I have carried in my coat, black wet 

with rain. I stand. I clear my throat.



My coat drips. The carved door closes

on its slow brass hinge. City noises— 



car horns, bicycle bells, the respiration

truck engines, the whimpering 



steel in midtown taxi brakes—bend

in through the doorjamb with the wind 



then drop away. The door shuts plumb: it seals

the world out like a coffin lid. A chill, 



dampened and dense with the spent breath

of old Hail Marys, lifts from the smoothed



stone of the nave. I am here to pay

my own respects, but I will wait: 



my eyes must grow accustomed

to church light, watery and dim.



I step in. Dark forms hunch forward

in the pews. Whispering, their heads 



are bowed, their mouths pressed

to the hollows of clasped hands. 



High overhead, a gathering of shades

glows in stained glass: the resurrected 



mingle with the dead and martyred

in panes of blue, green, yellow, red. 



Beneath them lies the golden holy 

altar, holding its silence like a bell,



and there, brightly skeletal beside it,

the organ pipes: cold, chrome, quiet 



but alive with a vibration tolling

out from the incarnate 



source of holy sound. I turn, shivering

back into my coat. The vaulted ceiling 



bends above me like an ear. It waits:

I hold my tongue. My body is my prayer.

As a girl I held the hind

legs of the small and terrified, wanted

the short-fur and the wet meat furrowing.





Wanted the soft cry of the quavering

boy at primary school, rockstone





mashed up against his tender head,

the sick milk of us poor ones sucked

clean from a Government-issued plastic bag.





At lunchtime children were lethal

and precise, a horde hurling “Ben-foot”

at she who was helpless and I





waking too-surprised to hear my own

cruel mouth taunting. Her smile some

handsome forgery of myself.





Grateful, even now,

they cannot see the bald-wire

patois of my shamdom—





Makeshift, dreaming the warmth

spent in the muscle of the living,

the girl I grew inside my head dreaming





of a real girl, dreaming.

I wanted a pearled purse so I stole it.

I wanted a real friend so I let him. Let her.





Let him. Let him. Let him.





This beauty I am eager to hoard

comes slippery on ordinary days,





comes not at all, comes never.





Yet I am a pure shelled-thing. Glistening

manmade against the wall where one

then two fingers entered





the first time,

terror dazzling the uncertainty

of pleasure. Its God as real as girlhood. 

                                                                and then



                                                                a sudden 

                                                               and catastrophic 



                                                               world 

                                                                you a subtle 



                                                                body 

                                                                driven 



                                                                through 

                                                                fear 



                                                                up harsh 

                                                                walling



                                                                driven 

                                                                under 



                                                                ego

                                                                down harsh



                                                                futility

                                                                you see



                                                                it when 

                                                                they Mutt



                                                                and Jeff

                                                                let



                                                                seeing in

                                                                we know 



                                                                all 

                                                                is 



                                                                power 

                                                                you mere



                                                                body

                                                                bare



                                                                life

                                                                in 



                                                                isolation



                                                                with 

                                                                threat and 



                                                                incentive

                                                                coffee



                                                                a meal

                                                                shower



                                                                a letter

                                                                asylum 

                                                                          *                                          

                                      “touch, too,       is an infinite 

                                       system of communication,”  she said, 

                                       floating in the pool, and traced an arc 

                                       along the light       wave surface       then my arm,

                                        “each living gesture   precarious  

                                         which is the root of a latin prayer.”

Funny, isn’t it, how hard to describe

a good man? In the shower, I let

the water run hot as my blood filtering

a mirror of loss. The messenger arrived

flustered as feathers falling to the place

where feathers go to find each other. Who

is the man who makes you remark, “I have

been lucky”? How does the faucet instruct

forgiveness? Our voices spiral to meet

with too much space between. My cuticles

shine like chrome under the moment’s remains.

A demand for nakedness pools somewhere

down the drain. For what we’ve been able to

let go, and know it happens to us all. 

Your curls are soaked in gold but your fingers

cling to my back & could work

a filament & needle through

the gash that leads to the decayed

rafters of a barn

hush the pigeons who coo there

one by one by

breaking their necks

The river smells of September wending

through the dry fields

a blue vein

your thumb traces along a wrist

my wrist

careful never

to the source

I’ve slept with the image of your

arm on my chest

your breath collects in the tiniest

droplets on my neck

but touching myself

to your scalp’s human smell

tarnishes the mirror’s

silver backing

Another woman holds

your beloved’s hands

You hold me like the blue

of an egg you’ve found

bulging from the grass

Trade your house key for

a clutch of mums

we'll put in water on the sill

Fold your ring

in the chapped hand of a man

waiting by the exit ramp

though the jingle of coins or

a bitten chicken sandwich

would do

Turn to me & lift your hair

I’ll clasp on you a necklace

strung with the heads of snakes

                                    for Edward Baugh

Flashing silk phantoms

from the promontory,  

when seen at dark  

rushing to their beds,

those lights corroding

over Navy Island,

never grow old.  

In two enamel basins,

fill water to wash overripe

stars, eaten without

second guess, worm

and all, from veranda

chairs, where no guilt

brims over, whatsoever. 

As frost, unknown, intimate

breath bursts hot its kind

silence. Get up, go greet

Errol Flynn’s ghost

at the empty footbridge,

leaning on the breeze.

Maroons hum out

of hills, restless as

unappeased trees,

ringing,

“Even days coming

are already gone

too soon,” then return

before the river’s lustre

hides their voices

and immeasurable

slow leaves bring

down our morning.

“If you were a star,” you said, “you’d be called Forgive me.”

To which I smiled (you couldn’t see me) and said,

“Or Forgive me not.”

You said “Beware the ides of March on days we’re distant

from bees and flowers.”

“Not if the bees in the mouth don’t sting,” I said,

“and the air we move is a monk’s in a meditative year.”

“Are we the plants or the particles,

the planets or the elements?” you asked,

“and our touchless touching, vector-dependent sex,

and the honey mouth, are they

the silences that waggle the tune

on our foraging routes?”

“When I say honey,” I clarified,

“I’m asking you whose pollen you contain.

We’re no snowflake symmetry

yet to each pollen grain its aperture:

porous, colpate, yet blanketing the earth

as crystals might, and light isn’t refused.”

“And when I say honey,” you said

“I grip my sweetness on your life,

on stigma and anthophile,

and the soporific folded on its synchronous river

that doesn’t intend to dissect my paradise.”

“O captive my captive, we lost and what did love gain,”

I asked, “I haven’t fallen from where I haven’t been,

or exited what I didn’t enter.”

“Seen or unseen,” you said, “I’ll live in your mouth.

We have an extra room. The children like it there,

mead in it their stories and playdough.”

“As if a child is the cosmic dust that made me,

and I’m the suffix, its -ide.”

“And within that child a child.”

“And within that another.”

I awake to you.  A burning building.  

The alarm is my own.  Internal alarm, clock alarm, 

then coming through your very walls.  The alarm 

is of you.  I call first with my mouth.  Then with my phone.

No one.  Then maybe someone.  Then yes, a fire fighter, or two, is coming.  

Outside, the children gather and gawk.  Cover their ears from the blare.

They are clothed in their footed pajamas.  We are all awake now. Even you,

the burning building.  

I’m leaving, I say.  I look them each in the eyes, the mouths, the chests.  

I look at their footed feet.

I’m leaving you burning.   The children can walk.  The children can follow.

The building burns now behind me.  You burn, 

behind me.  The alarm

Screams.  No. No.

Not screaming. 

There is a field between us.  

Now you are calling. 

And now beseeching.

Behind me the children are a trail of children.  Some following.  Some clinging.

And now you, my home, my building, burn and burn.

There is a mountain between us.

And now you are ringing.  

And now you are singing.

I look back.  Back to you, burning building.

You are a glowing dancer, you are a façade on sparkling display.

Now a child.  Or two.  Or three.  Pilgrim children. Between me 

And you.  

Up until this sore minute, you could turn the key, pivot away.

But mine is the only medicine now

wherever you go or follow.

The past is so far away, but it flickers,

then cleaves the night. The bones

of the past splinter between our teeth.

This is our life, love. Why did I think

it would be anything less than too much

of everything? I know you remember that cheap motel

on the coast where we drank red wine,

the sea flashing its gold scales as sun

soaked our skin. You said, This must be

what people mean when they say

I could die now. Now

we’re so much closer

to death than we were then. Who isn’t crushed,

stubbed out beneath a clumsy heel?

Who hasn’t stood at the open window,

sleepless, for the solace of the damp air?

I had to get old to carry both buckets

yoked on my shoulders. Sweet

and bitter waters I drink from.

Let me know you, ox you.

I want your scent in my hair.

I want your jokes.

Hang your kisses on all my branches, please.

Sink your fingers into the darkness of my fur.

“...because in the dying world it was set burning.”

                                                            —Galway Kinnell

We are not making love but

all night long we hug each other. 

Your face under my chin is two brown

thoughts with no right name, but opens to

eyes when my beard is brushing you.

The last line of the album playing

is Joan Armatrading’s existential stuff, 

we had fun while it lasted.

You inch your head up toward mine

where your eyes brighten, intense, 

as though I were observer and you

a doppled source. In the blue light

in the air we suddenly leave our selves

and watch two salt-starved bodies

lick the sweat from each others’ lips.

When the one mosquito in the night

comes toward our breathing, the pitch

of its buzz turns higher

till it’s fat like this blue room

and burning on both of us;

now it dies like a siren passing

down a street, the color of blood.

I pull the blanket over our heads

about to despair because I think

everything intense is dying, but you, 

you, even asleep, hold onto all

you think I am, more than I think, 

so intensely you can feel me

hugging back where I have gone. 

                            (a lullaby)





Snow glints and softens

a pig's slaughter.



Mama refuses another 

drink, mama 

agrees to another drink.



On the wall—a carpet with peonies,

their purple mouths 

                     suck me into sleep.

Small, 

        I've been bedded. 

                                            Toasts

from across the wall, 

                     my lullabies. 

Mama says no-no-no 

to more drink.



My bed smells of valenky. 

Without taking its eyes off me

a cat 

licks its grey paw as if sharpening a knife.

Mama yells yes to another drink.



Mama's breasts are too big to fit into packed morning buses.

There's uncertainty 

                                 I would grow into a real person.

But on a certain day 

in Vishnyowka, 

a pig



is slaughtered, mama whispers yes 

yes yes yes 

to more drink,

I'm vanishing into the peonies’ throats,

peonies smell of valenky, 

                                 of pig’s blood

on the snow.



*



Clock’s hands leave a strange ski track.

Was he mute a while,

or all tears. Did he raise

his hands to his ears so

he could scream scream

scream. Did he eat only

with his fists. Did he eat

as if something inside of him

would never be fed. Did he

arch his back and hammer

his heels into the floor

the minute there was

something he sought.

And did you feel yourself

caught there, wanting

to let go, to run, to

be called back to wherever

your two tangled souls

had sprung from. Did you ever

feel as though something

were rising up inside you.

A fire-white ghost. Did you

feel pity. And for whom.

When the pickup truck, with its side mirror,

almost took out my arm, the driver’s grin

reflected back; it was just a horror

show that was never going to happen,

don’t protest, don’t bother with the police

for my benefit, he gave me a smile—

he too was startled, redness in his face—

when I thought I was going, a short while,

to get myself killed: it wasn’t anger

when he bared his teeth, as if to caution

calm down, all good, no one died, ni[ght, neighbor]—

no sense getting all pissed, the commotion

of the past is the past; I was so dim,

he never saw me—of course, I saw him.

You and your friend stood 

on the corner of the liquor store

as I left Champa Garden, 

takeout in hand, on the phone 

with Ashley who said, 

That was your tough voice.

I never heard your tough voice before. 

I gave you boys a quick nod, 

walked E 21st past dark houses. 

Before I could reach the lights 

on Park, you criss-crossed 

your hands around me,

like a friend and I’d hoped 

that you were Seng, 

the boy I’d kissed on First Friday 

in October. He paid for my lunch 

at that restaurant, split the leftovers. 

But that was a long time ago 

and we hadn’t spoken since, 

so I dropped to my knees 

to loosen myself from your grip, 

my back to the ground, I kicked 

and screamed but nobody 

in the neighborhood heard me, 

only Ashley on the other line, 

in Birmingham, where they say 

How are you? to strangers 

not what I said in my tough voice

but what I last texted Seng, 

no response. You didn’t get on top, 

you hovered. My elbows banged 

the sidewalk. I threw 

the takeout at you and saw 

your face. Young. More scared 

of me than I was of you. 

Hands on my ankles, I thought 

you’d take me or rape me. 

Instead you acted like a man 

who slipped out of my bed

and promised to call: 

You said nothing. 

Not even what you wanted.

              to the memory of Denis Johnson

The stranger bites into an orange

and places the rind between us

on the park bench.

It becomes a small raft of fire.

I came here to admire

the iron-lit indifference

of the geese on the pond.

The summers here

are a circuit in parallel

with everything I cannot say,

wrote the inventor

before he was hanged

from the bridge

this park is named after.

His entire life devoted

to capturing inextinguishable light

in a teardrop of enamel.

He was hanged for touching

the forehead of another man

in the wrong century.

The only thing invented

by the man I lost yesterday

was his last step into a final

set of parenthesis.

I came here to watch the geese

and think of him.

The stranger and I

share the orange rind

as an ashtray.

He lights my cigarette

and the shadows of our hands

touch on the ground.

His left leg is amputated

below the knee

and the bell tower rings

above the town.

I tell him my name

and he says nothing.

With the charred end of a stick

something shaped like a child

on the other side of the pond

draws a door on a concrete wall

and I wonder where the dead

wait in line to be born.

                              (for my sisters)

I still don’t know how he knew

I was running. My mouth was open,

or those boys were barking that loud;

not that I hadn’t been chased

by dogs. There’s a moment when

you can’t tell from which angle

it’s coming, and the air is a red drum,

and the trees lean away from you,

and the ground is wet.     Lonnie drove

truck nights, and grew strawberries

in our backyard, which were small,

but sweet. You could taste his hands

in the dirt, which the mouth learns

to read as green and sweet. My mother

made him liver and onions; we ate fish

Fridays and I wasn’t allowed milk. He’s why

I like my eggs runny. I still don’t understand

anything about engines. I can’t remember

why those boys were after me. Maybe

it makes sense why a Rottweiler

would break a fence.      Lonnie stood

with his shotgun out front. Sometimes

he wouldn’t come home, or he’d walk

into the house with his shirt bloody.

When we left, my mother didn’t want

money. Not that we would have gone,

but that other woman didn’t even invite us

to the funeral. Man, I bet Yvette’s children

have children. Lord knows what’s happened

to Chrissy now that she’s too old to dance.

^{Translated by Carina del Valle Schorske}

Pensive light. Light
with folded hands, a shrug
of song in the shoulders.
Light that sullies the sea’s
Sunday best, the foam
moving blind over it.

I’ve lost the waistline
of my violet mountains
in the sky’s mouth.
El Yunque is an ancient flute;
retrospective leap.
Blue swallow, blue choke.

Here lives San Juan.
There’s a light that might
save you in the gold
pigeon coop, its womb
made of glass. Here
the rays of the sun
keep growing towards
the dense eyes
of blank harmony.

Passionate
from the balcony I watch
the living death of the sun
high above the shoulders
of the stricken minute.
To the sound of trumpets
I defend my feeling
from the grey bite
of disenchantment.

And the day grows through me
like a magic tree
from nothing to nothing—
grows and sings,
fragrant, shaken,
fills up with promises
and hours.

Nothing changes.
Everything is just twilight.
Physical laws.
I make this light
because I love it.
It’s mine because we are,
eye to eye,
mute correspondence.

We are twilight, luz mía,
just twilight. 

Luz pensativa.
Luz de manos cerradas
y hombros de canto breve.
Luz que ensucia al mar
su camisón de fiesta.
Anda ciega la espuma.

Mis montañas violetas
han perdido su talle
en la boca del cielo.
El Yunque es flauta histórica;
Salto en retrospectiva.
Bocado azul que ahoga.

Acá vive San Juan.
Hay luz que salva
en palomar de oro
su vientre hecho de vidrio.
Aquí siguen creciendo
las espigas del sol
para los ojos densos
de la blanca armonía.

Apasionada
desde el balcón yo miro
la muertevida del sol
alto sobre los hombros
del fenecido instante.
A trompetazos de alma
defiendo mi emoción
de la mordida gris
del desencanto.

Y crece el día por mí
como mágico árbol
de la nada a la nada.
Crece y canta,
fragante, estremecido
y se llena de promesas
y horas.

Nada cambia.
Todo es sólo twilight.
De leyes físicas.

Yo hago esta luz
porque la amo.
Es mía porque somos,
de mirada a mirada,
muda correspondencia.

Somos twilight, luz mía,
Sólo twilight.

I’ve lost something and I can’t describe
what it is

and what if that’s my job
to say how empty an absence is



like rolling 2 gears together
and maybe teeth are missing in one
or both

or maybe trying to grind
two stones that are
polished and smoothed



I’ve always liked 
a little grit

but sand in my shoes
or in my hair

is like shattering
a glass in carpet
and using a broom to
get it out

I can’t describe
what it’s like to
sit on opposite ends
of a park bench and
not know how
to get any closer

I miss so many things
and I’ve looked through my piggy
bank and only found pennies

a pile of things that are
almost completely worthless

a shoebox full of sporks
a well with a bucket and a rope
that’s too short

sometimes in my room
it’s so dark that if I wake
up I won’t know if it’s morning or night

imagine being someplace you know
so well but are lost and don’t have any idea
how to get out

the rule is, put your right hand out
lay it on the wall, and follow

sometimes the rules don’t apply to all of us
I don’t want to sleep here again tonight

                                                 (from Negro Mountain)



 

She said,



Get your bearings.



No shape in my gap, not



now. From now



on, it goes



without



saying. If



this is allied to “the negro



character” it’s far



from original—I’d only get



to where we came out of the mountains and



hit the sea. And view



the old coast too, from



the road, the route described



by its indentations—“One bay



after another”—until the road turned inland



again. Civilization’s



tattered



in such. Far



be it from me. One’s



close to nothing.



Something,



though, to the coast—



“My affection



hath an unknowne bottome, like the Bay



of Portugall,” some-



one else had been made



to say.

Sycorax

As if someone blew against the back of my neck,

I writhed up, becoming a wind myself,



and I flowed out the window of my bedroom.

Maybe I also emitted a moan over the croaking



of the frogs that night. Then I raised my arms

to the clouds, rooting my feet deep in the soil.



A stretch, I called it.



Now—pure nature in the night,

too sway-of-the-trees wise to worry about men—



I opened my nightgown but offered nothing

to anyone. This is for me, I said aloud to the night.



People would have laughed had they seen me

out their windows, naked but for my nightgown



flapping: I was small but the conviction of my stance

would’ve made me seem immense, framed



through their windows. Without my clothes

I was a world of possibility, more than a desire.



I, knowing better, I ought to mind my place,

I ought to walk like a lady,



I ought to demure myself to make him feel stronger,

I ought to mourn him when



he is gone. But every word I spoke to the wind

carried to him the scent of his regrets.



Every word blew through the night,

a breeze of my indifference.