because my mother named me after a child     borne still

to a godmother I’ve never met     I took another way to be

known—something easier to remember          inevitable

to forget         something that rolls over the surface of thrush

     because                                                 I grew tired of saying

            no it’s pronounced…   now I’m tired of not

conjuring that ghost I honor            say it with me:        Airea

                          rhymes with sarah

sarah from the latin meaning          a “woman of high rank”

       which also means whenever I ask anyone to hold me

in their mouth             I sound like what I almost am

hear me out:                          I’m not a dee             or a river

     charging through working-class towns where union folk

cogwedge for plots                &          barely any house at all

where bosses mangle ethnic phonemes & nobody says one

    word because checks in the mail             so let’s end this

                 classist pretend where names don’t matter

& language is too heavy a lift                       my “e” is silent

like most people should be              the consonant is sonorant

              is a Black woman                  or one might say the spine

       I translate to ‘wind’ in a country known for its iron

imply “lioness of God”                                   in Jesus’ tongue

            mean “apex predator”           free of known enemy

fierce enough         to harm              or fast enough to run

                          all I’m saying is                  this:

the tongue has no wings     to flee what syllables it fears

the mouth is no womb             has no right to swallow up

                                     what it did not make

LONELINESS
(Her Word)

One ought not to have to care
  So much as you and I
Care when the birds come round the house
  To seem to say good-bye;

Or care so much when they come back     
  With whatever it is they sing;
The truth being we are as much
  Too glad for the one thing

As we are too sad for the other here—
  With birds that fill their breasts      
But with each other and themselves
 And their built or driven nests.

HOUSE FEAR

Always—I tell you this they learned—
Always at night when they returned
To the lonely house from far away        
To lamps unlighted and fire gone gray,
They learned to rattle the lock and key
To give whatever might chance to be
Warning and time to be off in flight:
And preferring the out- to the in-door night,       
They learned to leave the house-door wide
Until they had lit the lamp inside.

THE SMILE
(Her Word)

I didn’t like the way he went away.
That smile! It never came of being gay.
Still he smiled—did you see him?—I was sure!     
Perhaps because we gave him only bread
And the wretch knew from that that we were poor.
Perhaps because he let us give instead
Of seizing from us as he might have seized.
Perhaps he mocked at us for being wed,
Or being very young (and he was pleased
To have a vision of us old and dead).
I wonder how far down the road he’s got.
He’s watching from the woods as like as not.

THE OFT-REPEATED DREAM

She had no saying dark enough
  For the dark pine that kept
Forever trying the window-latch
  Of the room where they slept.

The tireless but ineffectual hands
  That with every futile pass      
Made the great tree seem as a little bird
  Before the mystery of glass!

It never had been inside the room,
  And only one of the two
Was afraid in an oft-repeated dream     
  Of what the tree might do.

THE IMPULSE

It was too lonely for her there,
  And too wild,
And since there were but two of them,
  And no child,

And work was little in the house,
  She was free,
And followed where he furrowed field,
  Or felled tree. 

She rested on a log and tossed
  The fresh chips,
With a song only to herself
  On her lips.

And once she went to break a bough
  Of black alder.
She strayed so far she scarcely heard
  When he called her—

And didn’t answer—didn’t speak—
  Or return.
She stood, and then she ran and hid        
  In the fern.

He never found her, though he looked
  Everywhere,
And he asked at her mother’s house
  Was she there.      

Sudden and swift and light as that
  The ties gave,
And he learned of finalities
  Besides the grave.

Lie to yourself about this and you will
forever lie about everything.

Everybody already knows everything

so you can
lie to them. That's what they want.

But lie to yourself, what you will

lose is yourself. Then you
turn into them.

                 *

For each gay kid whose adolescence

was America in the forties or fifties
the primary, the crucial

scenario

forever is coming out—
or not. Or not. Or not. Or not. Or not.

                 *

Involuted velleities of self-erasure.

                 *

Quickly after my parents
died, I came out. Foundational narrative

designed to confer existence.

If I had managed to come out to my
mother, she would have blamed not

me, but herself.

The door through which you were shoved out
into the light

was self-loathing and terror.

                 *

Thank you, terror!

You learned early that adults' genteel
fantasies about human life

were not, for you, life. You think sex

is a knife
driven into you to teach you that.

i wish them cramps.
i wish them a strange town
and the last tampon.
I wish them no 7-11.

i wish them one week early
and wearing a white skirt.
i wish them one week late.

later i wish them hot flashes
and clots like you
wouldn't believe. let the
flashes come when they
meet someone special.
let the clots come
when they want to.

let them think they have accepted
arrogance in the universe,
then bring them to gynecologists
not unlike themselves.

They sing their dearest songs—
He, she, all of them—yea,
Treble and tenor and bass.
And one to play;
With the candles mooning each face...
Ah, no; the years O!
How the sick leaves reel down in throngs!

They clear the creeping moss—
Elders and juniors-—aye,
Making the pathways neat
And the garden gay;
And they build a shady seat...
Ah, no; the years, the years;
See, the white storm-birds wing across!

They are blithely breakfasting all—
Men and maidens—yea,
Under the summer tree,
With a glimpse of the bay,
While pet fowl come to the knee...
Ah, no; the years O!
And the rotten rose is ripped from the wall.

They change to a high new house,
He, she, all of them—aye,
Clocks and carpets and chairs
On the lawn all day,
And brightest things that are theirs...
Ah, no; the years, the years;
Down their carved names the raindrop plows.

How fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean
Are Thy returns! ev’n as the flow’rs in Spring,
    	To which, besides their own demean
The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring;
                	   Grief melts away
         	           Like snow in May,
    	As if there were no such cold thing.
 
    	Who would have thought my shrivel’d heart
Could have recover’d greennesse? It was gone
    	Quite under ground; as flow’rs depart
To see their mother-root, when they have blown,
                	Where they together
                	All the hard weather,
    	Dead to the world, keep house unknown.
 
    	These are Thy wonders, Lord of power,
Killing and quickning, bringing down to Hell
    	And up to Heaven in an houre;
Making a chiming of a passing-bell.
                	We say amisse
                	This or that is;
    	Thy word is all, if we could spell.
 
    	O that I once past changing were,
Fast in Thy Paradise, where no flower can wither;
 	   Many a Spring I shoot up fair,
Offring at Heav’n, growing and groning thither,
                	Nor doth my flower
                	Want a Spring-showre,
    	My sinnes and I joyning together.
 
    	But while I grow in a straight line,
Still upwards bent, as if Heav’n were mine own,
    	Thy anger comes, and I decline:
What frost to that? what pole is not the zone
                	Where all things burn,
                	When Thou dost turn,
    	And the least frown of Thine is shown?
 
    	And now in age I bud again,
After so many deaths I live and write;
    	I once more smell the dew and rain,
And relish versing: O, my onely Light,
                	It cannot be
                	That I am he
    	On whom Thy tempests fell all night.
 
    	These are Thy wonders, Lord of love,
To make us see we are but flow’rs that glide;
    	Which when we once can find and prove,
Thou hast a garden for us where to bide.
                	Who would be more,
               	Swelling through store,
    	Forfeit their Paradise by their pride.