Gaza has become a funeral home, 
but there are no seats, 
no mourners, no bodies. 
In the caskets are nothing but 
what remained of the dead’s clothes, 
and on the crumbling walls are clocks 
that have not moved for fourteen months.

I Celebrate myself, and sing myself,

And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.

Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
    If this be error, and upon me prov’d,
    I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.

if they preferred tea with honey
            (take a step back)
if they watched police procedurals

if their ankle throbbed
or their hands swelled
and they didn’t complain
or they did
            (take another step back)

if they missed being in love
with its anticipations
a hand caressing the small of their back
            (take a third step)
or maybe they’d forgotten
held it like a souvenir postcard
from long ago 
colors faded

if they had children and
their children had children and
their children’s children had children

or maybe they hadn’t forgotten 
            (bend knees)
but found instead a love deeper than love
            fathomless and devout
            
if they were simply going through the motions
which now gave them a warm and glowing contentment
that came to them like breath
            (bow)

if they recalled the headlines
from those other times
            (bend knees)
the hours volunteering at a soup kitchen
writing pen pals in uniform
            (bow)

if they remembered fear
or if they’d grown immune
so saturated with it
it had transformed into a fourth prayer

if they understood what happened when it happened
if their hearing caught the stranger’s cry
if they pondered for an instant
if they were dreaming or confused
            (fall down)

the wind blows, the rain falls

the sick are healed
the bound released

gather exiles from the four corners of the earth
unto the land
            
reassemble 
here
body upon body 

En respuesta a le asesinato de once judíes, incluyendio a une de noventa y siete años que se decía era une sobreviviente de le Holocausto, pero no

si elle prefería le té con miel
            (de une paso atrás)
si veía les programas policiaques

si le dolía le tobillo
o si sus manos se les hinchaban
y elle no se quejaba
o si sí
            (de otre paso atrás)

si extrañaba estar enamorade
con sus anticipaciones
une mano acariciando le parte baje de su espalda
            (de une tercer paso)
o tal vez se le había olvidado
y sostuvo le memoria como une postal
de hace mucho tiempo
les colores desvanecides

si tuvo hijes y
si sus hijes tuvieron hijes y
les hijes de sus hijes tuvieron hijes

o quizá ya no se acordaba
            (doble les rodillas)
y en vez encontró une amor más profunde que le amor
insondable y devote

si simplemente pasaba por les movimientos
que ahora le daban une cálide y brillante satisfacción
que le vino como aliento
            (reverencie)

si recordaba les titulares
de aquelles otres tiempos
            (doble les rodillas)
les horas de voluntarie en une comedor de beneficencia
escribiéndole cartas a les amigues militares
            (reverencie)

si recordaba le miedo
o si se volvió inmune
tan saturade que
le había transformade en une cuarte oración

si comprendió le que sucedió cuando sucedió
si su oído atrapó le grito de le extrañe
si se preguntó por une instante
si estaba soñando o confundide
            (cáigase)

sopla le viento, cae le lluvia

les enfermes se curan
les atades son liberades

reúna exiliades de todes les rincones 
para tomar le tierra

junteles
aquí
cuerpo sobre cuerpo

(War Time)

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white,

Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

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.

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

and you used to be The Richard Bey Show 
and my sister’s spaghetti. Under a friar plum tree, 
a simplified reading of “The Argonautica.”
You kept me full and entertained. I was that kind 
of round child. Gorging on what was left over. 
I didn’t want a real burden, my own ship or story. 
I didn’t want to go on ahead. I didn’t want to 
have to reverse into you. Into your apparatus. 
I never wanted nostalgia. We used to know each other,
remember? Dry. Humid. Dry. Humid. 
Not. Humid. Dry. Humid. Dry. Humid. Dry.
Why did we have to pry open our patch of dirt? 
Why couldn’t you always be acid wash
or those I CAN’T DRIVE 55 posters at the swap meet 
or sunglasses. I never wanted to lay questions around 
you. What if he takes another this year? What if 
he’s difficult to talk my way out of? What if he eats me 
only half-alive? What if all he is in his beach bum
orange is ghosts clothespinned to the laundry line?

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

Gold-brown upon the sated flood
The rock-vine clusters lift and sway:
Vast wings above the lambent waters brood
Of sullen day.

A waste of waters ruthlessly
Sways and uplifts its weedy mane,
Where brooding day stares down upon the sea
In dull disdain.

Uplift and sway, O golden vine,
Thy clustered fruits to love's full flood,
Lambent and vast and ruthless as is thine
Incertitude.

My grandmother kisses
as if bombs are bursting in the backyard,
where mint and jasmine lace their perfumes
through the kitchen window,
as if somewhere, a body is falling apart
and flames are making their way back
through the intricacies of a young boy’s thigh,
as if to walk out the door, your torso
would dance from exit wounds.
When my grandmother kisses, there would be
no flashy smooching, no western music
of pursed lips, she kisses as if to breathe
you inside her, nose pressed to cheek
so that your scent is relearned
and your sweat pearls into drops of gold
inside her lungs, as if while she holds you
death also, is clutching your wrist.
My grandmother kisses as if history
never ended, as if somewhere
a body is still
falling apart.

There is this ringing hum  this
bullet-borne language  ringing
shell-fall and static this  late-night
ringing of threadwork and carpet  ringing
hiss and steam  this wing-beat
of rotors and tanks  broken
bodies ringing in steel  humming these
voices of dust  these years ringing
rifles in Babylon  rifles in Sumer
ringing these children their gravestones
and candy  their limbs gone missing  their
static-borne television  their ringing
this eardrum  this rifled symphonic  this
ringing of midnight in gunpowder and oil this
brake pad gone useless  this muzzle-flash singing  this
threading of bullets in muscle and bone  this ringing
hum  this ringing hum  this
ringing

The line-storm clouds fly tattered and swift, 
  The road is forlorn all day, 
Where a myriad snowy quartz stones lift, 
  And the hoof-prints vanish away. 
The roadside flowers, too wet for the bee,
  Expend their bloom in vain. 
Come over the hills and far with me, 
  And be my love in the rain. 

The birds have less to say for themselves 
  In the wood-world’s torn despair
Than now these numberless years the elves, 
  Although they are no less there: 
All song of the woods is crushed like some 
  Wild, easily shattered rose. 
Come, be my love in the wet woods; come,
  Where the boughs rain when it blows. 

There is the gale to urge behind 
  And bruit our singing down, 
And the shallow waters aflutter with wind 
  From which to gather your gown.    
What matter if we go clear to the west, 
  And come not through dry-shod? 
For wilding brooch shall wet your breast 
  The rain-fresh goldenrod. 

Oh, never this whelming east wind swells   
  But it seems like the sea’s return 
To the ancient lands where it left the shells 
  Before the age of the fern; 
And it seems like the time when after doubt 
  Our love came back amain.      
Oh, come forth into the storm and rout 
  And be my love in the rain.

The calm, 
Cool face of the river
Asked me for a kiss. 

            on Gustav Klimt’s painting, 1907-1908

Do you really think if you bend

me, I will love you? You

crack my chin up, your hands

brown pigeons scheming reunion

at my cheek and temple, your jaw

cragged at the end of your thick neck

of longing. I claw onto you

as the only tree here, your

swing. I’m mad for gravity though

I’m bound, diagonally, to

you. Let me. Push from your trunk towards

the edge and my freedom. Leave me

to wither while moss weeps

in the corners, our halo liquid

as yolk, waving from our bodies’ heat,

our divinity melting. My dress

blossoms loudly. You are still

wrestling me closer. If only I could

release to you my mouth just this

once and you would leave me,

but the shadows of your robe are

so haphazard. I know you will try

to smother me again. The poppies scratch. My feet

reach beyond spring.