She, being the midwife

and your mother’s

longtime friend, said

I see a heart; can you

see it? And on the grey

display of the ultrasound

there you were as you were,

our nugget, in that moment

becoming a shrimp

or a comma punctuating

the whole of my life, separating

its parts—before and after—,

a shrimp in the sea

of your mother, and I couldn’t

help but see the fast

beating of your heart

translated on that screen

and think and say to her,

to the room, to your mother,

to myself It looks like

a twinkling star.

I imagine I’m not

the first to say that either.

Unlike the first moments

of my every day,

the new of seeing you was the first

—deserving of the definite article—

moment I saw a star

at once so small and so

big, so close and getting closer

every day, I pray.

Pristine the ash                                   no one has touched yet

before wind sweeps it along                         across the altar

                         dusting chrysanthemum and bees

before it is swept off again                

                                                              the way the body burns

            part by part

particle by particulate

                                                              particularly diverging

                                                              its tiny cinders

                        of moth wings.

After sound                                        there is no sound

                                                              a wolf sanctuary

           void of howling

                        headlights on the winding road

picking up snow

                                     a tuft falling on the heron

                         as her wingtips dip into water.

Evolution:    

                         bat wing

                         whale fin

                         my hand shielding myself from light

as I adjust

                                                              frames along the wall

barefoot on the black bookcase

                                     the heat of my footprint

             disappearing though no hand wipes it.

In taking inventory of what’s left

                         what the dead have cleared in space

             a question

                                      like the body of a boy

curled inside his dog’s bed

                                      a boy filling his own rice bowl

                                      until he doesn’t want to

anymore.

                        I want to be beside him in the dark

to hear his voice again

                                      to stop seeing him on the street

                         in the back row         

                                      of a classroom where I teach.

            Is there no end to this need

mushrooms inching along

                         blades of grass after a field of rain

                                                             the heron fishing

wings spread to lure prey into her shade.

In war they say We’re not the top species because we’re nice

In life I say Let me come closer

                                      even if it kills me.

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.

The most common thing in the world

is a statue with its arms broken off.

The brokenness a flatness exposing the texture of the marble or clay.

The second most common thing are the arms.

The right to bear them.

Which is something even those who do not want the right have.

Having something or someone to pray for

doesn’t mean you have to pray.

Who gave you something or someone to pray for, think of that.

In the third most common thing, grass still wet

from rain overnight, which you did not participate in by watching.

You were asleep in the fourth most common thing.

You wake now and walk on the fifth most common thing.

The smooth surface of it.

Without meaning to be reductive.

You say the name of a country to refer to its ongoing conflict.

The word conflict a rag that wipes the blade clean.

A clean blade above a fireplace is the sixth most common thing.

Which means you have a neighbor, either

to the east or west, who is currently displaying a weapon.

Even if you do not own a weapon, you could.

And because of this you are complicit.

But you cannot do anything about most things.

You cannot put the arms back onto a statue

is another way of saying you can’t put a bullet back into a gun.

The body subsumes bullets as though it is in love.

It inculcates bullets in the ways of the flesh.

Which is torn by the time the bullet is convinced.

You aren’t convinced of anything you don’t already believe in.

In this way you are always standing your ground.

The ground under someone standing it

is the seventh most common thing.

The eighth is the air in which you openly carry.

You like the feel, the weight, the heft of it in your hand.

But mostly you like the ability to take another’s life should you need to.

It was your grandfather’s ability, your father’s.

Before you know it, it will be your child’s.

Whose body in the fetal position resembles a finger curling over a trigger.

Whose whole life is still in the magazine.

Until it isn’t and the sound is like that of a sternal saw

cutting through the breastbone of the world.

Finally buckling under the tink, tink, tink of the hammer against the saw.

And you thought you had hid the key to the drawer where you keep the gun.

But a key whose location is known is the ninth most common thing.

The tenth most common thing is a thoracic cavity

opened with a few cranks of the rib-spreader.

And the esophagus and lungs are fished around by the hands of a surgeon

who begins to massage the heart.

To clamp the aorta.

So that more blood is directed into the brain.

Instead of into the bowels, which have emptied by now.

While what is being filled are the gun racks of those.

Whose child is not on the table.

Is not statuesque in the beauty sense of the word.

But in the way rigor mortis sets in.

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

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.

^{for Michele Antoinette Pray-Griffiths}

Ordinary days deliver joy easily
again & I can't take it. If I could tell you
how her eyes laughed or describe
the rage of her suffering, I must
admit that lately my memories
are sometimes like a color
warping in my blue mind.
Metal abandoned in rain.

My mother will not move.

Which is to say that
sometimes the true color of
her casket jumps from my head
like something burnt down
in the genesis of a struck flame.
Which is to say that I miss
the mind I had when I had
my mother. I own what is yet.
Which means I am already
holding my own absence
in faith. I still carry a faded slip of paper
where she once wrote a word
with a pencil & crossed it out.

From tree to tree, around her grave
I have walked, & turned back
if only to remind myself
that there are some kinds of
peace, which will not be
moved. How awful to have such
wonder. The final way wonder itself
opened beneath my mother's face
at the last moment. As if she was
a small girl kneeling in a puddle
& looking at her face for the first time,
her fingers gripping the loud,
wet rim of the universe.

      —after Donne’s “Meditation XII”

What won’t end a life if a vapor will? 
If this poem were a violent shaking of 
The air by thunder or by cannon, in 
That case the air would be condensed above 
The thickness of water, of water baked 
Into ice, almost petrified, almost 
Made stone and no wonder; no la. But that 
Which is but a vapor, and a vapor 
Not exhaled when breathed in, who would not think
Miserably then, put into the hands 
Of nature, which doesn’t only set us 
Up as a mark for others to shoot at, 
But delights itself in blowing us up 
Like glass, till it see us break, even 
From its own breath? Madness over madness
Misplaced, overestimating ourselves
Proceeding ourselves, we proceed from ourselves 
So that a self is in the plot, and we
Are not only passive, but active, too,
In this destruction contract. Doesn’t my 
Calling call for that? We have heard of death 
On these small occasions and from unearthed
Instruments: a pin, a comb, a hair yanked,
A golden vision gangrened and killed. But
Still the vapor. Still. So, if asked again, What 
Is a vapor? I couldn’t tell you. So
So insensible a thing; so near such
Nothings that reduce us to nothing. 
And yet for all their privileges, they are 
Not privileged from our misery; for they 
Are the vapors most natural to us, 
Arising in our own bodies, arising
In the clot-shine of disheveled rumor;
And those that wound nations most arise
At home. What ill air to meet in the street.
What comes for your throat like homebred vapor 
Comes for your throat as fugitive, as fox,
As soulman of any foreign state? As
Detractor, as libeler, as scornful jester
At home? For, as they babble of poisons
And of wild creatures naturally disposed
(But of course) to ruin you, ask yourself
About the flea, the viper; for the flea,
Though it may kill no one, does all the harm
It can, not so that it may live but so
That it may live as itself, shrugging through
Your blood; but the jester, whose head is full
Of vapor, draws vapor from your head, pulls
Pigeons from his pockets, blares what venom
He may have as though he were the viper,
As though he is not less than a vapor,
As though there is no virtue in power,
Having it, and not doing any harm.

             or better

when the training dedicated

            to what lines my eyes cast

braids me to that skein

            then I know I’m a thing

that can take itself away

            maybe etched with the man

on a horse leaping

            into the lithographed

German windmill’s open bay

            refined, involutely resolved

to curving inward

            while touching the outside,

screaming isn’t looking

            like when my mother died

of being a woman,

            poor and eventually

American, the nerve I had

            to fold time

in my mouth as if to call

            back an escape line

from a life

            and who would think

to hide in a windmill

            and the horse

amenable?

            I really was

looking at that print

            thinking without rancor

of what fraction of hateable men

            I’ve known

and been

            who work so hard

at fleeing into private chambers

            only to find

some uninvited thought of me

            eyes closed, whispering

exactly there, spectral

            and unwanted as I am,

It’s just easier for me

            if you’re not around

translated from the Spanish by Robin Myers

I don’t understand how we walk around the world
as if there were a single way for each of us, a kind
of life stamped into us like a childhood injection,
a cure painstakingly released into the blood with every passing year
like a poison transmuted into antidote
against any possible disobedience that might
awaken in the body. But the body isn’t mere
submissive matter, a mouth that cleanly swallows
whatever it’s fed. It’s a lattice
of little filaments, as I imagine
threads of starlight must be. What can never
be touched: that’s the body. What lives outside
the law when the law is muscled and violent,
a boulder plunging off a precipice
and crushing everything in its path. How do they manage
to wander around so happily and comfortably in their bodies, how
do they feel so sure, so confident in being what they are: this blood,
these organs, this sex, this species? Haven’t they ever longed
to be a lizard scorching in the sun
every day, or an old man, or a vine
clutching a trunk in search of somewhere
to hold on, or a boy sprinting till his heart
bursts from his chest with sheer brute energy,
with sheer desire? We’re forced
to be whatever we resemble. Haven’t
you ever wished you knew what it would feel like to have claws
or roots or fins instead of hands, what it would mean
if you could only live in silence
or by murmuring or crying out
in pain or fear or pleasure? Or if there weren’t any words
at all and so the soul of every living thing were measured
by the intensity it manifests
once it’s set free?

Tomboy

Yo no sé cómo se hace para andar por el mundo
como si solo hubiera una posibilidad para cada cual,
una manera de estar vivos inoculada en las venas durante la niñez,
un remedio que va liberándose lentamente en la sangre
a lo largo de los años igual que un veneno
que se convierte en un antídoto
contra cualquier desobediencia que pudiera
despertarse en el cuerpo. Pero el cuerpo no es
una materia sumisa, una boca que traga limpiamente
aquello con que se la alimenta. Es un entramado
de pequeños filamentos, como imagino que son los hilos
de luz de las estrellas. Lo que nunca podría
ser tocado: eso es el cuerpo. Lo que siempre
queda afuera de la ley cuando la ley es maciza
y violenta, una piedra descomunal cayendo 
desde lo alto de una cima
arrasando lo que encuentra. ¿Cómo pueden entonces
andar tan cómodos y felices en su cuerpo, cómo hacen
para tener la certeza, la seguridad de que son eso: esa sangre,
esos órganos, ese sexo, esa especie? ¿Nunca quisieron
ser un lagarto prendido cada día del calor del sol
hasta quemarse el cuero, un hombre viejo, una enredadera
apretándose contra el tronco de un árbol para tener de dónde
sostenerse, un chico corriendo hasta que el corazón
se le sale del pecho de pura energía brutal,
de puro deseo? Nos esforzamos tanto
por ser aquello a lo que nos parecemos. ¿Nunca
se te ocurrió cómo sería si en lugar de manos tuvieras garras
o raíces o aletas, cómo sería
si la única manera de vivir fuera en silencio o aullando
de placer o de dolor o de miedo,
si no hubiera palabras
y el alma de cada cosa viva se midiera
por la intensidad de la que es capaz una vez
que queda suelta? 

^{For October}

I was thinking about that museum 
with just the one painted stamp people 
pay big money to stare at minimum 
an hour at a time by a painter of people

who have been old for a very long time. 
Sarah Beth Bess of Peducah, Old Walter Thom
outside Paris Island, the most senior clients
of most of the low country senior homes.   

There used to be a country where no sad
songs were allowed out loud because 
making the king blue was outlawed. 
The girl falling down the well sang without pause 

as she fell. People described it as gospel.
The boy in the well sang as well as a small bell 
& the people said it sounded like babble.
Rising in life-like detail from the middle 

of the stamp sized painting is an ornate mountain. 
My people moved further south to the beaches 
instead of moving north after reconstruction. 
“Blessed,” my father said when I asked if he’d 

rather be blessed or lucky. Soda in a can taste better 
than soda in a bottle but beer in a bottle 
taste better than beer in a can. It’s better
plus less stressful to think the best of people.

The worst thing about scared people 
is they go around scaring other people. 
Who you are with your mamma, People, 
is not who you are with other people.

The color of my mother’s thumbs up emoji 
is unchanged either because she’s not estranged 
by such things or because she doesn’t know 
the shade of her thumb can be changed. 

The painter can be seen painting a small 
painting through the window of a modestly
decorated cabin on the mountain. With all 
the people who clap when some mostly 

vengeful violence happens in the movie, 
those who do not clap may feel no other people 
are not clapping. I hear you. It seems  
reasonable to stare at a painting for at least 

as long as it takes the painter to make it 
& also reasonable to stare for approximately 
as long as it takes the sun to rise & set.
I told my father being blessed was vaguely 

more dependent on the whims of God. 
I’d rather be lucky. The girl in the well 
was put there in the name of god
by farming people. The boy fell.

I thought I could stop

time by taking apart

the clock. Minute hand. Hour hand.

Nothing can keep. Nothing

is kept. Only kept track of. I felt

passing seconds

accumulate like dead calves

in a thunderstorm

of the mind no longer a mind

but a page torn

from the dictionary with the definition of self

effaced. I couldn’t face it: the world moving

on as if nothing happened.

Everyone I knew got up. Got dressed.

Went to work. Went home.

There were parties. Ecstasy.

Hennessy. Dancing

around each other. Bluntness. Blunts

rolled to keep

thought after thought

from roiling

like wind across water—

coercing shapelessness into shape.

I put on my best face.

I was glamour. I was grammar.

Yet my best couldn’t best my beast.

I, too, had been taken apart.

I didn’t want to be

fixed. I wanted everything dismantled and useless

like me. Case. Wheel. Hands. Dial. Face.

Oh, a hidden power is in my breast, 

    A power that none can fathom; 

I call the tides from seas of rest, 

They rise, they fall, at my behest; 

And many a tardy fisher’s boat, 

I’ve torn apart and set afloat, 

     From out their raging chasm. 

For I’m an enchantress, old and grave; 

      Concealed I rule the weather; 

Oft set I, the lover’s heart a blaze, 

With hidden power of my fulgent rays, 

Or seek I the souls of dying men, 

And call the sea-tides from the fen,

      And drift them out together. 

I call the rain from the mountain’s peak,

     And sound the mighty thunder; 

When I wax and wane from week to week,

The heavens stir, while vain men seek,

To solve the myst’ries that I hold, 

But a bounded portion I unfold, 

     So nations pass and wonder. 

Yea, my hidden strength no man may know;

     Nor myst’ries be expounded;

I’ll cause the tidal waves to flow, 

And I shall wane, and larger grow, 

Yet while man rack his shallow brain, 

The secrets with me still remain, 

      He seeks in vain, confounded.