Hatred is the new love. Rage is right. Touch
is touch. The collars of the coat, turned down,
point up. The corners of our hearts are smoothed
with rough. Our glass breaks slick, our teeth
rip soft. The mollusk of me, shell-less.
If the future once was, the past predicted
us. The street gives off rhythm. The sun
gives off dusk. When we walk, we
pour backward. When we have nothing,
it’s enough. The hunger leaves us satisfied,
the fullness leaves us wrung. The sum of all
its parts is whole, the reap of it has roots, not
took or plucked. Far apart, we move inside
our clothes: open is old, young is closed. The fangs
we used to bare are milk teeth grown from gums.
The fire we used to be scathed by numbs. We
run on the track of our consumption, done.
We’ve been ice when liquid is our natural state.
We’ve worn our husks, we’ve clenched our fists.
We scold and punish, scrape, pay a price.
We dole out in slanders what has no weight.
We pay in cringing for the moments. We open
injuries in one another. We lacerate places
that flex like knuckles, crack and grow. We are
sipping from the water’s thirst. We were lost
at first. From the finish, begun. We undergo
the pain the other knows. We are cartoon yards
where dogs dig for lost bones. Esoteric,
we are full of holes. That need to be filled.
That need to be dug. We are under-loved.
We are under-known. Give to us and we are
downcast and uplifted and sift like water
and sand like stone. We are greedy, we are
gone. We are helpless, we are prone. Drain us
or fill us and we’ll ache a vast installment.
Let us empty. Let us alone. Madness
is our happiness. Sadness is our home.

Everything goes
into this three-pound confessional:
oil fragrant with peanuts,
sometimes sesame, always garlic.
It can reincarnate last night’s rice
I cook down hard, until it’s evolved
into brown crunch infused
with jasmine and salt. My skillet
has gone to war, seared
steaks, downed men,
transformed flabby pork
belly into an armor of crispy
chicharrón to be dipped
in peppered vinegar or tabasco.
It has cradled so many uncarved
chickens whose caverns have housed
whole lemons sliced like cathedral
windows of sun, apple pears,
or onions like unmapped globes.
I bless the chicken
with soy sauce, coconut
vinegar and even a bit
of ginger that bites like a woman
at the peak of bliss.

This is how I get the men
to love me.

I watch them eat
in unarmed silence,
spellbound by potatoes
I’ve scalloped, then fried
in butter and shallots.
I’ve sautéed that cod
to a softness that renames
their tongues, as if eating
were a thousand
and one nights,
and they can’t move
and they wait for centuries
on their knees,
begging: Just a bit more.
Just a bit more.

It’s neither red
nor sweet.
It doesn’t melt
or turn over,
break or harden,
so it can’t feel
pain,
yearning,
regret.

It doesn’t have 
a tip to spin on,
it isn’t even
shapely—
just a thick clutch
of muscle,
lopsided,
mute. Still,
I feel it inside
its cage sounding
a dull tattoo:
I want, I want—

but I can’t open it:
there’s no key.
I can’t wear it
on my sleeve,
or tell you from
the bottom of it
how I feel. Here,
it’s all yours, now—
but you’ll have
to take me,
too.

1

It is not simply the Day of the Dead—loud, and parties.
More quietly, it is the day of my dead. The day of your dead.

These days, the neon of it all, the big-teeth, laughing skulls,
The posed calacas and Catrinas and happy dead people doing funny things—

It’s all in good humor, and sometimes I can’t help myself: I laugh out loud, too.
But I miss my father. My grandmother has been gone

Almost so long I can’t grab hold of her voice with my ears anymore,
Not easily. My mother-in-law, she’s still here, still in things packed

In boxes, her laughter on videotape, and in conversations.
Our dog died several years ago and I try to say his name

Whenever I leave the house—You take care of this house now,
I say to him, the way I always have, the way he knows.

I grew up with the trips to the cemetery and pan de muerto,
The prayers and the favorite foods, the carne asada, the beer.

But that was in the small town where my memory still lives.
Today, I’m in the big city, and that small town feels far away.

2

The Day of the Dead—it’s really the days of the dead. All Saints’ Day,
The first of November, also called the día de los angelitos—

Everybody thinks it’s Day of the Dead—but it’s not, not exactly.
This first day is for those who have died a saint

And for the small innocents—the criaturas­—the tender creatures
Who have been taken from us all, sometimes without a name.

To die a saint deserves its day, to die a child. The following day,
The second of November, this is for everybody else who has died

And there are so many,
A grandmother, a father, a distant uncle or lost cousin.

It is hard enough to keep track even within one’s own family.
But the day belongs to everyone, so many home altars,

So many parents gone, so many husbands, so many
Aunt Normas, so many Connies and Matildes. Countless friends.

Still, by the end of the day, we all ask ourselves the same thing:
Isn’t this all over yet?

3

All these dead coming after—and so close to—Halloween,
The days all start to blend,

The goblins and princesses of the miniature world
Not so different from the ways in which we imagine

Those who are gone, their memories smaller, their clothes brighter.
We want to feed them only candy, too—so much candy

That our own mouths will get hypnotized by the sweetness,
Our own eyes dazzled by the color, our noses by the smells

The first cool breath of fall makes, a fire always burning
Somewhere out there. We feed our memories

And then, humans that we are, we just want to move quickly away
From it all, happy for the richness of everything

If unsettled by the cut pumpkins and gourds,
The howling decorations. The marigolds—cempasúchiles—

If it rains, they stink, these fussy flowers of the dead.
Bread of the dead, day of the dead—it’s hard to keep saying the word.

4

The dead:
They take over the town like beach vacationers, returning tourists getting into everything:

I had my honeymoon here, they say, and are always full of contagious nostalgia.
But it’s all right. They go away, after a while.

They go, and you miss them all over again.
The papel picado, the cut blue and red and green paper decorations,

The empanadas and coconut candy, the boxes of cajeta, saladitos,
Which make your tongue white like a ghost’s—

You miss all of it soon enough,
Pictures of people smiling, news stories, all the fiestas, all this exhaustion.

The coming night, the sweet breads, the bone tiredness of too much—
Loud noise, loud colors, loud food, mariachis, even just talking.

It’s all a lot of noise, but it belongs here. The loud is to help us not think,
To make us confuse the day and our feelings with happiness.

Because, you know, if we do think about our dead,
Wherever they are, we’ll get sad, and begin to look across at each other.

^{translated by Alejandro Cáceres Joseph}

In the bosom of the sad evening
I called upon your sorrow… Feeling it was
Feeling your heart as well. You were pale
Even your voice, your waxen eyelids,

Lowered… and remained silent… You seemed
To hear death passing by… I who had opened
Your wound bit on it—did you feel me?—
As into the gold of a honeycomb I bit!

I squeezed even more treacherously, sweetly
Your heart mortally wounded,
By the cruel dagger, rare and exquisite,
Of a nameless illness, until making it bleed in sobs!
And the thousand mouths of my damned thirst
I offered to that open fountain in your suffering.
.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  

Why was I your vampire of bitterness?
Am I a flower or a breed of an obscure species
That devours sores and gulps tears?

El vampiro

En el regazo de la tarde triste
Yo invoqué tu dolor… Sentirlo era
Sentirte el corazón! Palideciste
Hasta la voz, tus párpados de cera,

Bajaron… y callaste… y pareciste
Oír pasar la Muerte… Yo que abriera
Tu herida mordí en ella —¿me sentiste? —
Como en el oro de un panal mordiera!

Y exprimí más, traidora, dulcemente
Tu corazón herido mortalmente,
Por la cruel daga rara y exquisita
De un mal sin nombre, hasta sangrarlo en llanto!
Y las mil bocas de mi sed maldita
Tendí á esa fuente abierta en tu quebranto.
.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  

¿Por qué fui tu vampiro de amargura?…
¿Soy flor ó estirpe de una especie obscura
Que come llagas y que bebe el llanto?

^{in memoriam Thelonious Monk}

You have to be able to hear past the pain, the obvious
minor-thirds and major-sevenths, the merely beautiful

ninths; you have to grow deaf to what you imagine
are the sounds of loneliness; you have to learn indifference

to static, and welcome noise like rain, acclimate
to another kind of silence; you have to be able to sleep

in the city, taxis and trucks careening through your dreams
and back again, hearing the whines and sirens and shrieks

as music; you must be a mathematician, a magician
of algebra, overtone and acoustics, mapping the splintered

intervals of time, tempo, harmony, stalking or sluicing blues
scales; you have to be unafraid of redundance, and aware

that dissonance-driven explorations of dissonance
may circle back to the crowded room of resolution;

you have to disagree with everything except the piano, black
and white keys marking the path you must climb step

by half-step with no compass but the blues, no company
but your distrust of the journey, of all that you hear, of arrival.

When I am newly angry at one person, I forgive
another. Infants divide the good breast from the bad

one, but really, we resent need. On our small,
transactional earth, God promotes a few angels

in the green jungle of wild selves. And the rest?
Thirst at the watering hole. I told you

how this would go. We would have a fight,
and I would become a jaguar, shrug my big

shoulders at your pain. Shrug like an indifferent
cat. You can’t win a fight with a cat, unless

you drown her. When you drown her, she is
resurrected as good. I remove myself from this

balancing act and spare you the labor of buoyancy.
I am not an animal that can be weighed.

do you think anger is
love divided
into long

sleeps to right
this weight / I cannot
sleep in the dream

of you

I see you
at all the funerals
when my name was good

I haven’t had rhubarb
since grandma died and
your name whitechalks

a tendering softsick

, the virgin mary in
my chin dimple watches

me get outta hand

Before in the backstand of our existence, and even after—you did so much. My brother and sister tell me all the time that they miss you and  sometimes it is enough to make me stop missing you. Your stories have  been filled in with all I can remember—I am there, with you. And father. 

And whenever you come to me, we take off down the same backroads  with you in the driver’s seat, and it feels right, this tightening of life. You tighten my life. 

Imagine another life in which we are together. 

                                                                                             let us go mother 

                                                      let us keep going. 

It has been said that Indians want to be left alone, but never actually be alone. Growing up and being the only Indian in your school, in your town, in the eastern half of your state, at a place where you open a history textbook and see pictures of “real” Indians doing “real” Indian things, like bathing in rivers next to a teepee, and your classmates ask you, “do you do that, too?” and I ask myself—should I?—and where your high school mascot is the Indians and that makes you feel like the only real Indian in the world, like the place you were from never existed.

But you know it exists because that is where your family lives—and every Christmas you talk to them on the phone and they tell you stories about home—and you ask

mother,

             where is the Indian in me?

Dear Poet,

Congratulations! It is with great enthusiasm that we at Vintage Vanity Press formally accept your debut poetry collection. Your talent—particularly the authentic elusiveness of your voice and form—is undeniable and provides a strong foundation for interpretation and refinement. We have a small but attentive review board at Vintage Vanity Press. We are the sort of publisher who believes poetry is a reverse personification where you unmask your best self in language. Our motto is “Make Your Self A Poem.” While many poets are able to write several kinds of poems in several kinds of forms about several kinds of topics, few shift as you do in materials (sheets of papyrus, palm leaves, bamboo, parchment, vellum, leather!) and mediums (inks made of rain, milk, blood, ash!). We frequently paused discussion of your work—excusing ourselves for the restroom stalls, dipping into utility closets, runny noses to the most private corners of our office. One reviewer didn’t make it past the line break in “children blowing up / balloons amid war.” We had read the poems to ourselves privately in advance of the meeting, of course, but never realized hearing them out loud could unlock such near-mystical wonders. As part of the publishing process, we have a few suggestions to enhance the collection’s already compelling qualities. We wondered how we might publicize, if not monetize, excerpts of your brilliance ahead of publication, as is detailed in the accompanying contract. We also debated the costs and benefits of the collection sharing its title with the long middle poem. The multi-dimensional poem functions well enough structurally, but its implications as the conceptual centerpiece could use some clarification. Life is described as if existence resists the clarity of fact. Our most junior member debated the poem with our most senior member throughout our lunch and afternoon tea break. You will note our abundant, partially debatable, realignment of line breaks here and there. (Also note no one touched the line about a line of children in tank tops before a line of tanks.) Some of my colleagues argued your penultimate poem’s robust response to non-theoretical suffering came to a lyrical but cynical conclusion. They think it tells a story constructed by others, thus should be cut. The primary aim of all editorial activities is “To lick a dirty thing until it’s clean” or, according to market and audience fluctuations, “To lick a clean thing until it’s dirty.” We’re on your side. We voted unanimously for the silences that fit between your lines. At the conclusion of our meeting, we decided to do as your final poem instructed. We each chose a word encapsulating a moment or mood of the day to a degree the word would trigger a sensory response at unforeseeable moments for the rest of the day. “Vestibule,” “Nephew,” “Clock.” A few members selected the word most uttered in the news. My word was “Blood.” It’s not exactly accurate to say outcomes were inconclusive, outcomes feel in process. As you navigate the publishing process, it’s important to note that Vintage Vanity Press will require an upfront investment to cover production costs, which include professional editing, design, formatting, printing, and distribution, with a detailed breakdown provided in the contract alongside royalty terms for future book sales. The thing about blood is you only really see it when it’s free. This partnership represents an opportunity to refine your work with our experienced support while ensuring your vision is realized in its final form. Please don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions or concerns as you review the publishing agreement and prepare for the road ahead. When we left the office, nothing burned outside; the inflamed parts of our bodies had simply swallowed smoke and whiskey. But I knew we were kin because the feeling was so specific—a form of unchosen intimacy. Before all this war, “war” was broken into everyday meaning—“broken” in the sense of being hurled against a screen with electricity or placed in a sentence given to hyperbole, but now the word refused to go quiet. Once again, congratulations and thank you. We received no other handwritten manuscript this year. Everything else was said by machinery.

Yours truly, The Vintage Vanity Press Review Board President and Founder.

They are like those crazy women 
   who tore Orpheus
      when he refused to sing,

these men grinding
   in the strobe & black lights
      of Pegasus. All shadow & sound.

"I'm just here for the music," 
   I tell the man who asks me
      to the floor. But I have held

a boy on my back before.
   Curtis & I used to leap
      barefoot into the creek; dance

among maggots & piss,
   beer bottles & tadpoles
      slippery as sperm;

we used to pull off our shirts, 
   & slap music into our skin.
      He wouldn't know me now
	  
at the edge of these lovers' gyre, 
   glitter & steam, fire,
      bodies blurred sexless

by the music's spinning light.
   A young man slips his thumb
      into the mouth of an old one,

& I am not that far away.
   The whole scene raw & delicate 
      as Curtis's foot gashed

on a sunken bottle shard. 
   They press hip to hip,
      each breathless as a boy

carrying a friend on his back. 
   The foot swelling green
      as the sewage in that creek.

We never went back.
   But I remember his weight 
      better than I remember

my first kiss.
   These men know something
      I used to know.

How could I not find them
   beautiful, the way they dive & spill 
      into each other,

the way the dance floor
   takes them,
      wet & holy in its mouth.

You were so small in my hands
no shrapnel could hit you,
but the dust and
smoke of the bomb
rushed into your lungs.
No need for any gauze.
They just closed your eyes.
No need for any shroud.
You were already
in your swaddle blanket.

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing is a psychotherapy
that enables people to heal from the symptoms and emotional distress
that are the result of disturbing life experiences. Repeated studies show
that by using EMDR therapy people can experience the benefits of
psychotherapy that once took years to make a difference. It is widely
assumed that severe emotional pain requires a long time to heal. EMDR
therapy shows that the mind can in fact heal from psychological trauma
much as the body recovers from physical trauma. When you cut your
hand, your body works to close the wound. If a foreign object or
repeated injury irritates the wound, it festers and causes pain. Once the
block is removed healing resumes. EMDR therapy demonstrates that a
similar sequence of events occurs with mental processes. The brain’s
information processing system naturally moves toward mental
health. If the system is blocked or imbalanced by the impact of a
disturbing event, the emotional wound festers and can cause intense
suffering. Once the block is removed, healing resumes. Using the
detailed protocols and procedures learned in EMDR therapy training
sessions, clinicians help clients activate their natural healing processes.

//

Once the block is removed healing resumes.

//

The first time
I start
medication
for depression
I imagine
a light thing
burying

//

(Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is a
psychotherapy that enables people to heal from the symptoms and
emotional distress that are the result of disturbing life experiences
Repeated studies show that by using EMDR therapy people can
experience the benefits of psychotherapy that once took years to make a
difference. It is widely assumed that severe emotional pain requires a
long time to heal. EMDR therapy shows that the mind can in fact heal
from psychological trauma much as the body recovers from physical
trauma. When you cut your hand, your body works to close the wound
If a foreign object or repeated injury irritates the wound, it festers and
causes pain. Once the block is removed healing resumes. EMDR
therapy demonstrates that a similar sequence of events occurs with
mental processes. The brain’s information processing system naturally
moves toward mental health. If the system is blocked or imbalanced by
the impact of a disturbing event, the emotional wound festers and can
cause intense suffering .  Once the block is removed, healing resumes.
Using the detailed protocols and procedures learned in EMDR therapy
training sessions, clinicians help clients activate their natural healing
processes.

//

I pull up my birth chart
for the seventh time
blame the neurosis on
my Mercury in Virgo
I pray to the planets
wonder about god
loving me
if I replace him
with stars
of my making

//

Once the block is removed healing resumes.

//

The house burns
On my father’s tongue

It kindles his voice
A wrecking

The house is not a house
It is space next to
Space just the same

As any house for sections
Of the city both
Poor and unwhite

The rice is not white
Because I’ve scorched it to ash

//

(Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is a
psychotherapy that enables people to heal from the symptoms and
emotional distress that are the result of disturbing life experiences
Repeated studies show that by using EMDR therapy people can
experience the benefits of psychotherapy that once took years to make a
difference. It is widely assumed that severe emotional pain requires a long
time to heal. EMDR therapy shows that the mind can in fact heal from
psychological trauma much as the body recovers from physical
trauma. When you cut your hand, your body works to close the wound
If a foreign object or repeated injury irritates the wound, it festers and
causes pain. Once the block is removed healing resumes EMDR therapy
demonstrates that a similar sequence of events occurs with mental
processes. The brain’s information processing system naturally moves
toward mental health. If the system is blocked or imbalanced by the
impact of a disturbing event, the emotional wound festers and can cause
intense suffering .  once the block is removed , healing resumes. Using the
detailed protocols and procedures learned in EMDR therapy training
sessions, clinicians help clients activate their natural healing processes.

//

My father stops
The burning
Before we all die

In the dead
Of night
I am learning
A lesson

The light
Of the stove
Smolders
If left alone

//

Once the block is removed healing resumes. Once the block is removed
healing resumes. Once the block is removed healing resumes. Once the
block is removed healing resumes. Once the block is removed healing
resumes. Once the block is removed healing resumes. Once the block is
removed healing resumes. Once the block is removed healing resumes.
Once the block is removed healing resumes. Once the block is removed
healing resumes. Once the block is removed healing resumes. Once the block is
removed healing resumes. Once the block is removed healing resumes. Once the block
is removed healing resumes. Once the block is removed healing resumes. Once the
block is removed healing resumes. Once the block is removed healing resumes.
Once the block is removed healing resumes. Once the block is removed healing
resumes. Once the block is removed healing resumes. Once the block is
removed healing resumes. Once the block is removed healing resumes.
Once the block is removed healing resumes. Once the block is removed
healing resumes. Once the block is removed healing resumes. Once the
block is removed healing resumes. Once the block is removed healing
resumes. Once the block is removed healing resumes. Once the block is
removed healing resumes. Once the block is removed healing resumes.
Once the block is removed healing resumes. Once the block is removed
healing resumes. Once the block is removed healing resumes. Once the
block is removed healing resumes. Once the block is removed healing
resumes. Once the block is removed healing resumes. Once the block is
removed healing resumes. Once the block is removed healing resumes.
Once the block is removed healing resumes. Once the block is removed
healing resumes. Once the block is removed healing resumes. Once the
block is removed healing resumes. Once the block is removed healing
resumes. Once the block is removed healing resumes. Once the block is
removed healing resumes. Once the block is removed healing resumes.
Once the block is removed healing resumes. Once the block is removed
healing resumes. Once the block is removed healing resumes. Once the block is
removed healing resumes. Once the block is removed healing resumes. Once the block
is removed healing resumes. Once the block is removed healing resumes. Once the
block is removed healing resumes. Once the block is removed healing
resumes. Once the block is removed healing resumes. Once the block is
removed healing resumes. Once the block is removed healing resumes.

//

(Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is a psychotherapy
that enables people to heal from the symptoms and emotional distress
that are the result of disturbing life experiences Repeated studies show
that by using EMDR therapy people can experience the benefits of
psychotherapy that once took years to make a difference. It is widely
assumed that severe emotional pain requires a long time to heal. EMDR
therapy shows that the mind can in fact heal from psychological trauma
much as the body recovers from physical trauma. When you cut your
hand, your body works to close the wound If a foreign object or
repeated injury irritates the wound, it festers and causes pain. Once the
block is removed healing resumes EMDR therapy demonstrates that a
similar sequence of events occurs with mental processes. The brain’s
information processing system naturally moves toward mental
health. If the system is blocked or imbalanced by the impact of a
disturbing event, the emotional wound festers and can cause intense
suffering .  once the block is removed , healing resumes Using the
detailed protocols and procedures learned in EMDR therapy training
sessions, clinicians help clients activate their natural healing processes.

//

On the medication
I carry the dark matter
Against luminous infinity
The nocturne beckons
My desire to live

//

Healing resumes once the block is removed.

//

White capsule
Moon swallowing dark
The universe reversed
Back into nothing

Or calloused fists beating
The house to cave
A rattle waking
The insides

Or the apparition
Of my mother having
Never left a ghost
Of her nurturing

//

The dead bolt locks us alone
the hearth of home sweltering
How we’ve grown to
Sweat off the night

Or the closing in
Of the room
The bed—
All the bodies

//

I place gravity
On the wet earth
Of my tongue
Citalopram-slated
Beauty, swallows
This black

//

An eclipse happens
In my body, each
Morning, I am 10mg
Better than when I’ve
Awakened

//

I have not asked
This land to welcome
Me back, living
Is endless
In its mercy

//

The permanence
Of medicine, the faltering
Craters of me, the sun
O, the sun, journeys
The joy of my throat

Listen, I promise you, I have
no stake in this world. No
political affiliations unless
love is a political tool, unless
my body is a political tool,
unless my comrades are a
political tool. I have no
high stake in this world, no
children to want to leave
a better world to, nothing
but fucking & bookmaking
that is my legacy & it is as
undeniable as smoke; yet
may disappear like it too. I
turn on the news & not
owning pearls, I clutch my
fancy juicer to my chest
I gather around me my art
& my mirrors, my plants &
my price of the ticket—a bible.
I think they’re coming for
me. For it. For all my
million little nothings they
consider stakes in this world.
I got no gun, I got no pickup
I got no desire to burn the
world; I don’t own the world
I own stand mixers & an
eggplant colored Le Creuset
a tiny apartment with bad pipes
& creaking floors. I have
no stakes. I barely got health,
I barely got muscle. I want
a garden near an ocean
that won’t eventually swallow
me. I want my only job to be this:
clawing at a white page until Black
appears. & suddenly, in that moment
I got something—

1 Samuel 17:56

The field soldiers remember the triumph,
a lithe boy’s naal on the head of giant,
before the king rode through the ranks
to inquire about his parentage or the prince
had him bathed, his hair scented with sweet herbs.

After the crowds dwindled, because neither
one’s cunning nor the adulation of the victorious
are nourishment, and the battle, having made him
hungry, alone and in silence, the boy
slowly ate the brain of the giant.

A stripling, to tell the truth, the boy grew—
mad with the taste—savored the giant brain
and learned its ways, became a giant,
begat giants, who craved and ate all
the people in the land, except their own.
 

we are in an ark
 

not a passport in hand
 

    tinted windows and air the taste of spit  

and body oils     the pregnant woman

squeezes her abdomen     the child will not  die

in the middle of a journey   too weak   to jump  

into the sharks     no emissary in sight   we want to sing

can barely clap     a groan rises from our ribs  broken

we lick the sweat     from each other’s sweat  the mother chews

on her placenta  she wants to share  but  we allow her greed

we laugh  the wind    responds     

we pray  into    our mouths  only the breath    in God  in us

makes music    of our meditations  we mark the distance

from  our mother’s     nipples with these    fragile fingernails

what we see     in each other’s spirits  is fear    I must have

two left    the Liverpool rocks roll like they fell from an archangel’s

vineyard    what praise can we give    with bound hands

they still     out talk      with a reason    of existence

in pairs     they drag us     out like animals

I am rejecting your request for a letter of rejection. One must reject everything in order to live. That may be true, but the rejected know another knowledge—that if they were not rejected, heaven would descend upon the earth in earthly dreams and an infinite flowering of all living forms would form a silveresque film over our sordid history, which has adventitiously progressed through violent upheavals in reaction to rejection; without rejection there would be no as-we-know-it Earth. What is our ball but a rejected stone flung from the mother lode? The rejected know that if they were nonrejected a clear cerulean blue would be the result, an endless love ever dissolving in more endless love. This is their secret, and none share it save them. They remain, therefore, the unbelieved, they remain the embodiment of heaven herself. Let others perpetuate life as we know it—that admixture, that amalgam, the happy, the sad, the profusion of all things under the sunny moon existing in a delicate balance, such as it is. Alone, the rejected walk a straight path, they enter a straight gate, they see in their dreams what no one else can see—an end to all confusion, an end to all suffering, an elysian mist of eternally good vapor. Forgive me if I have put your thoughts into words. It was the least I could do for such a comrade, whose orphaned sighs reach me in my squat hut.