is like a house
          with a brain inside. Another place
where eating
          and thinking
                     tango and spar—

At night
           you lean out, releasing
thought balloons.
           On the roof
                      someone stands ready

                      with a pin—

my father is tying concertina wire
around his garden which is
now all but ruined by
squirrels deer and worst
of all rabbits with cucumber
seeds stuck to their
tails     I am an apex predator my father is
an apex predator god makes
us in pairs      my mother searches the lawn
for four-leaf clovers pinning them
to a scrapbook pinning
moments to time she gives each clover
a name Buck Comes Onto Porch and
Hospital Note From Kaveh    while
she makes tea inside I search
the house for a lighter and can’t
even find matches       what I miss most
about winter is the brightness of
winter summer’s all foggy and
wet       my mother hovers in
the kitchen like a strange tune       she is out
of saffron and has no money
for more        she weeps over her
bleach-white rice until my
father comes in cracks an egg
over the plate bursts
the yolk says see says yellow       my mother
smiles so big and sad she wrinkles into
the future where my eyes
are yellow again maybe from the yolk
maybe something else       my fur is coming in
so thick my mother would squeal
with pride if she could see it     when she
was pregnant I kicked so hard so
often she could barely
sleep        staying up all
night she thought she must
be full of bunnies

The night sounds like a murder

of magpies and we’re replacing our cabinet knobs

because we can’t change the world, but we can

change our hardware. America breaks my heart

some days, and some days it breaks itself in two.

I watched a woman have a breakdown in the mall

today and when the security guard tried to help her

what I could see was all of us

peeking from her purse as she threw it

across the floor into Forever 21. And yes,

the walls felt like another way to hold us in

and when she finally stopped crying,

I heard her say to the fluorescent lighting, Some days

the sky is too bright. And like that we were her

flock in our black coats and white sweaters,

some of us reaching our wings to her

and some of us flying away.

Consider these parallel histories: An emperor once declared war on the sea, sent his men drowning toward victory, & the Red Sea is named for the dead algae blooming within it. Can you tell me the difference? Maybe I too am red for all the slaughter carried within me, bastard child of water, lake swelled with rotting fish. What are you searching for when you drag me from you? Your vein a riverbed dredged of impossible children. Cells tested for the echo of your mother’s name. Once you were carried in your mother, her belly a lake. If the child before you & all those after sunk, are you the blood or the water? A boat or the first unfinished wolf, wrenching itself from the sea? A bridge too carries bodies & the water carries it. Does this make the bridge a mother or a child? Your mother once told you that if she gave you life she could take it back. Does this make her the bridge or its necklace of nooses? The river or its surface tension? Liquor is lighter than water & so is gasoline. Both burn. Both stained-glass a surface in the sun. Common language says we drown in liquor, perhaps this means your mother is a lake beneath another’s surface. What does that make me? A bridge or a glass? Your mother’s mother? Sometimes I worry that you’ve forgotten me. Dry & sober as a boat. Your survival a matter of surface tension. Maybe you believe that you are the bridge, suspended above all your dead. Don’t forget, everything erodes. A canyon is just a river’s bastard child. Bruise deep in the dirt. All of man’s inventions topple, each bridge’s arches bullied down to cliché rust. Another history blooming the water red.

—after Michael Heizer

I may be looking at the set of boulders

that is now in front of me, but it is you I am addressing.

You are near or you are far,

depending on the accuracy of the words I have chosen.

When my teacher told me to use this

instead of the, she was talking about the range between

the intimate and the conventional. The gray cluster

is radiant, but it is a melancholy radiance.

To describe it only seems to lean away

from what I intend. Maybe, then, touch is a better way

of explaining the pleasure of that

encounter: the surprise and familiarity of the plant

that you brush past in the dark of your

own house. Or maybe the always-new logic of a dream

is closer to the truth: the falling that takes place

in a place where there is no ground.

The boulders are there for me, an arrangement

and its warren of rooms. One door opening to foggy roses.

Another one opening to a dawn that is the color of tea.

Surely there will always be new language

to tell you who I am, imagination rousing

out of idleness into urgency, reaching now towards you.

I keep remembering my teacher and she is an image

of joy, the small and wordless music

of her silver bangles. This over the.

One of the rules for writing the poems of a lonely person.

so I count my hopes: the bumblebees

are making a comeback, one snug tight

in a purple flower I passed to get to you;

your favorite color is purple but Prince’s

was orange & we both find this hard to believe;

today the park is green, we take grass for granted

the leaves chuckle around us; behind

your head a butterfly rests on a tree; it’s been

there our whole conversation; by my old apartment

was a butterfly sanctuary where I would read

& two little girls would sit next to me; you caught

a butterfly once but didn’t know what to feed it

so you trapped it in a jar & gave it to a girl

you liked. I asked if it died. you say you like

to think it lived a long life. yes, it lived a long life.

Light the last light and lift—

                                                                                                  and lift again in to that obscurity—

blue-skinned sky & what it cannot lead to—

                                                 the always immolated flesh of this world’s bone-shell—

what lasts? what goes like a trumpet blast

                                                                                                  through the feathered

                        ear of the angel? There

                                                                                                          & being & the evening air—

is in everything plummet—

                                                                                                                               & yet we go even some-

         times rise—have you wondered?

                                                                                                                               that dark wick—flame both

inward & below light the first fire—

                                                                                                                               what does not burn

                                                      might still die—& yet

                                                                                              what does not might grow—may graft—

                           like leaf & branch together—

                                                                                                                                              live this long lull

before the last:

                                                                let this

                                                                                                    let my words

leave their black axe next to the tree

                                                                                                                             & may

                         the grace

                                                of grace

feel through its fall

                                                                        the way—

Ten pound art book about Berlin. Black and whites

of a bear rifled down in a square, boys in sun on rubble,

a woman wearing a gas mask pushing a pram.

I was examining each photo for a glimpse of street corner

or sidewalk, wondering if it could be the spot

where my ancestor the roofer’s head

smashed into the pavement when he fell, the loss

that earned the payout that put his children on a boat

that put me here, when I smelled something burning,

but what began as an acrid odor softened

to the familiar scent of bonfires, signature fragrance

of the dying season. I never know where it’s coming from,

but in it there’s always that warm anticipation

of Halloween I remember, and within that the disappointment

when it was never like the movies: no New England

facades, no sidewalks choked with kids, there weren’t

enough of us, and yet I hear children’s laughter

like I’m there again, not in the memory, but the expectation—

outside the window a girl is filming on her phone

another girl tossing handfuls of red maple

over her head. I can see on the screen the video

playing in a short, closed loop. The leaves go up,

then are rewound into her hands, never falling all the way

into the grass over which they’re scattered now

after she dropped them when suddenly a firetruck blared by,

awaking at my feet the dog I’m paid to keep alive.

Your little elbow

nudges the air

as the raindrops

line up and wait

to fall. I forget

who I was before

our windows floated

away revealing

our drawn-over

selves. Your shadow

kites above us

and whatever we say

forever hovers.

A tornado touches

gently down, black

lightning ignites

a butterfly’s skull.

Your fingers grip

the triggers of long

stemmed flowers

beneath the sky’s

television of rain

broadcasting two

smiling clouds.

Are they us? I ask.

They’re just clouds,

you say, then cut

yourself out.

I am white       where it matters        in front of the

camera     I am an egg             a cobweb          when

my mother calls        me Haloul       I pretend not

to hear                here I am a résumé                 doll

gown of paper            checklist             piss in a cup

I was afraid          of my body                        but not

anymore           now there’s respect              this bitch

pantyless                      humming           louder than

the                    machine            I am white         when

asked to be                   storyboarding             my own

grandmother      into a                         poem           here I am

meet cute           between              egg &           song

It’s dusk on a Tuesday in June. A hot wind

       bears down and east. In my room, a stranger’s

hairclip lies like a gilded insect beside the sink.

       Hours later, it’s still dusk; it will be dusk all night.

Last month, I cut the masking tape from a box my mother left

       my sister and me. On the lid, she wrote, Life is hard, not

unbeatable. If I can do it, darlings, so can you. 2 am. A rosy dark

       dusting the window, the heat a ladder into sleep.

Things feel partial. My love for things is partial. Mikel on his last legs, covered

in KS lesions demanded that I see the beauty of a mass of chrysanthemums. Look,

he demanded. I lied that I could see the beauty there but all I saw was a smear

of yellow flowers. I wanted to leave that place. I wanted to leave him to die

without me. And soon that’s what I did. Even the molecule I allowed myself to feel

of our last goodbye made me scream. What would have happened if I’d opened

my heart all the way as I was told to do if I wanted Jesus to live inside one of its

dank chambers? Whitman told me to unscrew the locks from the doors and the doors

themselves from the jambs. Let love come streaming in like when the St. Joe flooded

Save-A-Lot and drove it out of business. The only store in town. Don’t put my ashes

in the river Mikel said. Put them in a tributary. I did. I put them in a tributary without

touching them. Now I want to chalk my fingerprints with them but it’s too late.

I want to hold them like he held me and touched my upper lip and called it cupid’s

cusp, a phrase that made me wince. I felt love all the way then, and never since.

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

Isn't it funny

when suddenly after all these decades

you notice a new part of your body.

 

Maybe the hamstrings—

entirely unused when lifting weights,

back used instead

which then pains for years.

 

Maybe the slight shoulder raise

that tightens those muscles

maybe for good.

 

I notice my body

slide through time.

It is odd and peculiar,

genius of no one,

a perfect clock

making clocks

look simple.

 

Newness comes naturally.

Resisting it causes the past

to present memories on yellow

platters.

 

My age is a number.

Bones getting ready to play poker.

I will remain a small book

hidden away deep

in the library.

 

I love my body and this world!

Such a declaration

five years ago

would've driven me insane.

 

But now an appreciation arrives

with a fine taste of sulfur

and anywhere I look is born

a rose.

When the forensics nurse inspected me, she couldn’t

see the tenderness he showed me after. My walk home

 

squirmed sore with night. I passed the earthworms

displaced to sidewalk, their bodies apostrophed

 

in the sun. I did not anticipate a grief

so small, my noun of a prayer, Eat dirt to make dirt.

 

Took a man’s hand as he led me to cave. So long

as I breathed, I could huff violets in his dank, practice

 

earth’s gasp. Mother lifts daughter, daughter casts

look at camera, a killer, a stick in the mud. I hold

 

my own hand. When the forensic nurse inspected

me, I described the house, historic blue. Asked me

 

to push my hips down. Little crescent moons

where his nails stabbed into me. She gave me

 

the word abrasion so gently I offered consent. Blue

as the moon when I sighed wait, blue as the no of my



throat. Abrasion, possibly extended form of red.

Harm results in a starry night too, many galaxies

 

scraped under the nail of a heavenly body. Ah my

second earth, its wounds hardened into swallowed

 

prophylaxis, an injection pooling between muscle

and skin. A woke seed. Deadarmed anti-moons

 

aggregated. A storm can travel seeds up to 30 miles

away. They dust on the sidewalks like lost data.

 

He did not intend Did not. Bloody speculum

a telescope searching the angry night sky for proof.

I know I’m godless when

my thirst converts water                into wasps, my country a carpet

                                                            I finger for crumbs. A country

my grandmother breeds

dogs instead of daughters             because only one can be called

                                                            home. I am trained to lose accents,

to keep a pregnancy

or cancel it out with                       another man. My tongue is

                                                            a twin, one translating

the other’s silence. Here

is my lung’s list of needs:               how to hold water

                                                            like a woman & not

drown. I want men

to stop writing &                            become mothers. I promise this

                                                            is the last time I call my mother

to hear her voice

beside mine. I want                        the privilege of a history

                                                            to hand back unworn

to grow out of

my mother’s touch                         like a dress from

                                                            childhood. Every time

I flirt with girls, I say

I know my way around                   a wound. I say let’s bang

                                                            open like doors, answer to

god. I unpin from

my skin, leave it to                          age in my closet & swing

                                                            from the dark, a wrecking

ball gown. In the closet

urns of ashes:                                   we cremated my grandfather

                                                            on a stovetop, stirred

every nation we tried

to bury him in was                          a war past calling itself

                                                            one. I stay closeted with

him, his scent echoing

in the urn, weeks-old                     ginger & leeks, leaks

                                                            of light where his bones halved

& healed. With small

hands, I puzzled                              him back together. I hid from

                                                            his shadow in closets

his feet like a chicken’s,

jellied bone & meatless.                His favorite food was chicken

                                                            feet, bones shallow in the meat

When he got dementia,

he flirted with my mother              he mouthed for my breasts

                                                            like an infant

We poured milk

into his eyeholes                             until he saw everything

                                                            neck-deep in white

the Chinese color

of mourning, bad                             luck, though the doctor

                                                            says everything is

genetics. I lock myself in

the smallest rooms that fit             in my mind, my grandfather’s:

                                                            a house we hired back from

fire. So I’ll forever

have a mother, I become                a daughter who goes by god. I urn

                                                            my ghosts, know each by a name

my own.

                               for Lucie Brock-Broido

 

            I was there at the edge of Never,

of Once Been, bearing the night’s hide

 

            stretched across the night sky,

awake with myself disappointing myself,

 

            armed, legged & torsoed in the bed,

my head occupied by enemy forces,

 

            mind not lost entire, but wandering

off the marked path ill-advisedly. This March

 

            Lucie upped and died, and the funny show

of her smoky-throated world began to fade. 

 

            I didn’t know how much of me was made

by her, but now I know that this spooky art

 

            in which we staple a thing

to our best sketch of a thing was done

 

            under her direction, and here I am

at 4 AM, scratching a green pen over a notebook

 

             bound in red leather in October.

It’s too warm for a fire. She’d hate that.

 

             And the cats appear here only as apparitions

I glimpse sleeping in a chair, then

 

             Wohin bist du entschwunden? I wise up,

know their likenesses are only inked

 

             on my shoulder’s skin, their chipped ash poured

in twin cinerary jars downstairs. Gone

 

             is gone, said the goose to the shrunken boy

in the mean-spirited Swedish children’s book

 

             I love. I shouldn’t be writing this

at this age or any other. She mothered

 

             a part of me that needed that, lit

a spirit-lantern to spin shapes inside

 

             my obituary head, even though—

I’m nearly certain now—she’s dead.

Maybe a bit dramatic, but I light

candles with my breakfast, wear a white gown 

around the house like a virgin. Right

or wrong, forgive me? No one in this town 

knows forgiveness. Miles from the limits

if I squint, there’s Orion. If heaven

exists I will be there in a minute

to hop the pearly gates, a ghost felon,

to find him. Of blood, of mud, of wise men. 

But who am I now after all these years 

without him: boy widow barbarian

trapping hornets in my shit grin. He’ll fear 

who I’ve been since. He’ll see I’m a liar,

a cheater, a whole garden on fire.

I asked my wife

to check the hive,

to see

if the hive

were burning.

(I had 

no wife, no hive.)

Yes, she said,

rising up

from where she’d

been

embroidering

a new wind. Then

—Yes,

she said again,

only this time

a bit more softly.

before sleep

and carry a box cutter

for protection

you are an animal that is all loins

and no dexterity

you are the loneliness

and non-loneliness of a planet with a flag in it

and something ugly raccoon-paws

the inner lining of your throat

but you swallow it

and you smash a snow globe in a parking lot

and you leave the door open

to the tea factory’s peppermint room

contaminating everything

the sleepytime blend

the almond sunset and genmaicha

the hibiscus broth your parents made you drink

to prevent recurrent UTIs

and outside the palm trees

in need of treatment for exotic diseases

keep dying

slowly like a woman circling a parking lot

and if you had to name what you think you are

you would say bogwolf

and the thing clawing your throat

draws blood

but you swallow it

and you live for the ways people in love penetrate

each other

for the sweetness of lichens

for the return of normal hand smell

after wearing latex gloves

you thank the bones that made your soup

and all the brake pedals that aren’t broken

There will be no stars—the poem has had enough of them. I think we can agree

we no longer believe there is anyone in any poem who is just now realizing

they are dead, so let’s stop talking about it. The skies of this poem

are teeming with winged things, and not a single innominate bird.

You’re welcome. Here, no monarchs, no moths, no cicadas doing whatever

they do in the trees. If this poem is in summer, punctuating the blue—forgive me,

I forgot, there is no blue in this poem—you’ll find the occasional

pelecinid wasp, proposals vaporized and exorbitant, angels looking

as they should. If winter, unsentimental sleet. This poem does not take place

at dawn or dusk or noon or the witching hour or the crescendoing moment

of our own remarkable birth, it is 2:53 in this poem, a Tuesday, and everyone in it is still

at work. This poem has no children; it is trying

to be taken seriously. This poem has no shards, no kittens, no myths or fairy tales,

no pomegranates or rainbows, no ex-boyfriends or manifest lovers, no mothers—God,

no mothers—no God, about which the poem must admit

it’s relieved, there is no heart in this poem, no bodily secretions, no body

referred to as the body, no one

dies or is dead in this poem, everyone in this poem is alive and pretty

okay with it. This poem will not use the word beautiful for it resists

calling a thing what it is. So what

if I’d like to tell you how I walked last night, glad, truly glad, for the first time

in a year, to be breathing, in the cold dark, to see them. The stars, I mean. Oh hell, before

something stops me—I nearly wept on the sidewalk at the sight of them all.

Oh people not mine

what is it we can hear

the old custodian

coddles the tin box

in the empty church

the ex-monk clips

his lime tree just so

my soiled skin flensed

from my uniform

Jesus said to them

oh ye of little faith

Ayamonte is golden

the sun rakes over us

meticulous and slow

a mutt with cataracts

licks its parts ticking

Portugal lies exposed

on her soft cheap cot

passive and docile unlike

that bull that is Spain

the sea’s lips scold me

in that Spanish way

gentle and yet firm

nothing here is mine