a line break        is a kind of lie       my friend says

            yet still        he writes

an encore        over and over        the lyric

            a border wall        topped        by concertina wire

improbably survives

            as does the sound       of honeybees

and monarchy

            as did the man        on the Golden Gate        who leapt

after he fed        the parking meter

within the loops and lines of our initial correspondence,
each letter holds the history of its defining nature

                                                 now, some will not slip cleanly from my mouth

instead hook into the valley of my lips,
force themselves through the fleshiness of my cheek,
and attempt to jump-swim back down my throat
             choke me         with their spurred dorsal fin, gaping gills
a fish refusing its fate

and I’m reminded of that time at the lake,
where tannins colored the bottom of our paper cups,
dew falling on our faces,
and you told me I tasted like the lake
– spruce and freshwater life –
a memory we share, even if, by next morning,
we see the evening differently
me acutely aware you will never claim me
while you suffer with the fish bones you dared swallow

even through your denial,
you cannot question how,
when I say your name, 
my voice always quivers

You house my children

and my children’s children.

You are the ship carrying descendent cargo.



You are shrouded in hazardous vapor

like a myth. You hold the ten-prong

hanger dangling matter. The one

called back from eternity.



You have been cast off and delivered—

shipped to an office building,

and retrieved in my bedroom.



I do not know what it is like

to awaken suddenly, carried

in the body of another.

^{In response to Sharon Olds’ poem “Outside the Operating Room of the Sex-Change Doctor”}

            In an operating room outside of the cis woman’s imagination,
no tray of organs—severed.
            No blood for her to leaden with a massacre’s name.
After anesthesia, nothing is removed. Nothing wasted. Instead, skin
budded inward, a rose blooming into its own mouth.
            While the patient is still sedated, the doctor scalpels genesis,
sutures her body toward the truth.
            There is no organ severed & named a weapon for the convenience
of a body’s disposal.
            No organ severed & speaking at all. Made a puppet in the lazy
pantomime of metaphor.
            If anything is cut away, let it be the word his from the tip
of the cis woman’s tongue. Let it be her tongue.
            If anything speaks, let it be the new & perfect organ, who says
I was a Georgia O’Keefe painting dressed in drag & now, darlings
see how I bloom, how my petals slowdance the breeze.
            The cis woman’s severed tongue says nothing—least of all
to name trans women animals.
            The poem is about imagination? Right? I want to tell you
that I believe the tongue would whisper I’m sorry, I’m sorry.
            I’m not willing to lie.

Christmas Eve, 2016

Before everyone died – in my family – first definition I learned was – my mother’s maiden name, ULANDAY – which literally means – of the rain – and biology books remind us – the pouring has a pattern –  has purpose – namesake means release – for my mother meant, flee – meant leave – know exactly what parts of you – slip away – drained sediment of a body – is how a single mama feels – on the graveyard shift – only god is awake –  is where my – family banked itself – a life rooted in rosaries – like nuns in barricade – scream – People Power – one out of five – leave to a new country – the women in my family hone – in my heart – like checkpoints – which is what they know – which is like a halt  – not to be confused for – stop – which is what happened to my ma’s breath– when she went home – for the last time – I didn’t get to – hold her hand as she died – I said I tried – just translates to – I couldn’t make it – in time – I tell myself – ocean salt and tear salt – are one and the same – I press my eyes shut – cup ghost howl – cheeks splint wood worn – which is to say – learn to make myself a harbor – anyway – once I saw a pamphlet that said – what to do when your parent is dead –  I couldn’t finish reading – but I doubt it informs the audience – what will happen – which is to say – you will pour your face & hands – & smother your mother’s scream on everything – you touch – turn eyelids into oars – go, paddle to find her.

the clock is on time
because the stars fall
because all form forms time
              falls on the body
              freezes a book
              beneath the water
because the water is an organ
because all arguments are similar
              similar singularities
because we can never discover the subject
because
because is always an object
              which is an object among objects
              which is neither and or
because we expect to find a similar
              before a different set of circumstances
              being repeated for convenience
              causing a similar
              to seem familiar
              which we think
              has an experimental conclusion
              similar to a set of circumstances
              based on an object
              that falls in the water
              which is a simile
because nothing is like an egg
              or a concept of an egg
because there is no apparent singular
              couched in a connection between
              sensible and secret powers
because the question occurs in a medium
              which is a thing
              among other things
              multiplied times a hundred times
because
              a thought is an object within a thought
              an oncoming proposition
              of a possible position
              a reference to clocks on the body
              as an object without a memory
              a memory without thoughts
because the future will resemble the past
because we want our colors to match
              because on a supposition
              resembling something that could happen
because the hand that shook the hand
              of another mislaid thought
              is based on an object
              that relates to the clock

because maybe
              what matters is a seat
              in a new convertible
because what matters is good theme music
              an antidote to putting the horse before the cart
              or a thought with an anecdote
because the object could swim before it could walk
              like interchangeable silence is a demand
              for milk in your pudding
because we are doing the doing
              which is based on the bones of direction
because matter is everywhere
              and like a hammer
              we feel the touch before meaning
              remember touch through memory
              as an object with destiny
              that wrote an essay
              something that astonished someone
              that’s now a thought in time
              that has a past
              that’s now newer than before
              before it could ever be a question

maybe one day, during a point in time, without a particular point in time, without a reference, a point in time without a point, without a reference, without a connection, when someone or anyone being someone, processes a confluence of points and lines, designating nothing, processing in a process, proceeding in a connection, between a connection and an operation, and an operation and a process, connecting the process and operation to a future, between, voluntary actions and tangential beings, being one of many, doing an extended process, extending endlessly into an oncoming process, into the whole of matter at the beginning of the process, proceeding to another process, beginning with an ending and ending with a beginning, the whole of matter at the beginning without a beginning and / or an end, but an endless string of events, endlessly extending throughout the whole of matter, an operation in constant conjunction with the innumerable outside, outside walls of brute naming, or external objects bumped into doctrines of fixed limits, the discourse of lovers as a discourse of lovers, a constellation of objects, thick in layered shades, embroiled always dwellers, always close to obscure, dreaming merging lines on diverging edges, in the pleasure at midnight sharp, where action is the action taken, where the chains no longer imprison, where there is a constant period in time, that is a matter of fact, in the now, being a period in time, filling a blank now, being now being constant, with a connection to the self, being unintelligible to a definition of the disavowing now, constantly installing sediment of then now, in a make believe intelligible constant, with the nonexistent already mentioned, that has no existence, in the shallow of shadows, in the tender canopy of sorrow, wedged in the future viaducts, at the margins, in the venue of morning, in the palm of one's hand, without resistance or insult, these with a blessing and buds of beginning, in the clarity of hands, in the moment of amino, viewing motion's emergence, emerging in all actions, in all object's inner connection, an object of original connection, without origin, a universal action unrecognizable in action, that is an animal action, that is rock in action, or an object action interconnected to the sediment of all action, no sham or quilt, lost on a rock, living with the suffering universe, suffering with the living universe, on a rock in a house, as a dog or teacher, as a double locked-down disconnect, grieving in fearful hunger, immune in the misery of others, living in past present tense on the geography of cross-town traffic, scrawling daily existence in the moment of being, in the connection of being, being without a specific point in time, being cross-town traffic, or a rock in the universe.

substituting one day for the next remaining attempt to emerge from the next gesture skip deity made entirely of language, to the next instant justification graveyard, like content, like everything else, like a given epic, like another battle dream beach distance, another metaphor without preemptive assumptions.

we are through and the matter is time, is material substance, is too many free radicals, a consequence for contemporary rethinking, but what account accounts, indexes rational skips to the next gesture stale regime?

I want to believe in conclusion forest, in an ascendant transmission, but the pain remains, the places visited remain, a reverse placebo reverses reason that never was, because incessant dread snaps cool, captures remains doing the same.

know when they’re going to die. It’s why  
she leaves the flock, lays beneath  

the magnolia bush while her sisters clamber  
into the coop, presenting herself only to us 

the next morning. Sure, I’m projecting—   
a human trait. But imagine walking  

into your own brutal death   
in the processing plant.

It’s no surprise, Lisa says,   
we’re such fearful creatures—  

full on chicken wings and fried chicken  
sandwiches and sesame chicken  

and chicken salad and rotisserie
chicken and BBQ chicken, chicken

fingers, chicken pot pie, chicken parmesan,  
chicken & waffles—we’re always eating  

fear. I swear I’ll stop every time I look  
at our own small flock from our kitchen  

window while preparing Korean fried   
chicken. And why do I need to include  

that extra adjective when I tell you what  
I’m cooking? If I only said fried chicken, 

would you render me whole or only smell   
paper buckets and grease? Watch me lick 

the fat from my fingers over a plate   
of bones? The things I love will kill me 

and kill the ones I love. The chickens   
outside, Lisa and I—full on sweet dark meat.

^{In honor of Earth Day, we invited four poets to collaborate on a new poem that conveys our interconnected struggle for environmental justice. The collaborative poem is inspired by Cecilia Vicuña's ongoing “Quipu of Encounters” workshop series and her poem "Three Fragments of Instan." This collaborative poem project is presented in partnership with the Guggenheim Museum.}

When the wind frenzied up a snow globe
of petals, I was picnic-blanket easy, delighted
by a congregation of trees celebrating the newlyweds of spring,
delighted by life’s parade throwing its confetti down. But you know
I knew what was coming. We all did. Forgive us:
we were entwined, we were betwixt, time was not yet bent.
Nevertheless, I was unable to resist tipping my head back to catch those petals
on my tongue, to catch those petals as if they were snowflakes
though I knew they were not snowflakes, not at all, but blossoms
blasted apart far too soon in a season that had forgotten how to be cold.

—Nickole Brown

/ / /

Can seasons forget? Do trees celebrate?—It’s the eternal problem, isn’t it,
how ego blossoms in paraphrase, propagates our deep, deciduous need

to seed the severed world of object-things with our image? To spread
out gingham sheets and claim the cast of green shade for ourselves,

to think green thoughts under? To delight in the swan-shaped pedal
boats drifting by, aimlessly? But who among us, in the blank face

of certain unknowns, hasn’t cleaved to what they know they know?
To self-likeness, taxonomy, to god, guilt, or grace, to hands forced

forward by the mainspring’s spiral torsion? Wait long enough
and white petals, even, will melt on your tongue. But patience is so difficult.

—J.P. Grasser

/ / /

I have cleaved to what I know: the tempered regularity
of falling leaves, the speed with which bulbs blast,

or cicadas, buzzing, spring from the dampened earth.
This year, though, tulips came early. Already the daffodils

bury their heads in the dirt. But here I am, in a winter
of the mind, surrounded by surplus capital, an excess

of heat, which lifts green things from their beds.
Between one settled reality, then, and the blossoming

possibility of another, I bask in eddies of unseasonal light,
eying the spiral turn of the plum tree’s gentle confetti. 

—John James

/ / /

Truth is a leviathan:
even its monstrous size
can be buried in dark waters
until we learn to doubt its existence.

Still, I open my eyes
to the husk of morning,
draw my name in the sand
and defy the rising tide.

—Ariel Francisco