^{after Bulund al-Haidari}

To the hostages of our policies, my apologies—
the petty stenographers of the crooked rulers
in the once fancy now crumbling cities
of our fading Empire lied then.
They lied then and they lie now.
Everything they say and write is a lie,
about law and freedom, about equality
and justice, in the rubble of the bombs
we make and sell, in the silent cries
of limbless orphans, in the night
lit by white phosphorous and the
relentless sound of buzzing drones.
They tell us we used to have things of
value, even things we ourselves made,
and that it was a place like no other.
All I know is that Sinbad once sailed
to Gaza and so to Gaza he’ll sail once again.

Another child in Gaza—unseeable under rubble,
but for one arm
jutting out of sharp and rocky ruins,

her fingers curling and uncurling.

She must have heard the man calling out—
here to lift
hunks of a building off of the living—
he hopes — calling out again and again,

            is anyone here? is anyone alive?

Her fingers answer.
Her fingers are her mouth and tongue now,
curling and uncurling, they call out,

I’m here, over here, I’m here, right here,
I’m here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, 

Gauzy film between
evergreens is a web

of loss. Get closer. Reach
to touch the shimmering

gossamer and your finger
pushes through. Remember

filling that space with desire?
Someone else might grieve

the spider who abandoned
this home; others grow anxious

waiting for a deer’s walk
to wreck it. But you—

you grieve the net of thought
spun inside your own womb:

intricate and glossy and strong.

What I’ve written for you, I have always written
in English, my language of silent vowel endings
never translated into your language of silent h’s.
               Lo que he escrito para ti, siempre lo he escrito
               en inglés, en mi lengua llena de vocales mudas
               nunca traducidas a tu idioma de haches mudas.
I’ve transcribed all your old letters into poems
that reconcile your exile from Cuba, but always
in English. I’ve given you back the guajiro roads
you left behind, stretched them into sentences
punctuated with palms, but only in English.
               He transcrito todas tus cartas viejas en poemas
               que reconcilian tu exilio de Cuba, pero siempre
               en inglés. Te he devuelto los caminos guajiros
               que dejastes atrás, transformados en oraciones
               puntuadas por palmas, pero solamente en inglés.
I have recreated the pueblecito you had to forget,
forced your green mountains up again, grown
valleys of sugarcane, stars for you in English.
               He reconstruido el pueblecito que tuvistes que olvidar,
               he levantado de nuevo tus montañas verdes, cultivado
               la caña, las estrellas de tus valles, para ti, en inglés.
In English I have told you how I love you cutting
gladiolas, crushing ajo, setting cups of dulce de leche
on the counter to cool, or hanging up the laundry
at night under our suburban moon. In English,
               En inglés te he dicho cómo te amo cuando cortas
               gladiolas, machacas ajo, enfrías tacitas de dulce de leche
               encima del mostrador, o cuando tiendes la ropa
               de noche bajo nuestra luna en suburbia. En inglés
I have imagined you surviving by transforming
yards of taffeta into dresses you never wear,
keeping Papá’s photo hinged in your mirror,
and leaving the porch light on, all night long.
               He imaginado como sobrevives transformando
               yardas de tafetán en vestidos que nunca estrenas,
               la foto de papá que guardas en el espejo de tu cómoda,
               la luz del portal que dejas encendida, toda la noche.
               Te he captado en inglés en la mesa de la cocina
               esperando que cuele el café, que hierva la leche
               y que tu vida acostumbre a tu vida. En inglés
               has aprendido a adorer tus pérdidas igual que yo.
I have captured you in English at the kitchen table
waiting for the café to brew, the milk to froth,
and your life to adjust to your life. In English
you’ve learned to adore your losses the way I do.

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.

Imagine, when a human dies,
the soul misses the body, actually grieves
the loss of its hands and all
they could hold. Misses the throat closing shy
reading out loud on the first day of school.
Imagine the soul misses the stubbed toe,
the loose tooth, the funny bone. The soul still asks, Why
does the funny bone do that? It’s just weird.
Imagine the soul misses the thirsty garden cheeks
watered by grief. Misses how the body could sleep
through a dream. What else can sleep through a dream?
What else can laugh? What else can wrinkle
the smile’s autograph? Imagine the soul misses each falling
eyelash waiting to be a wish. Misses the wrist
screaming away the blade. The soul misses the lisp,
the stutter, the limp. The soul misses the holy bruise
blue from that army of blood rushing to the wound’s side.
When a human dies, the soul searches the universe
for something blushing, something shaking
in the cold, something that scars, sweeps
the universe for patience worn thin,
the last nerve fighting for its life, the voice box
aching to be heard. The soul misses the way
the body would hold another body and not be two bodies
but one pleading god doubled in grace.
The soul misses how the mind told the body,
You have fallen from grace. And the body said,
Erase every scripture that doesn’t have a pulse.
There isn’t a single page in the bible that can wince,
that can clumsy, that can freckle, that can hunger.
Imagine the soul misses hunger, emptiness,
rage, the fist that was never taught to curl—curled,
the teeth that were never taught to clench—clenched,
the body that was never taught to make love—made love
like a hungry ghost digging its way out of the grave.
The soul misses the unforever of old age, the skin
that no longer fits. The soul misses every single day
the body was sick, the now it forced, the here
it built from the fever. Fever is how the body prays,
how it burns and begs for another average day.
The soul misses the legs creaking
up the stairs, misses the fear that climbed
up the vocal cords to curse the wheelchair.
The soul misses what the body could not let go—
what else could hold on that tightly to everything?
What else could see hear the chain of a swingset
and fall to its knees? What else could touch
a screen door and taste lemonade?
What else could come back from a war
and not come back? But still try to live? Still try
to lullaby? When a human dies the soul moves
through the universe trying to describe how a body trembles
when it’s lost, softens when it’s safe, how a wound would heal
given nothing but time. Do you understand? Nothing in space can
imagine it. No comet, no nebula, no ray of light
can fathom the landscape of awe, the heat of shame.
The fingertips pulling the first gray hair
and throwing it away. I can’t imagine it,
the stars say. Tell us again about goosebumps.
Tell us again about pain.

try calling it hibernation.
Imagine the darkness is a cave
in which you will be nurtured
by doing absolutely nothing.
Hibernating animals don’t even dream.
It’s okay if you can’t imagine
Spring. Sleep through the alarm
of the world. Name your hopelessness
a quiet hollow, a place you go
to heal, a den you dug,
Sweetheart, instead
of a grave.

^{with gratitude to Wanda Coleman & Terrance Hayes}

We have the same ankles, hips, nipples, knees—
our bodies bore the forks/tenedors
we use to eat. What do we eat? Darkness
from cathedral floors,

the heart’s woe in abundance. Please let us
go through the world touching what we want,
knock things over. Slap & kick & punch
until we get something right. ¿Verdad?

Isn’t it true, my father always asks.
Your father is the ghost of mine & vice
versa. & when did our pasts
stop recognizing themselves? It was always like

us to first person: yo. To disrupt a hurricane’s
path with our own inwardness.
C’mon huracán, you watery migraine,
prove us wrong for once. This sadness

lasts/esta tristeza perdura. Say it both ways
so language doesn’t bite back, but stays.

                                          ^{for Kristen}

Our earliest understanding of seizures
                                    was that they must be the devil

                                                                        possessing the sick.

                                                                       ▼

                     At the onset of my condition,
                                the doctors were convinced it must be
                                                                                                        epilepsy. Kept me
                                                                                for a week. Bedridden & wired
                                                                                           to their machines.

                                                                       ▼

“Epilepsy” from the Greek

                      epi—upon &
                      lambanein—to take hold.

                                              The body snatched away
                                  from itself.

                                                                       ▼

My first seizure was not like this
instead, voltage in my blood,

my body draped in wind,
in wings, in nets, & veils
of heatless light.

                                                                       ▼

                                                           Sometimes, I think I must be
                                                           a bad feminist. The days that
                                                           all I want to be is owned.
                                                           An object. A possession.

                                                                       ▼

An apostrophe denotes possession.
Means to turn toward.                          Thin hook

          of ink that joins one body                   to another
by its name.             Small black latch

that clicks the distance between
                                                two things shut.

                                                                       ▼

Most days,
my pink leather collar
collects dust in a closet.

                        Though once, I wore it daily.
                                                           Marked territory’s familiar
                        weight. Though, once,
                                                           a dom made me wear it out
                        in a dive bar’s dim light
                                                           to read poems for tips
                        & I bruised my throat
                                                           from the force of speaking.

                                                                       ▼

                For weeks after, my voice
                                                                        was choked
                           with ghost-palms, padlock
                                                   caught in my throat.

                                                                       ▼

                Once, the common practice
                                        for treating patients
                            in the midst of seizing

                                                                was to force a piece of wood
                                                                between their teeth

                            to prevent them from biting
                                                    through their tongues.

                                                                       ▼

                                                                                       Epilepsy shares a common root
                                                                                                      with latch. Thus, the lock, & band,

                                                                                       the collar, & cuffs, & trapdoor
                                                                                                           of a mouth—cousins to illness.

                                                                       ▼

                                          The doctor tells me this is Not epilepsy
                                          but a cousin-illness. Misfiring nervous
                                                system shocked & baring teeth.

                                                                       ▼

Certain kinds of seizure are categorized
                        by the feeling of euphoria that overtakes the body

when you return to it. I first knew to call
                        these seizures from the dead-light they left behind.

                                                                       ▼

                                    My lover tells me they have heard the voice of god
                                          since before they understood human speech

                                                & this is how I know we are thunder
                                                        -blooded in the same way.

                                                                       ▼

The seizure—a kind
of theft. Speech stolen
from the tip of my tongue. I wake
            from sudden darkness & words

                                                            topple
from my mouth, unhinged
            from their tangled meanings.

                        Back against the floor, my tongue
                        babels a tower skyward.

                                                                       ▼

                                                                                Sometimes I hear voices
                                                                           in the darkness. Sometimes
                                                                                 I hear my love, reaching
                                                                               for me as if through water,
                                                                            even from 1000 miles away.

                                                                       ▼

The same lover told me                      that  the  distance  between
orgasm & seizure is thin

                                                                           as a split lip’s skin.
The body overtaken                                                     by itself. But

there’s something different                                   in being trembled
by another’s hand.

                                                                       ▼

                                                      Their hand: a hook & a name.

                                                                       ▼

Possession—a mark of sin.
                                                Of course.

                          An invitation. I give myself
                          over & this must be a deviled thing.

A dirty prayer. If a nun has wed
the lord, pray tell
                                                              what strange marriage is this?

                                                                       ▼

                       To be bridled is to be held,

but contains within it bride,
           could be confused for bridal.

                                  They hold me through a seizure
                       or pin me to the bed, fingers
                                  a bit inside my mouth. I am wed
                                                         to their hands.

The dead do
     what they want
which is nothing—

sit there, mantled,
     or made real
by photographs

in silver frames,
     or less real
by our many ministrations.

Dusting. Bleach. The world
     swept, ordered,
seemingly unending.

The dead, listless,
     lazy, grow tired
& turn off the TV—

or like a father passed
     out in an easy chair
during the evening news

      what’s watched now
does the watching.

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

You rake the soil of our verge, preparing our plot for summer.
Between us, walking—neighbors and dogs, questions: what are we doing here, to the earth
of our verge—unhinged rhizomes heap, clumped grief of an old barrow sways drunk on its wheel.
We agree: the barren of potential; we agree, bulbs—their dormancy, a poem—
and tubers—like language, for their incubation of eyes. I emerge, eyes
on you, nuclear to the sun—beside you, lowering; beside you, that glow-eyed beast
of emptiness arranging.

*

I tell you about this morning’s dream. You tear the ground with a pickaxe; I manicure
weeds from the loamy apron of a young tree. I admit: I stared at our newborn with regret.
True, you laugh light into our longing. A mother tells me: Early morning dreams are premonitions.
What premonition is it to long to see (the Earth); what regret is it to birth another into this longing?
Impossible resources.
But how early was it—the morning—the bouquet making-root in a sorry vase.
I am not one for intentional form, but maybe, babe—should we freeze our eggs?

*

You strongarm the wheelbarrow. Not me. Exoskeletal flora deflated like a dead birthday party.
Our cat pounces crickets from the limit of her tangled leash.
We leash because patriarchy. We leash because to verge leans always toward. Too toward.
Watch children! The slow or empty road. The crows’ luxury of carrion.
Today, I am wearing your pants and you are wearing mine—Sapphic! I crouch
to the earth of our verge—any keen beast knows what, there, next opens: Our raked plot effluvial.
But we know soil is all foreshadow. Fingers subtext glove-fingers, floral print—
syntax is the bacteria of desire.
Our hose froze broken—leaks, screeching—so we bear the water in cans.

*

We bare the water in cans and unload bagged soil from the bed. Our verge leans luxury. We’ll feast
on the effulgence of dinnerplate dahlias. But it’s early spring and I’m already
anxious about regretting labor.
We could fail the future, babe—do you, too, feel our potential
is a meaning leaning too much, too toward, swaying with unhinged grief—Why
do we labor the rearrangement of this plot?
Twist earthful effluvium. Difficult to tell your pants from mine.
We stare back the setting sun: love, a premonition of night foreshadowed
in light’s velvet ash.
Deliver me bulbs from the peatmoss of our winter-keep; I’ll strongarm
their tunicate survival—divulge!—as if it were nutrient reek of our own flesh, own whet nerve.

I talk to a screen who assures me everything is fine.

I am not broken. I am not depressed. I am simply

in touch with the material conditions of my life. It is

the end of the world, and it’s fine. People laugh

about this, self-soothing engines sputtering

through a nosedive. Not me. I’ve gone and lost my

sense of humor when I need it most. This is why I

speak smoke into a scene. I dance against language

and abandon verse halfway through, like a broken-

throated singer. I wander around the front yard,

pathless as a little ant at the tip of a curled-up

cactus. Birds flit in and out of shining branches.

A garden blooms large in my throat. Color and life

conspire against my idea of the world. I have to

laugh until I am crying, make an ocean to land

upon in this sea of flames. Here I am.  

Another late-winter afternoon,

            the sunset and the purple-flowered tree

trying their best to keep me alive.

Admit it—
you wanted the end

with a serpentine
greed. How to negotiate

that strangling
mist, the fibrous

whisper?

To cease to exist
and to die

are two different things entirely.

But you knew this,
didn't you?

Some days you knelt on coins
in those yellow hours.

You lit a flame

to your shadow
and ate

scorpions with your naked fingers.

So touched by the sadness of hair
in a dirty sink.

The malevolent smell
of soap.

When instead of swallowing a fistful
of white pills,

you decided to shower,

the palm trees
nodded in agreement,

a choir
of crickets singing

behind your swollen eyes.

The masked bird
turned to you

with a shred of paper hanging
from its beak.

At dusk,
hair wet and fragrant,

you cupped a goat's face

and kissed
his trembling horns.

The ghost?

It fell prostrate,
passed through you

like a swift
and generous storm.

Stars, turn from your courses,

Stars, stars, I want you,

Spill into my hands.

I have found a new loneliness,

A new strong loneliness,

That no one understands.

I know a new joy, stars,

A joy of the still peak,

The wonder of airs knife-sharp;

Stars, I have learned to know them,

I have learned the tongue they speak.

Stars, I can understand them,

All the words they say,

All the subtle things.

They teach me exaltation,

A new intoxication

Fine drawn as the music of harp-strings.

Alone … alone … alone …

Stars, I can hear my skin breathe,

Hear my blood beat.

How can flesh be so light,

Feet walk and touch nothing,

Thought become so fleet?

Time is a rhymeless poem

Without any end Written in space,

Here at the world’s summit

Where life-giving winds

Sharply whip one’s face.

Life is the one reality,

Life intensely realized,

Life wildly felt;

Death is an ungrasped dream,

A vague monstrous fable,

A puzzle still unspelt.

Alone … alone … alone …

No other thing that breathes

In this keen place.

O my new joy,

Joy of singing summits,

Of endless, vibrant space!

Stars, stars, stoop down,

Stars, turn from your courses,

Spill into my hands!

Stars, you are my kindred:

I am strong with a new loneliness

That no one understands.

I have robbed the garrulous streets,
Thieved a fair girl from their blight,
I have stolen her for a sacrifice
That I shall make to this mysteried night.

I have brought her, laughing,
To my quietly sinister garden.
For what will be done there
I ask no man’s pardon.

I brush the rouge from her cheeks,
Clean the black kohl from the rims
Of her eyes; loose her hair;
Uncover the glimmering, shy limbs.

I break wild roses, scatter them over her.
The thorns between us sing like love’s pain.
Her flesh, bitter and salt to my tongue,
I taste with endless kisses and taste again.

At dawn I leave her
Asleep in my wakening garden
(For what was done there
I ask no man’s pardon.)