When fiber-optic, sky blue hair became the fashion, my father began the 
monthly ritual of shaving his head. It was August, and we were still living in the 
Projects without a refrigerator. The sound of my mother fluttering through the 
rosaries in another room reminded me of the flies I'd learned to trap in mid-
flight and bring to my ear.
	"Vecchio finally died," my father said, bending to lace his old boots. "You 
want to come help me?"
	My grandparents lived in a green-shingled house on the last street before 
the Jones & Laughlin coke furnaces, the Baltimore & Ohio switching yard, and 
the sliding banks of the Monongahela. The night was skunk-dark. The spade 
waited off to the side.
	Before I could see it, I could smell the box on the porch.
	We walked down the tight alley between the houses to get to the back yard 
where fireflies pushed through the heat like slow aircraft and tomato plants hung 
bandaged to iron poles. My father tore and chewed a creamy yellow flower from 
the garden.
	After a few minutes of digging, he said, "Throw him in."
	I lifted the cardboard box above my head, so I could watch the old white 
cat tumble down, a quarter moon in the pit of the sky.
 

            for the Women of the 19th Amendment 

Praise their grit and gospel, their glistening

brains, their minds on fire. Neurons, numbering the stars.

Praise their bones. Their spines and skulls,

the axis, the atlas: I will not and I shall.

Their mouths, praise. Ridged palates

and smart muscular tongues, teeth, sound or pitted,

their wit and will. Their nerve,

and founded within the body. Honor

now their wombs and hearts, biceps and blood,

deep mines of the flesh where passion is tested.

Thank all twenty-six bones of their feet,

arches, heels, bunions, sweat,

marching the streets in high buttoned boots. Praise

the march. Praise justice.

Though slow and clotted. 

Their hands at the press. The grease and clatter,

the smell of ink. Feel the sound

of their names in our mouths:

Susan B. Anthony

Dr. Mabel Ping-Hua Lee

Marie Louise Bottineau Baldwin

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Wilhelmina Kekelaokalaninui Widemann Dowsett

Praise their eyelids that close

and give rest

at the end of each long day.

Praise the work that goes on.

A ghost, though invisible, still is like a place
your sight can knock on, echoing; but here
within this thick black pelt, your strongest gaze
will be absorbed and utterly disappear:

just as a raving madman, when nothing else
can ease him, charges into his dark night
howling, pounds on the padded wall, and feels
the rage being taken in and pacified.

She seems to hide all looks that have ever fallen
into her, so that, like an audience,
she can look them over, menacing and sullen,
and curl to sleep with them. But all at once

as if awakened, she turns her face to yours;
and with a shock, you see yourself, tiny,
inside the golden amber of her eyeballs
suspended, like a prehistoric fly.

Small fellowship of daily commonplace
    We hold together, dear, constrained to go
   Diverging ways. Yet day by day I know
   My life is sweeter for thy life’s sweet grace;
And if we meet but for a moment’s space,
   Thy touch, thy word, sets all the world aglow.
   Faith soars serener, haunting doubts shrink low,
   Abashed before the sunshine of thy face.
Nor press of crowd, nor waste of distance serves
   To part us. Every hush of evening brings
   Some hint of thee, true-hearted friend of mine;
And as the father planet thrills and swerves
   When towards it through the darkness Saturn swings,
   Even so my spirit feels the spell of thine.

¹⁸⁸⁸

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
       But O heart! heart! heart!
         O the bleeding drops of red,
           Where on the deck my Captain lies,
             Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up- for you the flag is flung- for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths- for you the shores a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
       Here Captain! dear father!
         This arm beneath your head!
           It is some dream that on the deck,
             You’ve fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
       Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
         But I with mournful tread,
           Walk the deck my Captain lies,
             Fallen cold and dead.

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Hold fast to dreams 

For if dreams die

Life is a broken-winged bird

That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams

For when dreams go

Life is a barren field

Frozen with snow.

The pads of your paws scrabble
as I drag you from the tunnel
clamped to the shiny green trap,
a baby, hell-bent on saving
your twist of life, spun
from the same cells as I am, the common
intelligence of fins, wings, limbs.
The first time you see the sun
you’re splayed on your back, the shadow
of my blade above you.
Your ears, tiny colorless petals,
and at the tips of your articulated fingers,
ten frantic claws. When I strike,
your mouth opens stunningly
wide, a scream so silent
all sound is sucked down the naked
whirlpool of your throat. I hate
that I can salvage nothing.
I can’t skin and eat you, stuff or display
your fur on the mantel.
I won’t carve a needle
from your bone. Bit of breath
I bury under a stone.

^{—After Francisco Goya's "Saturn Devouring His Son"}

We follow the porcelain
column of a child's arm

into time's mouth, desperate
Titan, runnel of inked tear

spilling from his eye.
This feels like the beginning

of knowing death. It digs
nails into the small

of a child's back, white-
knuckled grip of a father

arthritic from holding
dead things. The whole scene

weeps a blurred body,
brings a child into the world

embalmed by the deaf. Death
and artist, two skulking

lumps, billow canvas curtain.
These are the ghosts

that move marrow, fingers
that slip the knife point

into a notch of soft bone,
and lift the broken end

to our lips to drink
this dark paint that fills us.