poems i like

^{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.