no other
ransom money, nothing to break or barter but my life
my spirit measured out, in bits, spread over
the roulette table, I recoup what I can
nothing else to shove under the nose of the maitre de jeu
nothing to thrust out the window, no white flag
this flesh all I have to offer, to make the play with
this immediate head, what it comes up with, my move
as we slither over this go board, stepping always
(we hope) between the lines

^{On the occasion of the reopening of the Lyric Theatre, 1940s Black dream house, Lexington, Kentucky}

On the East End, we shine our
own shoes, dress our own legs,

smooth down willful hair, let all
new trouble float. Done-up.

We promenade and pass, Deweese
(DoAsYouPlease) & 3rd, where

Winkfield & Murphy once hoofed
& flew backwards, black-winged,

on horseback. Under the blazing
marquee we hand our shiny quarter

over, glide toward, then across,
our eight-point star, rose-tile light

of regeneration. In the dark theater,
the salt-cod sweat of work, now left

behind, names hurled our way all day,
now set aside, paychecks that never

match our labor folded away now.
House lights dim: Paul Robeson is

Othello. Miss Ella strikes & swings.
The Duke & Count jazz-juice the night,

royalty speaks to royalty. The Ink Spots
spill all with Sarah Vaughan, Miss Mahalia

orchestrates & moans and moonbeams,
Candy Johnson & his Peppermint Sticks

fill every inch of stage. Marian Anderson
poses her hands in alto-soprano.

Woody Strode, our Black cowboy,
wild-rides the open oat fields & range.

Our dusty eyes drink in Beah Richards,
Dorothy Dandridge, Lena Horne.

Intermission at the Lyric: Lights up!
Freda Jones tries on a brand-new

hat and no one is arrested. Bernard
Lewis licks his ice cream cone on every

melting side, no one is booked for
licking or loitering. Morgan and

Marvin Smith, the famous picture-
taking twins, take our picture too.

At the Lyric we pose, bright futures
we portray. At the Lyric we fall in love

with our lips: Lucinda kisses Big Tank
clear through the opening act. Julia

can’t see the show for looking at the
ocean of their mouths; open, close.

We cry at the Lyric, laugh out loud at
the Lyric. Whisper Quiet! Here comes

the principal! Miss Lucy Harth Smith
proudly takes her seat. At the Lyric,

William Wells Brown pulls out his
indelible pen to write us down. Isaac

Scott Hathaway shapes our faces in
a mustard-amber clay on new money.

We come to the Lyric to rise, rejuvenate,
see ourselves win, watch ourselves lifted

up in lights, hit the home run, be hero
champion of the world. Only to file

back out live & alive, stroll back across
the rays of the eight-point star, rose-tile

light of return, sink back into the race-
track of the East End with everything

we have now become. Sweet Lyric,
lyceum of dreams, where once we came

to rise into who Mama, not dime-store
magazines, promised us we were.

The dead bird, color of a bruise,
and smaller than an eye
swollen shut,
is king among omens.

Who can blame the ants for feasting?

Let him cast the first crumb.

~

We once tended the oracles.

Now we rely on a photograph

a fingerprint
a hand we never saw

coming.

~

A man draws a chalk outline
first in his mind

around nothing

then around the body
of another man.

He does this without thinking.

~

What can I do about the white room I left
behind? What can I do about the great stones

I walk among now? What can I do

but sing.

Even a small cut can sing all day.

~

There are entire nights

                                I would take back.

Nostalgia is a thin moon,
                                                              disappearing

into a sky like cold,
                                          unfeeling iron.

~

I dreamed

you were a drowned man, crown
of phosphorescent, seaweed in your hair,

water in your shoes. I woke up desperate

for air.

~

In another dream, I was a field

and you combed through me
searching for something

you only thought you had lost.

~

What have we left at the altar of sorrow?

What blessed thing will we leave tomorrow?

disappear: one by one by one the darling scented rushes sink back into melt. In the dream stream, the boat glides past too quick, and there is no chance to gather the loveliest of the dream-rushes. No less satisfying was the old sheep: so many knitting needles, dozens and dozens all pierced into a ball of worsted, and there was never ever any telling of just what, even in dream, it might be that the old sheep was knitting.

For years, I dreamt of the child who, when I reached out to her, turned into a sheet of paper, and so, in waking hours, I wrote and wrote and wrote and my friends consoled me: see, you have book babies; this, while I looked on at other women who knit bibs and booties, so many booties, such small socks.

When Alice steals away and consoles the Duchess’s baby, it metamorphoses into a pig and runs away from her, runs away. That is ever so much a better-known story than the one of dream-rushes or too many knitting needles. (How ever did Alice ever console herself? Did her friends say, Oh, just think now you’ll have truffles!?)

Odysseus’s mother wonders how her son, a mere mortal, made it over Oceanus to the land where lives sink back into melt. She says that he must have had a good boat; he tries to embrace her, but like a soul she flits about and away. When Odysseus asks why Mother, why not stay still and let us embrace, she says, Son, it’s because I no longer have sinew, no longer have bones.

My little baby, who I will name a weaver of spools and not of dreams, with mortal limbs—not quite sinew, not quite bone—paddles a rowboat inside of me, and I stay, in those moments, ever-so-still so that she may reach out to me. The midwife says that what I’m feeling is called quickening. Scientists say that she is dreaming—practicing for this life, I like to think, where, in her nursery, there will be a machine projecting fake moonbeams and fake stars and fake shadows and fake birds and fake clouds to storm over her.

We’re in a taxi on the way to see Andrea del Sarto’s last supper,
          which was in the country when it was painted
but is now in the suburbs beyond the old city wall in an ex-convent,
          and our driver turns the radio to an English station
playing an American song, yes, Lil’ Kim’s “How Many Licks,”
          and Miss Kim, you are not singing about throwing punches,
but for a while I don’t notice because my husband
          is talking about where we will eat dinner, but like a bullet
the lyrics penetrate the armor of the city, the fresco, the tagliata
          and punterelle I’ll eat later, and I’m crossing my legs twice,
once at the knees and then at the ankles, but what do I know,
          because my dad never threw me out of the house,
and I’ve never lived on the streets, and your life, Kim, is like an opera,
          Lucia di Lammermoor maybe, but you’re not taking Enrico’s shit,
and when Edgardo breaks into your phony wedding you grab him
          and run off to Paris but not before you sing the mad scene,
because what’s Lucia without it, all the blood and tattoos, and you
          could never sing Mimi, because she’s such a simp. No, Musetta’s
your gal, so Lil’ Kim put on your Queen-of-the-Night gown,
          the corset and headpiece with shooting stars, or your Lulu rags,
Jack the Ripper leading her to his knife, or your Lil’ Kim hot pants,
          but remember, Kim, we girls need some secrets while we fix
our lipstick, straighten our push-up bras and little black dresses,
          because we’re riding the lonely streets in taxis, limos,
buses and sports cars, hair a little messy, dying for the night to open up
          dark and mysterious like a song only time can sing.

The French—or was it the English?—government placed a plaque
On that house at 8 Great College Street, Camden Town, London, 
Where in a room Rimbaud and Verlaine, a peculiar couple, 
Lived, drank, worked, and fornicated 
For a few brief stormy weeks. 
No doubt the ambassador and the mayor attended the dedication, 
All the same people who were enemies of Rimbaud and Verlaine when they lived.
 
The house is sad and poor, like the neighborhood,
With the sordid sadness that goes with poverty, 
Not the funereal sadness of spiritless wealth. 
When night comes down, as in their time, 
Over that sidewalk, with its damp gray air, a hand organ
Plays, and the neighbors, on their way home from work, 
The young ones dance, the rest take to the pub. 

Brief was the singular friendship of Verlaine the drunk 
And Rimbaud the tramp, quarreling constantly. 
But we can think that maybe it was 
A good time for the two, at least if each remembered 
That they left behind an intolerable mother and a boring wife. 
But freedom is not of this world, and the freed, 
Having broken with everything, had a high price to pay.
 
Yes, they were there, the plaque says so, behind the wall, 
Prisoners of their fate: the impossible friendship, the bitterness 
Of separation, and then the scandal; and for this one 
The trial, and two years in jail, thanks to his habits 
Condemned by society and law, at least up to now; for that one on his own 
To wander from one corner of the earth to the other, 
Escaping to our world and its celebrated progress. 

The silence of one and the talkative banality of the other 
Made for a kind of balance. Rimbaud rejected the hand that Oppressed 
His life; Verlaine kisses it, accepting his punishment. 
One drags in his belt the gold he's gained; the other 
Wastes it on absinthe and whores. But both 
Outside the law forever, beyond the respectable people 
Whose meaningless work makes them rich and successful. 

Then even the black prostitute had the right to insult them; 
Today, as time has passed, as it does in the world, 
Their lives on the edge of everything, sodomy, drunkenness, vicious verses, 
No longer matter, and France makes use of both their names and their works 
For the greater glory of France and its logical art. 
Their acts and their comings and goings are studied, giving the public 
Intimate tidbits about their lives. No one is shocked now, nor protests.
 
"Verlaine? Go on, my friend, a satyr, a regular lech 
When it comes to women; a perfectly normal fellow, 
Like you and I. Rimbaud? A devout Catholic, as it's been proved." 
And they recite hunks of the "Drunken Boat" and the Sonnet to the "Vowels." 
But of Verlaine they recite nothing, because he's not in vogue 
Like the other, of whom they bring out phony texts in fancy editions; 
Young poets, in every country, talk about him nonstop in their provinces.
 
Can the dead hear what the living are saying about them? 
Let's hope not: that endless silence must be a relief 
For those who lived and died by the word, 
Like Rimbaud and Verlaine. But the silence there is no escape 
From this repugnant laudatory farce. There was a time one of them wished 
That humanity had a single head, so it could be chopped off. 
Maybe he was exaggerating: if it were just a cockroach, and be crushed.

Worry stole the kayaks and soured the milk.
Now, it’s jellyfish for the rest of the summer
and the ozone layer full of holes.
Worry beats me to the phone.
Worry beats me to the kitchen,
and all the food is sorry. Worry calcifies
my ears against music; it stoppers my nose
against barbecue. All films end badly.
Paintings taunt with their smug convictions.
In the dark, Worry wraps her long legs
around me, promises to be mine forever.

Thugs hijacked all the good parking spaces.
There’s never a good time for lunch.
And why, my mother asks, must you track
beach sand into the apartment?
No, don’t bother with books,
not reading much these days.
And who wants to walk the boardwalk anyway,
with scam artists who steal your home and savings?
Watch out for talk that sounds too good to be true.
You, she says pointing at me,
don’t worry so much.

Whatever I care for, someone else loves it
more, deserves it more: the doe with her
whole mouth crushing the phlox or the seer
who adores my future, whereas I could

take it or leave it. I know I’ll disappear.
It won’t be glamorous. It won’t be like when
the Mona Lisa was stolen and the tourists all
lined up to pay their respects at the empty
spot on the wall of the Louvre.

I’ve never actually even seen the sky.
I’ve only ever seen effluents, seen wattage.

The only night I remember is the dinner
of neighbors at which a man I never
had met before said I don’t fear dying—

look at the past, people have been dying forever, and—

then he stopped and shook his head—
I drank too much. I was almost saying
that people have died forever and all
of them survived, but of course—he made
a hard laugh—God, of course they didn’t survive.

Do not pretend that you don't like it
when we threaten you.

We see you getting pheromone stink
under the collar, moaning, baldly. 

Motionless, picturing decay.

When we creak your step,
when we crack your glass,
when we tap tap tap,

that is a bone

that is all we have

though we are very shiny,
and filled with beetles.

We are made entirely of bone.

Like an idol.

Like the tusk of some wonderful past.

When you cleave to us,
your skin will fuse,
hot calcium meth,
and in the myth, 
you will be named for us.

What things are steadfast? Not the birds.
Not the bride and groom who hurry
in their brevity to reach one another.
The stars do not blow away as we do.
The heavenly things ignite and freeze.
But not as my hair falls before you.
Fragile and momentary, we continue.
Fearing madness in all things huge
and their requiring. Managing as thin light
on water. Managing only greetings
and farewells. We love a little, as the mice
huddle, as the goat leans against my hand.
As the lovers quickening, riding time.
Making safety in the moment. This touching
home goes far. This fishing in the air.

Who am I?
Someone who kisses your shoulder when they’re not supposed to.
I’m wearing high heels by the pool so that makes everything OK.
Now don’t be charming, darling.
There could be a lot of smashed vases in our future.

What should I do? Mind my manners?
I’m the type of person to lose an emerald ring.
I might drop it in my champagne and drink it.
How can I be such a swine?
Oh, darling. I hate to be thirsty.

Why do you insist on breaking my tiaras?
Baby, it’s not good for you to be so evil.
Darling, you have such a soft belly.
I always want to cut a soft belly. I can’t help it.
No, don’t try to get away.

Nothing’s wrong with you, so, congratulations.
What will you do now?
Stand on the balcony looking good?
Nothing’s wrong with you and I like it.
I’ll take your silence as a non-goodbye.

I get lonelier and lonelier and then I eat all the pink capsules for dinner.
How come I never get any telegrams?
It’s surprisingly easy to be enraged in a ruffled dress.
Look at yourself in the reflection of your flask.
You used to be a hobby of mine.

People in their nightgowns, smoking cigarettes,
they give great speeches.
I like it like upside-down sunsets.
I like it like a mess of emeralds.
I like it when you gesture from your forehead, “So long!”