Here I am so selfish I only remember my reaction. Each fact loosening falling away like icicles along the eaves. I once saw one so large & the earth so soft that it pierced the ground below it. I once walked through a spider web so vast, I felt its tug as I pulled through it. I once drove 30 miles at night through pitch-black counties without headlights using only my cellphone light to guide me. I once was so high I wrote a paper backwards and since it was for 20th Century Avant-garde Lit got an A. You know second winds? I got a fifth wind once during a swim meet. As the fish grows increasingly long, life accumulates like a US Ironworks slagheap. Once my date dropped me off at the front door and I ran through the house out the back into my boyfriend’s car waiting in the alley. Once I lost control in the middle of northbound 95 and somehow spun across the median, arriving in the shoulder of the southbound lanes, and just kept driving, direction’s pointless. I once bought an $80 cab ride because I couldn’t remember where I was—simultaneously building a bed in a refrigerator box stealing gas from the Racetrack flying to Denver to marry a stranger. I once strangled my boyfriend at 65 mph on the freeway until I started laughing so much my grip loosened. Once I wrote the most erotic sex fantasy I could dream got paranoid that someone would read it, chose a password to protect the document, promptly forgot the password and let that define my sex life for years. I once sang Swing Low in a cop car and felt like a coward. The only secrets are forgotten ones. I once told a man I didn’t want a boyfriend and a week later admitted to him I had gotten married. Who said biography is a story true enough to believe? Who told me they once ate a joint before getting pulled over, but at the last minute the cop car flew past them, worked in a gas station and stole all the money, painted a donkey with zebra stripes, danced on stage with Bootsy Collins, who told me that for one day he was the best whistler on the planet, could whistle any song in the world perfectly, rivaled the skylarks and finches, invented gorgeous sonatas whistling them into the sunset, into the blushing dusk and by morning forgot how to do it?

Visible, invisible,
A fluctuating charm,
An amber-colored amethyst
Inhabits it; your arm
Approaches, and
It opens and
It closes;
You have meant
To catch it,
And it shrivels;
You abandon
Your intent—
It opens, and it
Closes and you
Reach for it—
The blue
Surrounding it
Grows cloudy, and
It floats away
From you.

late spring wind sounds an ocean 
through new leaves. later the same 
wind sounds a tide. later still the dry 

sound of applause: leaves chapped 
falling, an ending. this is a process.
the ocean leaping out of ocean 

should be enough. the wind 
pushing the water out of itself;
the water catching the light

should be enough. I think this 
on the deck of one boat
then another. I think this 

in the Salish, thought it in Stellwagen
in the Pacific. the water leaping 
looks animal, looks open mouthed,

looks toothed and rolling;
the ocean an animal full 
of other animals.

what I am looking for doesn’t matter.
that I am looking doesn’t matter.
I exert no meaning.

a juvenile bald eagle eats 
a harbor seal’s placenta.
its head still brown. 

this is a process. the land 
jutting out, seals hauled out,
the white-headed eagles lurking 

ready to take their turn at what’s left.
the lone sea otter on its back,
toes flopped forward and curled;

Friday Harbor: the phone booth
the ghost snare of a gray whale’s call; 
an orca’s tooth in an orca’s skull

mounted inside the glass box. 
remains. this is a process. 
three river otters, two adults, a pup, 

roll like logs parallel to the shore. 
two doe, three fawns. a young buck 
stares, its antlers new, limned gold 

in sunset. then the wind again: 
a wave through leaves green 
with deep summer, the walnut’s 

green husk. we are alive in a green 
crashing world. soon winter. 
the boat forgotten. the oceans,

their leaping animal light, off screen.
past. future. this is a process. the eagles 
at the river’s edge cluster 

in the bare tree. they steal fish 
from ducks. they eat the hunter’s 
discards: offal and lead. the juveniles 

practice fighting, their feet tangle 
midair before loosing. this 
is a process. where they came from. 

for how long will they stay. 
that I am looking doesn’t matter. 
I will impose no meaning.

Pallidly sleeping, the Ocean’s mysterious daughter
Lies in the lee of the boulder that shattered her
 charms.

Dawn rushes over the level horizon of water
And touches to flickering crimson her face and her
 arms,

While every scale in that marvelous tail
Quivers with colour like sun on a Mediterranean
 sail.

Could you not keep to the ocean that lulls the
 equator,
Soulless, immortal, and fatally fair to the gaze?
Or were you called to the North by an ecstasy greater
Than any you knew in those ancient and terrible
 days

When all your delight was to flash on the sight
Of the wondering sailor and lure him to death in the
 watery night?

Was there, perhaps, on the deck of some far away
 vessel
A lad from New England whose fancy you failed to
 ensnare?

Who, born of this virtuous rock, and accustomed to
 wrestle
With beauty in all of its forms, became your despair,
And awoke in your breast a mortal unrest
That dragged you away from the south to your
 death in the cold northwest?

Pallidly sleeping, your body is shorn of its magic,
But Death gives a soul to whatever is lovely and dies.
Now Ocean reclaims you again, lest a marvel so
 tragic
Remain to be mocked by our earthly and virtuous
 eyes,
And reason redeems already what seems
Only a fable like all of our strange and beautiful
 dreams.

Everyone needs a genie and a lamp.
Ancient red handprints in a hard-to-get-to cave.
A wireless charger for their liver
after years of heedless drinking.
Also, not to dematerialize before seeing Venice,
which itself may soon dematerialize
beneath the Adriatic. Upstairs, my brother
bangs the supper dishes. My wish
is to be too drunk to think
about the sermon at the funeral mass,
the priest mumbling no one knew what,
or the coffin fed into the back of the hearse
and driven off with another brother’s body
while his widow went to pieces on the curb.
According to the internet, there are three things
a genie can’t do: no granting the wish for more wishes.
No bringing back the dead. For that,
you’ve got religion. Also, no making someone fall
in love with you. Luckily there are potions,
even if they’re bad for your digestion. I wish
my friend had never been diagnosed with Parkinson’s.
That we still lived together in that house
among the trees. I’d like to go there now
on a magically self-cleaning carpet
for when my dying cat throws up again,
and grieve.

If you must drink it, do no come
   An’ chat up in my face;
I hate to see de dirty rum,
   Much more to know de tas’e.

What you find dere to care about
   I never understan’;
It only dutty up you mout’,
   An’ mek you less a man.

I see it throw you ’pon de grass
   An’ mek you want no food,
While people scorn you as dey pass
   An’ see you vomit blood.

De fust beginnin’ of it all,
   You stood up calm an’ cool,
An’ put you’ back agains’ de wall
   An’ cuss our teacher fool.

You cuss me too de se’fsame day
   Because a say you wrong,
An’ pawn you’ books an’ went away
   Widout anedder song.

Your parents’ hearts within dem sink,
   When to your yout’ful lip
Dey watch you raise de glass to drink,
   An’ shameless tek each sip.

I see you in de dancing-booth,
   But all your joy is vain,
For on your fresh an’ glowin’ youth
   Is stamped dat ugly stain.

Dat ugly stain of drink, my frien’,
   Has cost you your best girl,
An’ mek you fool ’mongst better men
   When your brain’s in a whirl.

You may smoke just a bit indeed,
   I like de “white seal” well;
Aldough I do not use de weed,
   I’m fond o’ de nice smell.

But wait until you’re growin’ old
   An’ gettin’ weak an’ bent,
An’ feel your blood a-gettin’ cold
   ’Fo’ you tek stimulent.

Then it may mek you stronger feel
   While on your livin’ groun’;
But ole Time, creepin’ on your heel,
   Soon, soon will pull you down:

Soon, soon will pull you down, my frien’,
   De rum will help her too;
An’ you’ll give way to better men,
   De best dat you can do.

And every time, I say this is the last time, now

that we know what travel can grift from the body.

She is naked as I am now, but drunk. In bed.

The place dark, the bamboo blinds like split brooms.

A few weeks before, he’d slipped in using his key,

skittered the dog waiting at the top of the stairs,

watered the mums he’d left on the counter,

put away the wine. He doesn’t mention

coming to the room and she can’t remember.

But this night, every courtesy is whittled

to her littlest part, its radical pink, for once,

indistinguishable from everything: darkness;

his shirt; singed mothwings splayed

on the lampshade like pencil shavings;

wet receipts stuck to the bottom of the vase.

Persephone emerged each spring with the inventory

of her kingdom still clinging to her ankles,

and there were whispers that she grew to love

what we never wanted: swollen Easter fruit, 

its uninvited flesh blue as the vein

bisecting the corridor of my inner thigh.

Each time I go back, I want to sit

with the body. I want to say, “One day you’ll fold

into nights devoid of liquor and lose the taste.

Your joints will ache; your body will try to leave

in ways only your ancestors understand.”

I never think to tell him, “Stop”; tell her “Wake up.”

She’s still afraid of other women, endings, and the dead.

And so I leave, but with the door ajar

as if to say, “Beloved, what has happened

to me shouldn’t happen to you. But until

it does, there is nothing I can tell you.”

The moon assumes her voyeuristic perch
to find the rut of me, releashed from sense,
devoid of focus ’cept by your design.
I never thought restraint would be my thing.
Then you: the hole from which my logic seeps,
who bucks my mind’s incessant swallowsong
& pins the speaker’s squirming lyric down
with ease. You coax a measured flood, decide
the scatter of my breath & know your place—
astride the August heat, your knuckles tight
around a bratty vers, a fuschia gag:
you quiet my neurotic ass, can still
the loudness murmuring beneath my skull.
Be done. There’s nothing more to say.

Not an act, I’m told, more a leave to live 
where words have no leverage—I’ve a pile 
of words. It was useful to hear actors 
talk shop about how one doesn’t just act 

but live the role—a trick into feeling 
what doesn’t need said. I watch a cast now 
from this seat next to no one asking me
what was said like these two do, one row up. 

Once home, they’ll unwrap each other’s bow-tied 
necks; mouths agape, marvel over their spoils
as if for the first time. Look at the way
one lowers the other’s mask, levies a kiss, 

then worries back its curl over the usher
-hushed laugh, each needling the other to live.

He was as a god,
stepped out of eternal dream
along the boardwalk.

He looked at my girl,
a dream to herself and
that was the end of them.

They disappeared beside the sea
at Revere Beach as
I aint seen them since.

If you find anyone
answering their description
please let me know. I need them

to carry the weight of my life
The old gods are gone. What lives on
in my heart

is their flesh
like a wound,
a tomb, a bomb.

Just off Joe Batt’s Arm. Nadia’s on the bridge, and you bring her the new calculations. Narrow nightwatch nigh the ship’s head while she tossed close to cliffs. She gestures for you to sit, tells you things—drugs they can grow, remedies, interactions, techniques. There are more men than women of working age on board. While she talks, she oversees the change of watch, the steady steps along the catwalks and up to the crow’s nests, the gray-clad backs bent over their tasks. The northern sea has begun to roll with more surge and menace, and a layer of chill under the mist clings to the mouth and nose, undercold. No icebergs to worry about anymore. She tells you that the continental currents are uncertain, as are the depths. Crispin has another bellyache. Some crew sweeps up a grainy spill on the deck below, and she stops to write a note. She looks up as if she has news and explains that the females of only two species undergo menopause. That is, the females of only two species outlive their capacity to reproduce: humans and killer whales. Experience in cessation: the females stop having young, then they lead the pod, carry knowledge of navigation, food supplies, routes.

You let me, your stepmother, 
Take your hand to walk  
into the surf, let 
slippery seaweed wrap  
around your ankles  
like emerald ribbons. 

We step on the edge  
of lacey waves that feel 
like butter on hot skin.  

You hold back, your mother’s 
fear of the sea, fear of me,  
sways you. She warns you  
Yemaya, the Santeria god, 
will swallow you into the sea 
here in Puerto Rico, la isla bonita,
land of your Borinquen bloodline. 

I tip the balance, study Santeria,
pin a benevolent picture  
of Yemaya on my bulletin board, 
so she will know who we are. 

Queen of the Ocean, Mother, 
Yemaya, savior of sailors,  
Spirit of moonlight, 
She will protect you, I swear, 
as she does sailors in stormy seas. 

Tall, lean in silver drapery,  
she shows up in New Orleans hoodoo, 
In Brazil, her wizened face, a walnut, 
In Venezuela, I find  
a child-size likeness of her,  
but am afraid to bring it home, 
its eyes too lifelike. 

Today, we are in Puerto Rico.
We weave our fingers together, 
dig our toes into the sea floor 
sandy and firm underfoot, 
enter the sea of your ancestors.

I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it—

A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot

A paperweight,
My face a featureless, fine
Jew linen.

Peel off the napkin
O my enemy.
Do I terrify?—

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.

Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me

And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.

This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.

What a million filaments.
The peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see

Them unwrap me hand and foot—
The big strip tease.
Gentlemen, ladies

These are my hands
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,

Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.

The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut

As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I’ve a call.

It’s easy enough to do it in a cell.
It’s easy enough to do it and stay put.
It’s the theatrical

Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:

‘A miracle!’
That knocks me out.
There is a charge

For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart—
It really goes.

And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood

Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.

I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby

That melts to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

Ash, ash—
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there--

A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.

Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.

Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.

23–29 October 1962

Hamlet speaks to Horatio

Nay, do not think I flatter;
For what advancement may I hope from thee
That no revenue hast but thy good spirits,
To feed and clothe thee? Why should the poor be flatter'd?
No, let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp,
And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee
Where thrift may follow fawning. Dost thou hear?
Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice
And could of men distinguish, her election
Hath seal'd thee for herself; for thou hast been
As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing,
A man that fortune's buffets and rewards
Hast ta'en with equal thanks: and blest are those
Whose blood and judgment are so well commingled,
That they are not a pipe for fortune's finger
To sound what stop she please. Give me that man
That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him
In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart,
As I do thee.—Something too much of this.—
There is a play to-night before the king;
One scene of it comes near the circumstance
Which I have told thee of my father's death:
I prithee, when thou seest that act afoot,
Even with the very comment of thy soul
Observe mine uncle: if his occulted guilt
Do not itself unkennel in one speech,
It is a damned ghost that we have seen,
And my imaginations are as foul
As Vulcan's stithy. Give him heedful note;
For I mine eyes will rivet to his face,
And after we will both our judgments join
In censure of his seeming.

LOVE has had his way with me.
      This my heart is torn and maimed
Since he took his play with me.
    Cruel well the bow-boy aimed,

Shot, and saw the feathered shaft
    Dripping bright and bitter red.
He that shrugged his wings and laughed––
    Better had he left me dead.

Sweet, why do you plead me, then,
    Who have bled so sore of that?
Could I bear it once again? . . .
    Drop a hat, dear, drop a hat!

My friends are dead who were

the arches    the pillars of my life 

the structural relief when

the world gave none.

My friends who knew me as I knew them

their bodies folded into the ground or burnt to ash.

If I got on my knees

might I lift my life as a turtle carries her home?  

Who if I cried out would hear me?

My friends—with whom I might have spoken of this—are gone.

                               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.

Here on my lap, in a small plastic bag,
my share of your ashes. Let me not squander
them. Your family blindsided me with this gift.
We want to honor your bond they said at the end
of your service, which took place, as you'd
arranged, in a restaurant at the harbor,
an old two-story boathouse made of dark
wood. Some of us sat on the balcony, on black
leather bar stools, staring at rows of docked boats.
Both your husbands showed up and got along.
And of course your impossibly handsome son.
After lunch, a slideshow and testimonials,
your family left to toss their share of you
onto the ocean, along with some flowers.

You were the girlfriend I practiced kissing
with in sixth grade during zero-sleep
sleepovers. You were the pretty one.
In middle school I lived on diet Coke and
your sexual reconnaissance reports. In this
telling of our story your father never hits
you or calls you a whore. Always gentle
with me, he taught me to ride a bike after
everyone said I was too klutzy to learn.
In this version we're not afraid of our bodies.
In this fiction, birth control is easy to obtain,
and never fails. You still dive under a stall
divider in a restroom at the beach to free me
after I get too drunk to unlock the door. You still
reveal the esoteric mysteries of tampons. You
still learn Farsi and French from boyfriends
as your life ignites. In high school I still guide you
safely out of the stadium when you start yelling
that the football looks amazing as it shatters
into a million shimmering pieces, as you
loudly admit that you just dropped acid.

We lived to be sixty. Then poof, you vanished.
I can't snort you, or dump you out over my head,
coating myself in your dust like some hapless cartoon
character who's just blown herself up, yet remains
unscathed, as is the way in cartoons. In this version,
I remain in place for a while. Did you have a good
journey? I'm still lagging behind, barking up all
the wrong trees, whipping out my scimitar far
in advance of what the occasion demands. As I
drive home from your memorial, you fizz in
my head like a distant radio station. What
can I do to bridge this chasm between us?
In this fiction, I roll down the window, drive
uncharacteristically fast. I tear your baggie
open with my teeth and release you at 85
miles an hour, music cranked up full blast.

You’ve just died in my arms,

But suddenly it seems we’re eternal



Cali boys, Afro-haired cohorts in crime,

Racing through intricate lattices



Of quince and lemon tree shadows,

Corridors of Queen Anne’s lace—



On the skip-church Sunday you dubbed me

“Sir Serious” instead of Cyrus—



Then, swift as a deer’s leap, we’re devotees

Of goatees and showy Guatemalan shirts,



Intoxicated lovers for a month

On the northwest coast of Spain—



Praising the irrepressible sounds

Of a crusty Galician bagpiper



On La Coruña’s gripping finisterre,

Then gossiping and climbing



(Like the giddy Argonauts we were)

The lofty, ancient Roman lighthouse,



All the way—Keep on truckin’, we sang—

To the top of the Tower of Hercules—  

Through my
little window, I
see one day
the entire bird, 
the next just 
a leeward wing, 
the next
only a painful
call, which, without
the body, makes
beautiful attachments
by even
attaching at
all.

The fox with broken legs has a gift others do not. He removes his paws and they go walking through the woods at night alone. The paws stop to touch pondwater, to brush a blade of saltgrass. They tap the backs of passing beetles in the dark. At dawn, they return to the fox, whispering of rabbits curled in damp caverns, of green oak leaves and sand. The fox listens carefully; he gleans secrets of the world this way. He learns of the earth without lifting his nose from his long, broken limbs. Always, when the paws return they say we missed you, always he listens. How young, how simple they seem beside his face which is mottled and pocked. He gentles the paws like children. He hopes when he dies they live on without him. When his bones rattle and shake in wind, he hopes the paws walk through autumn leaves, pad softly through newfallen snow. He dreams they will drift across a black lake dappled with rain; that, above it, they’ll rise; they’ll glow like four pale moons.

You have to be always drunk. That’s all there is to it—it’s the only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually drunk.

But on what? Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But be drunk.

And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace or the green grass of a ditch, in the mournful solitude of your room, you wake again, drunkenness already diminishing or gone, ask the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, everything that is flying, everything that is groaning, everything that is rolling, everything that is singing, everything that is speaking . . . ask what time it is and wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you: “It is time to be drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of time, be drunk, be continually drunk! On wine, on poetry or on virtue as you wish.”

A mouse went to see his mother.  When his car broke down he bought a bike.
When the bike wore out he bought skates.  When the skates wore down he ran.
He ran until his sneakers wore through.  Then he walked.  He walked and 
walked, almost walked his feet through so he bought new ones.  His mother was 
happy to see him and said, "what nice new feet you have on."
—paraphrase of a story in Mouse Tails by Arnold Lobel

hey, listen, a bad thing happened to 
my friend's marriage, can't tell you
only can tell my own story which 
so far isn't so bad:

"Dad" and I stay married.  so far.
so good.  so so.

But it felt undoable. This lucky life
every day, every day. every. day.

(all the poetry books the goddamn same
until one guys gets up and stuns the audience)

Then, Joe Wenderoth, not by a long shot
sober says, I promised my wife I wouldn't fuck
anyone, to no one in particular and reads a poem 
about how Jesus has no penis.

Meanwhile, the psychiatrist, attractive in a fatherly 
way, says libido question mark.

And your libido?
like a father, but not like mine, or my sons'—

"fix it."

My friend's almost written 
a good novel by which I mean finished 
which means I'd like to light myself 
on fire, on fire
with envy, this isn't "desire" 
not what the Dr. meant
by libido?
                        I hope—

not, it's just chemical:
            jealousy. boredom. lethargy.

 

Books with prominent seraphs: their feet feet feet I am
marching to the same be—

other

than the neuronic slave I thought anxiety made me 
do it, made me get up and carry forth, sally 
the children to school the poems dragged 
by little hands on their little seraphs 
to the page my marriage sustained, remaining 
energy: project #1, project #2, broken 
fixtures, summer plans, demand met, request 
granted, bunny noodles with and without cheesy 
at the same time, and the night time I insomnia 
these hours penning invisible letters—

            till it stopped.

doc said: it's a syndrome.        you've got it, 
                                      classic.

it's chemical,
mental

circuitry we've got a fix for this
classic, I'm saying I can

make it better.

Everything was the same, then,
but better.

At night I slept.
In the morning got up.

Kids to school, husband still a fool-
hardy spirit makes
me pick a monday morning fight, snipe! I'll pay for that
later I'm still a pain in the 
elbow from writing prose those shift+hold+letter, 
I'm still me less sleepy, crazy, I suppose
less crazy-jealous just
ha-ha now at Jesus' no penis his
amazed at the other poet's kickass
friend's novel I dream instead about
the government makes me put stickers
on my driver's license of family members
who are Jews, and mine all are.  Can they get us 
all? I escape with a beautiful light-haired man,
blue-eyed day trader, gentile. 
 

gentle, gentle, mind encased in its 
blood-brain barrier from the harsh skull
sleep,  sleep and sleepy wake and want 
to sleep and sleep a steep dosage— 

            "—chemical?"

in my dreams now every man's mine, no-
problem, perhaps my mind's a little plastic, 
malleable, not so fatal now 

the dose is engineered like that new genetic watercress
to turn from green to red when planted over buried 
mines, nitrogen dioxide makes for early autumn
red marks the spot where I must 
watch my step, up one half-step-dose specific—


            The psychiatrist's lived in NY so long
            he's of ambiguous religious—
            everyone's Jewish sometimes—
            writes: "up the dosage."


now,
when I'm late I just shrug
it's my new improved style
missed the train? I tug
the two boys single file

the platform a safe aisle
between disasters, blithely
I step, step, step-lively
carefully, wisely.

I sing silly ditties 
play I spy something pretty
grey-brown-metal-filthy
for a little city fun.

Just one way to enjoy life's 
trials, mile after mile, lucky
to have such dependable feet.

you see,
the rodents don't frighten I'm
calm as can be expected to recover left to my 
one devivces I was twice as fast getting everywhere but
where did that get me but there, that inevitable location
more waiting, the rats there scurry, scurry, a furry

till the next train comes

"up the dosage."

Brown a first-cut brisket in hot Dutch oven 
after dusting with paprika.  Remove.  Sauté 
thickly sliced onions and add wine. (Sweet 
is better, lasts forever, never need a new bottle). 
Put the meat on onions, cover with tomato-sauce-
onion-soup-mix mixture, cover. Back in a low 
oven many hours.

The house smells like meat.
My hair smells like meat. 

I'm a light unto the nation.

I'm trying 
to get out of Egypt.
This year, 
I'll  be better.

Joseph makes sense of the big man's dreams, is saved,
saves his brothers those jealous boys who sold him 
sold them all as slaves. Seven years of plenty.  Seven
years of famine.  He insomnias the nights counting up
grains, storing, planning, for what? They say throw 
the small boys in the river (and mothers do so). Smite 
the sons (and fathers do it.) God says take off your shoes,
this holy ground this pitiful, incombustible bush.

Is God chemical?  
Enzymatic of our great need to chaos?

We're unforgivable. 
People of the salted
cheeks.  Slap, turn, slap.

To be chosen 
is to be 
unforgiving/ unforgiv-
en, always chosen: 
be better.

The Zuckers are a long line of obsessives. 

This served them well in war time saw it 
coming in time that unseeable thing they 
hoarded they ferried, schemed, paced, got the hell 
out figured out at night, insomnia, how to visa—

now, if it happens again, I won't be 
ready

I'm "better."

The husband, a country club Jew from Denver, American
intelligentsia will have to carry me out and he's no big 
man and I'm not a small girl how fast

can the doctor switch the refugee gene back on?


How fast can I get worse?  Smart again and worse?

Better to be alive than better.  

            "...listen:" says the doctor, "sleeping isn't death.  
            All children unlearn this fear you got confused 
            thought thinking was the same as spinning—"             
            Writes: "up the dosage."  
            don't think.  this refugee thing part
            of a syndrome fear of medication of being better...

Truth is, the anti-obsessional medicine works 
wonders and drags me through life's course...

About this time of year but years ago the priests spread 
rumors of blood libel. Jews huddled in basements accused 
of using Christian babes' blood to make unleavened bread.

signs and wonders.
Christ rises.

Blood and body and babes.
Basements and briskets 
and bread of afflictions.

I am calm now with my pounds of meat 
made and frozen, my party schedule, my pills 
of liberation, my gentile dream-boy, American 
passport, my grey haired-psychiatrist, my blue-
eyed son, my brown-eyed son, my poems on their 
pretty little fleet-feet, my big shot friends, olive-skinned 
husband, my right elbow on fire: fire inside deep in the nerve 
from too much carrying and word-mongering, smithery, bearing 
and tensing choosing to be better to live this real life this better orbit this Jack

Kerouac never loved you like you wanted. 
Blake.
Buddha. 
Only Jesus and that's his shtick,
he loves

everyone: smile! that's it,
for the camera, blood pressure
normal, better, you're a poster child
for signs and wonders what a little chemistry
does for the brain, blood, thought, hey,

did you know that Pharaoh actually wanted
to let them go?  those multitude Jews
but God hardened Pharaoh's heart against them [Jews]
to prove his prowess show his signs, wonders, outstretched 
hand, until the dosage was a perfect ten and then 
some, sea closing up around those little chariots
the men and horses while women on the far shore shook 
their tambourines.  And then what?  Forty years to get the smell
of slavery off them. 

Because of this. Bloody Nile. My story one of
the lucky.  Escape hatch even from my own
obsess—

            I am here because of this.
Because of what my ancestors did for me to tell this
story of the outstretched hand what it did for me this
marked door and behind this red-marked door, around 
a corner a blue-eyed boy waits to love me up with his 
leavened bread, his slim body, professional detachment, 
medical advancements, forgive me my father's mother's
father was the last in a long line of Rabbis—again! with this? This
rhapsody of affliction and escape, the mind bobbing along
in its watery safe. Be like everyone. Else. Indistinguishable but
better than the other nations but that's what got us into this, Allen,
no one writes these long-ass poems anymore.  Now we're
better, all better.  All Christian.  Kind. 

^{Answers crowdsourced from the author’s Instagram. Italics denote direct quotes.}

Absent parent(s) 

and the man who made me 

mistrust every man after. 

I haven’t earned it yet—

what is love if not a salary? 

The sweet treat we get 

for being demure.

It feels too selfish,

too vulgar, unladylike 

to gorge myself

on the moist cake of it. 

I’ve got bad credit, 

a prettier sibling, a rank 

history of mistakes,

each one more foul 

than the last. The timing

was all wrong. 

The timing was right 

but I was afraid 

of losing it.

I am disorganized.

My brain is broken, 

and it was stuck on something 

I thought was love.

I’ve spit out it before

just to prove that I can.

I believe I am ugly.

and in the end, 

it’s just easier this way,

familiar as a callous, 

tongued over like 

a cracked tooth:

suffering feels cleaner, 

because if I start to believe

I actually deserve love,

I’d have to find 

unacceptable all 

those incapable of 

giving it.

She kneeled before me begging
    That I should with a prayer
Give her absolution
    (How golden was her hair!)

She begged an absolution
    While the moments fled
She thought my tears were pity
    (My soul her lips were red!)

She begged of me forgiveness
    God you understand
(For pale and soft and slender
    Was her dainty hand!)

She begged that I should pray You
    That her Soul might rest
But I could not pray O Master
    (Ivory was her breast!)

Listen …
With faint dry sound,
Like steps of passing ghosts,
The leaves, frost-crisp’d, break from the trees
And fall.

KEY AND STRING THEORETICALLY RIPPLING IN THE WAKE 
RATTLES SURFACE OF DRYING BONES
EXCAVATED FROM A LAKE

A BLOW AGAINST THE BONES NOW 
STRIKES THEM DOWN INTO THEIR MARROW
DUST FLOATS IN CHAOS TRACING
WING TRACKS OF SPARROW
SUSPENDING CRIMSON IN THE PEARLESCENT WHITES 
OF FRESHLY DRIED SIGHT
KICKS IRIS 
WITH THE ILLUSION 
OF LIGHT IN MEMORY

STRING STRIKES WAGE WAR
AGAINST THE KICKS OF AN ANCHOR ONCE ASHORE
NOW NO MORE 
REVIVAL ON THE OCEAN’S FLOOR
NOW NO MORE 
REVIVAL ON THE BEDROOM DOOR
SUCK THE CRIMSON FROM THE BITS AND 
PRAY FOR MORE 
CRUSH THE BITS IN A STAMPING FIT 
ON A REVIVAL FLOOR 

A SEXED BEING SPLITS ON DEW OF THE WAVE PROJECTION
NOW MORE, DIVVIED INTO THE POSSIBILITIES THAT LIE THEREIN

SHE NOW THEE, ASTRAL BEAM OUT IN A PUNCH FROM THE GUT
DISEMBOWELING THE DUB OF WHAT LIED IN THE SUB

HIS HIGH STRUNG WIRE SHRIEKS AT ITS SCRAPING
THOUGH THREADBARE, STILL INEFFABLE. 
BREAKS IN ITS GAPING

                   1

I should like to creep
Through the long brown grasses
        That are your lashes;
I should like to poise
        On the very brink
Of the leaf-brown pools
        That are your shadowed eyes;
I should like to cleave
        Without sound,
Their glimmering waters,
        Their unrippled waters,
I should like to sink down
        And down
            And down . . . .
                And deeply drown.

                   2

Would I be more than a bubble breaking?
        Or an ever-widening circle
        Ceasing at the marge?
Would my white bones
        Be the only white bones
Wavering back and forth, back and forth
        In their depths?