like some 14 year old girl waiting for her crush to glance back i 

keep waiting for capitalism to end

but it won’t end

my adult life lover states

on what will end:

Libraries 

Birds 

Retirement 

Recess

Sprinting during recess 

Hispid Hares

Starfish shaped like stars 

Inconvenience

Wrinkles 

Sunken cheeks 

Living corals 

Protests

Anti-Nuclear Proliferation 

Non-Aggression Pacts 

Dragonflies

Mangosteen 

DMZs

Trade Embargos 

Leopards, all kinds 

Sawfins

Rewilding

Infiltration Plot/Dreams 

Oak, Trees.

Partulina Variabilis 

Partulina Splendida

(-------) Violence Prevention Programs

News. News:

Might a few jellyfish survive—

counting till revelations becomes part of—

Outside the water sings 

its tortuous note, 

devoid of the parrot, 

devoid of the quetzal.

A song without ears, 

a dry silk wrapped around the throat, 

neither warm nor cold 

but a vacillation between the two. 

A hammer swinging 

through the aether of the flesh, 

the mind’s red line. 

Tonight a part of me shivers, liking it, 

my whole body in one place, 

where steel drags along. 

I wonder if the body wants more 

to open or to shut. 

                                                no one speaks of how tendrils feed on the fruits

                        of my demise     these dead hands                  for instance     that alight                phlox

wild strawberry                 and pine             this is my body out of context       rotting in the                wrong hemisphere         

   I died                     so all my enemies would tremble at my murmur                  how it                      populates their homes     

                              so I could say to the nearest fellow dead person        I know more than

      all my living  foes                  I’ve derived sun-fed  design                             for once                             from

                    closing my oak eyes                           now they’ll never snare the civilian

                                                                     pullulating my throat

              I swim down to 

              look for our four-

              chambered house.

                            The window

              in our room still leaf-

              darkened, its bruiselight

              charged with fault. 

Am I very lonely? 

             I age in reverse until I am as

             small as my child

             body, my chest swollen

             with bright longing

             that the walls will not always

             greet each other 

                           in collapse—

The lord is kind.

             The underworld is lit by half

                          -moon as if to say, none

                          of this is evidence,

                          only decay.

             In the drift, this wreck still looks like a life:

             everything still hanging is relieved

             of its weight like an archer’s arrow

                           suspended in rags 

                           of snow.

             I hunt the me

             that made this heavenless night,

             my young fear circling your

             false beacon, its low

             stars and difficult earth stacked

             immense against

             every fact—

I should be funnier here:

                            Underwater, iron sinks

                                                                            weightless as       

               a kite 

                                     plummeting 

                      through peaks.

startling semiannual saccharine sensitivity to sentencing in a season of severing and severances to so called civil servants of streachery and separation i sense a series of spectators or investigators wont save us like stolen generators nothing speculative about spectacles we beasts spit and sputter   spits and sputters splitting sutures of your occipital up your occidental skeptical of this spectacular softness of this plexus flex i choose the best for myself   swearing the swivel of the stank of spangled smear with speared wet spirit spent to coalesce in this nonsense that’s the thing about your language is i make it sound so good it doesnt have to make sense they is all what you is where you from  someone tell these oxymorons we is dual citizens former resident aliensss and we have only just begun counting down this society’s days with the efficiency of arabic numerals

(for a.g., you & yours)

the night is silver in its silence

moon-pop echoes of the day

raked up rubble of the hours spent

my, the children slumber

a thousand tomorrows bubbling at their lips

the dream projections lighting up

the clouds’ ample cotton                    relish the silence

as you’ll relish tomorrow

and the honesty of such raucous noise, thick

child feet of our unfeathered breasts, beasts we cherish

hallway run, sprints to smash the mash of food

tumbling, rolling right into these arms

charmed in their amnesia regarding where one

begins or ends

reminding us of the joy

of first step and the storm after the holler:

mama see, mama watch

pitter/patter

                     pitter/patter

thunder on a hardwood, heartbeat

this sole and counted rhythm

every generation a temporal fugitive

running from the death grip

every death ship’s watch, yesterdays

we weren’t meant to make it through

relish the memory ingrained in the sound

how these tiny, tiny feet

grip the floor, say

tomorrow, tomorrow

I make you

tomorrow

My mother said this to me
long before Beyoncé lifted the lyrics
from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs,

and what my mother meant by
Don’t stray was that she knew
all about it—the way it feels to need

someone to love you, someone
not your kind, someone white,
some one some many who live

because so many of mine
have not, and further, live on top of
those of ours who don’t.

I’ll say, say, say,
I’ll say, say, say,
What is the United States if not a clot

of clouds? If not spilled milk? Or blood?
If not the place we once were
in the millions? America is Maps—

Maps are ghosts: white and 
layered with people and places I see through.
My mother has always known best,

knew that I’d been begging for them,
to lay my face against their white
laps, to be held in something more

than the loud light of their projectors
as they flicker themselves—sepia
or blue—all over my body.

All this time,
I thought my mother said, Wait,
as in, Give them a little more time

to know your worth,
when really, she said, Weight,
meaning heft, preparing me

for the yoke of myself,
the beast of my country’s burdens,
which is less worse than

my country’s plow. Yes,
when my mother said,
They don’t love you like I love you,

she meant,
Natalie, that doesn’t mean
you aren’t good.

*The italicized words, with the exception of the final stanza, come from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs song “Maps.”

They grow too aware of crowns, spend 

evenings rinsing and rinsing, water boiled 

with oils and herbs left to cool 

alongside chicken and grains. The women 

send their children to work, on themselves 

or the house, and steam their scalps.

I dream of my father but don’t know what he says. 

It’s kind. I share rice and other grains with a man. 

I hand him light in my kitchen. 

He takes it and my belly cools.

I prefer not to write about love.

I prefer not to write about my body.

My father’s love, my mother’s body.

Both regenerate with astounding speed.

At times, I find myself in an ancient pose.

In a café, I make my arms a bow

and look up, as if an arrow will appear

at an absurd angle. I mark a line 

from privacy to throat, trace the dark line 

under my bellybutton. Maybe someone 

took my astral baby. Maybe I birthed the man

who denied me. Maybe he had to deny me

to avoid a crime. I don’t point my fingers.

I’m convinced our fate is determined 

in part by water, that we can’t avoid walking by 

or being near a body of it, however we plan our travel. 

That showers are prescribed before birth. 

How many things have I missed 

letting my wet bangs touch my eyelashes, 

singing into a stream?

<sup>“Child with continuing cling issue his No in final fire”

             -Gwendolyn Brooks</sup>

sapphires are lovely as the Star of Bombay revered by Child.

she embodies its six rays replacing spoiled limbs. with

heat she hopes to change her lack luster, halt the continuing

spectrum a cousin sapped from her. a vampire’s cling,

she remembers his as cornflower blue. a distracting issue

a lover is not guilty of. how does he know it’s a turn off? he

cannot enter her that way nor retire to any position. No

moment to gaze without recall. shadows cannot swing in

the amber light. she admires little if at all. a final

twinge when lover pinch upon entering Crayola blush fire.

with the anemone zero.

Drink 12 oz. of coffee in Longmont.

Are you parched?

Is your name Pinky?

What color is the skin of your inner arm, creamy?

Valentine City rebate: a box of chocolates from Safeway.

Yours, yours, yours.

In its entirety.

Don't collude with your inability to give or receive love.

Collude, instead, with the lining of the universe.

Descent, rotation, silk water, brief periods of intense sunlight

striated with rose pink glitter.

The glitter can only get us.

So far.

Here we are at the part with the asphalt, airstream Tupperware,

veins, some nice light stretching.

Call me.

This is a poem for a beloved.

Who never arrived.

I hope to God you will not ask me to go anywhere except my own country. If we go back, we will follow whatever orders you give us. We do not want to go right or left, but straight back to our own land.

          —Barboncito

I hope to God you will not ask

Me or my People to send

Postcard greetings: lamented wind

Of perfect sunrisings, golden

Yes, we may share the same sun setting

But the in-between hours are hollow

The People fill the void with prayers for help

Calling upon the Holy Ones

Those petitions penetrate and loosen

The binds you tried to tighten

Around our heart, a tension

Blocking the wind, like a shell

Fluttering inside, fluttering inside

I knew what I was about

stroking your lovely

neck in the perilously

brief

interval at the intersection of

desire, the real, and feminist

derring-do.

And if the intersection is three

or four points of variance,

divergence, diversion,

aversion, and hapless brief

interval

larger than the grid,

in dread of a walled corner,

a piano stool, a

contraband .38,

and that flip of an

eye eros,

oh, throat

I don’t do well with

expectation. Come up

here if it’s too cool a

story below with your

windows cracked.

Higher is warmer

in this last,

fast

phantasmic

interval.

I ripped my mother being born

             and I am the only.

                            The oldest ripped my grandmother

                                     and still came more.

We have a family history

             of losing our heads,

                            of no one listening,

                                        of telling someone before.

We are raucous and willful,

              loud as thunder.

                            No one can forget us,

                                        we bear our teeth.

We pass through bodies

              like summer heat. We eat

                            and thicken, worry men.

                                        They plead and suffer, come again.

I entered the world

              a turning storm,

                            but no one stopped me

                                        though they’d been warned.

What if I tell you they didn’t evacuate

the high school after he brought in the

clock? What if he and clock waited in the

principal’s office

until the police came? You look at me

as though I pulled the fire alarm,

yelled into a crowded theatre. You

think I can erase the weapon out

of the hands of that young man in

Kevlar pointing his assault rifle at me?

Would your pain lessen? Would you

sleep tomorrow? What if I expunge the

hoodie? Outlaw convenience

stores? Institute curfew for all adult males

after 8 p.m.? Did you know that kid

loved horses, ate Skittles, went to

aviation camp? What if

I rub out midnight of the blue, blue

world? Take the jaywalk from the boy

trying to catch a city

bus? Which blue should it be? First or

second? The last thing you hear on the radio

before mashing

another button? What if there were no loosies

to smoke, steal, hawk? What if Sandy used her signal?

I say her name, I canonize the thought all

black lives matter. What if I raise my

voice? What if I don’t stop speaking?

What if I stop talking back?

Then will you miss me?

i have wanted to be a sieve

i have wanted to be an anechoic chamber

and reflect back to you     no sound

but for the quiet rush and thrum

of your own nervous blood

i have wanted to be instrument

and not just body     to be felt

the cleavage of the world through

but instead to splay the invisible

light waned out through     skin

          skin and rushes

          a bird-wing desire

          alight and under       {fire}

                                               {i} walked out into the burning-est

                                               woken / of time / am i / acting-vist

                                               enough / as light / in the interim

                                               / inner of darkness / now entering

                                               / the machine / in knowing of

                                               cloak & insidious /

                                               of wonder / & plunder /

                                               not to seek / satisfaction in peaks

                                               / & difficult in climb

                                               / & / into surrender's don’ts //

                                               {i} walked out

                                               into the brilliant

                                               wokenest of

                                               time & everything

                                               was trite-ist

These days, I refuse to let you see me

the way I see myself.

I wake up in the morning not knowing

whether I will make it through the day;

reminding myself of the small, small things

I’ve forgotten to marvel in;

these trees, blood-free and bone-dry

have come to rescue me more than once,

but my saving often requires hiding

yet they stand so tall, so slim and gluttonous

refusing to contain me; even baobab trees

will split open at my command, and

carve out fleshless wombs to welcome me.

I must fall out of love of the world

without me in it, but my loves have

long gone, and left me in a foreign land

where once I was made of bone,

now water, now nothing.

Breathe
. As in what if
the shadow is gold
en? Breathe. As in
hale assuming
exhale. Imagine
that.      As in first
person singular. Homonym
:. As in subject. As
in centeroftheworld as in
mundane. The opposite of spectacle
spectacular. This is just us
breathing. Imagine
normalized respite
gold in shadows
. You have the
right to breathe and remain
. Imagine
that
.

Executions have always been public spectacles. It is New Year’s 2009 in Austin and we are listening to Jaguares on the speakers. Alexa doesn’t exist yet so we cannot ask her any questions. It is nearly 3 AM, and we run out of champagne. At Fruitvale Station, a man on his way home on a train falls onto the platform, hands cuffed. Witnesses capture the assassination with a grainy video on a cell phone. I am too drunk, too in love, to react when I hear the news. I do not have Twitter to search for the truth. Rancière said looking is not the same as knowing. I watch protests on the television while I sit motionless in the apartment, long after she left me. Are we what he calls the emancipated spectator, in which spectatorship is “not passivity that’s turned into activity” but, instead, “our normal situation”? Police see their god in their batons, map stains and welts on the continents of bodies. To beat a body attempts to own it. And when the body cannot be owned, it must be extinguished.

Childless, I am in a house on the ocean-edge

of a national park. Nights, I consider broadcast horrors. This is not

my house. I am a stranger, a newcomer. So often, too,

is the horror. Passes time. Passes time. Past time lights

up my liturgical tendencies, illumines past time, my lovelies.

Here, in this room, in this house, the light is sometimey as always.

Clouds. Wind and all. Pronounced through windows onto woods, onto lawns.

Say “Light casts its tender hieroglyphs on the mundane

and cataclysmic equally,” and fancify a nothing, go straight

for an inaccuracy that distracts and passes time.

And light comes before the hieroglyph, and (as marker)

these hieroglyphs give meager insight into the “nature” of light beyond

some minor perceptions. And what? Shall I ride the alliterative waves

of articulation and silence that fog my mouth and mind? Or just let

the words like particles roll? See where and what this accrual of syllables gets us?

It’s midday, and you are both years before the you to whom this poem

whispers, before the women with whom these syllables conspire. Lullaby, loves,

this ain’t. I have become a woman who screams softly. Maybe an over-abundance

of caution? Of caustic care? Well, I’ve seen the clips and memes, heard the murmurs

and corporate decisions meant to mark-up and mock the nature of you that’s well beyond

easy perception. In past times,

I’ve been medicated out of my self, locked under

an atmospheric feeling, the condition of which would not relent, which could will “will not”

to relent. Wheels of wheeling won’t re-

lent. Absolve your self sunken between

Breath breath breathe                and the toxic dirt.