1.
In the skin of love,
tinted glass and bone
utopia sets aside.

Surely, this can stand
picturing. I, Quan Âm,

mother of wretched
jewels. To you, flight.
East favoring wind.

     2.
Meanwhile, diligence
takes a kilometer

walk between regimes.
Like Sebald, for whom
each novel begins

the infinite sentence,
write. Bull rope. Topaz.

Crown inlaid with bright
emerald. Fire. Fire.

     3.
At the War Memorial
Chapel on campus,

remember how you
took all your clothes off
in front of everyone

during a performance?
Naked grief screaming

on both haunches down
that cold, slick aisle,
you barked like a dog.

     4.
For the stone basin
where a lover brought
himself erasure,

have pity on nights
without reason. Indeed,

no match for autumn.
You could dye its fabric
red. Holy ruin.

This is Boat Country.
Rhythm, a phrase held
aloft by thin thread.

     5.
Melody, sea foam.
South of Saigon, hear
of the worst goodbyes.

North, my temple, styled
teal for fidelity.

I laugh because you
can’t see me laughing.

^{If I die, I want a loud death. I don’t want to be just 
breaking news, or a number in a group, I want a death
that the world will hear, an impact that will remain
through time, and a timeless image that cannot be
buried by time or place. 
         —Fatima Hassouna, Gaza photo journalist,
         on April 15, before her death on April 16, 2025}

Like the sound waves in space that tear 
the remnants of supernovas, and twist the paths
of light
           so maybe this is why some spiral galaxies 
like Messier 77 resemble ears. 
                                                   But also when  
sunset splinters its light over the ridgeline and 
the fireflies in this ravine cry desperately to save it,
  
or when the embers from last night’s crackling 
campfire tremble, 
     or when our dog begins to fear
the sounds we do not hear,
        then we know those waves
have touched us too.
                         For it is the silence after 
the plane’s screech or the missile’s strike,
a kind of voiceless scream
                                           that her photos captured
even as she stood among the rubble looking up
as if those waves could also signal a moment’s
desperate hope.
                        There is so much we do not hear—
the rumble of shifting sand dunes, the purr and drum 
of the wolf spider, the echoes of bats, the explosions 
on the sun, the warning cry of the treehopper, but

it’s the cry of those buried alive we so often refuse
to hear as too distant or beyond our reach to help,

yet even an elephant’s infrasound, which can be 
detected by herd members as far as 115 miles
brings them to safety,
which tells us, well, 
tells us what?
                             It was Jesus (Luke 19:40)
who said if these keep silent, then the very stones
will cry out.
                      Here, the news moves on to the next
loudest story,
                      or some chat on the phone blares
the latest scandal, score or personal interest.
In Gaza, 
one journalist warned, a press vest makes you a target.

In one photo a hand reaches through the rubble is if 
it were reaching to speak, 16 April 2025, from Al-Touffah.

In the end, it was the sound of her home collapsing.

In the end, we are all targets in our silences.

In the end, we know her absence the way each syllable 
shouts its lament, pleading from inside each of these words.

That winter was long and full of records: 
         snow up to our chests and the chill deep in our cells, 
                  the forever rain and with it, the mud that dripped 
                           like sap and became a part of us.

         Then came days of 
                  grass as soft as fleece 
                           bees flying like comets and goats 
                                     rotating around the creekbend we followed up until

                                              water water water was all we could hear, 
                                      until wild wild wildflowers were all we could see— 
                    a galaxy of them twinkling 
                            their bright violets and yellows and oranges,

a reminder of what has endured 
        what has always been 
                   what is now ready to be seen.

—

Like a lizard, I bathe           naked on a rock  

          and let the south wind and let the waterfall

and let the buckeye            lead me.  

The horizon is a line I cannot yet  say.

       The screen shows me what I haven’t seen in months,  

what others see: curves and a blur.

       Not a thing, but any thing. 

Finally, I am the animal that I am.

Naked carp swim upstream    and spawn in fresh water,
then fry return     to this 3,260-meter-high saline lake—

we stroll past black sheep      chained by their necks; 
later, our Yi host invites us    to join him at a low table:

boiled mutton, intestines, potatoes,     and red chile 
powder are set in red-swirling,     black lacquer bowls.

Closing my eyes,     I see wind turbines along a ridge, 
transmission lines     that arc from tower to tower 

across green hills;     a herder opens a gate, and black 
yaks slip through—when I walk    to a stream 

that feeds the lake, I follow     a path lined with red
and orange marigolds in pots,     wonder

who surrenders to reach     a higher plane of existence?
At a temple built and rebuilt     since 307 CE, 

I see a persimmon tree     alongside a cypress,
where lovers,     whetted by prayer, leave plaques

with dangling red strings.     Boating on this lake,
we make an oval track     on the surface; and, gazing 

at rapeseed     flowering yellow along the shore, 
we suspend but do not dissipate     the anguish of this world.

Crinkly-thin, the perfect marriage of algae and fungi, 
furbelowed and curled.


                                               venerable ancestors: strange as vellum, 
                                               an onion poultice, leather jerkin

                                                
Johann Dillen’s portraits of 1741: 
the ‘Strange Charactered Lichen, Black Dotted Wrinkled Lichen,
Leprous Black Nobb’d Lichen,
Crawfish Eye-like Lichen.’

                                                the youngest occupy a wicker couch, 
                                                eavesdrop on the aunties’ tales, wonder 
                                                why so aged-looking, their skin?

‘Wanderflechten’—those who traveled
on deer’s hooves, birds’ feet, hot air balloon baskets over arid land.


                                                travel’s allure, the turquoise ring, scarab bracelet

                                                
Those who embraced the seductions of moths’ wings, 
gave their bodies to the hungers  
of the ‘Brussels Lace Moths, Beautiful Hook-Tips, the Dingy Footman.’

                                                when can we stay out past dawn?

                                                
Lichens who gave sustenance, grew thin,
flailed against famine, 
lichen packed in the bodies of mummies.

                                                these have an aura, a blue-mauve cloud
                                                we can’t imagine the ribs’ furrows

                                                
Erik Acharius, 1808, the “father of lichenology,”  
fastens samples onto herbarium sheets,
lichens’ filaments and flakes suspended.

                                               nice—but not our father, who is spores and fragments

A thin cord anchors lichens to rock,
small bits chip off, wear of paw pad and fur,
take hold elsewhere.

                                               we hear the wind caressing bark

                                                
Lichens swept up by grazing reindeer,
hot breath devouring, rub of meaty tongues,
meat toxic to herders— 
radioactive fallout the lichens never meant to harbor.

                                               ghostly stalks of trees, an ashy forest 
                                               we can barely look

A single spruce hosts a rare green and red-lobed lichen.

                                                the odd one out, the one no one ever set eyes on

Lichens in the armpits of marble statues
differentiated from lichens on the thighs, 
eaten by snails on moonless nights.

                                               moonglow, 
                                               something we don’t know here, no one’s talking

                                                
A hummingbird’s nest, its outer layer  
shingled gray-green with lichen flakes, a point of pride, see—

                                               how beautiful they were, and useful.

                                            ^{… dreadful was the din 
Of hissing through the hall, thick swarming now 
With complicated monsters … —“Paradise Lost,” Book X}

The snow had buried Monument
                                      *
Where the Teslas spun their burnished wheels
                                      *
& the twice-dead Confederates ghost their plots
                                      *
& Lee & Stonewall dismembered still sprawl,
                                      *
Their bubble-wrapped limbs akimbo
                                      *
In their warehouse crates, & they wait to be 
                                      *
ensorcelled back to bespoken life.
                                      *
One hundred miles north the oligarchs clap,
                                      *
All of them turned to hissing serpents
                                      *
Seething & cat-cradling the Rotunda floor,
                                      *
Their darkling Prince droning on & on.
                                      *
They are stench & slither, their cobra-heads rear.
                                      *          
They own us now. They python-swallow 
                                      *
Each & everyone. Swallow us whole.

^{translated from the Arabic by Sara Elkamel}

There is no gift we can unwrap without you. 
You are what we need  
to make out the trees,  
spot an opponent, 
or take a stroll through someone’s heart. 
Without you, no one would read the same sentence  
a second time, breathless, 
before setting the book aside 
to pace from one room to the next. 
And without you, there would be no lines to draw 
under striking lines in the books of poetry and philosophy  
that now rest serenely by your bed, 
after having moved universes;  
after changing worlds. 
Without you, no one would look anyone else in the eye;  
hands would not meet. 
No one would photograph the waves that plow into fences,  
the snow-capped mountain peaks, 
the smiles of children. 
Without you, love stories would suffer a deficiency,  
and without you 
people would not gather on pitch black nights;  
they would not light candles or invent lullabies. 
Without you, no one would ever know  
that stories told in whispers 
are the only way to contend with night.  
They would have tried swords, 
grenades, soaring fences, and surveillance cameras—all this nonsense. 
Without you, libraries would not stop us  
dead in our tracks, 
nor would a flower.  
Rocks would be dull. 
And without you, massacre victims would not remain alive  
to stare us in the eyes. 
O terror, without you, poetry would steer us towards nothing.  
Without you, we could not fathom the abyss that surrounds us: the universe. 
We would never be moved  
by its menacing beauty. 
O terror: You are the singer’s voice  
that travels clearly across the borders  
in the Golan Heights. 
You are the prisoner; strapped, and mighty  
in the morning. 
You are the beloved’s name 
lighting up, suddenly, the screen in our hand. 
There is no gift 
we can unwrap without you. 

والآن، تعالَ أيُّها الرُّعب

لا نستطيعُ أن نفتَحَ أيَّ هَديَّةٍ بِدونِكَ. 
أنتَ ما نحتاجُهُ حتّى نَرى الأشجارَ، حتّى أرى خَصمي 
حتّى نتجوَّلَ في قَلبِ أحَد. 
بِدونِكَ لَن يقرأَ أحَدٌ جُملةً في كتابٍ 
أكثرَ من مَرَّةٍ وهو يشهَق، 
ثم يضَعُهُ على جَنْبٍ بِسُرعةٍ ويتمَشّى بينَ الغُرَف.   
بدونِكَ أيضاً لن يكونَ هناكَ خُطوطٌ مرسومَةٌ 
تحتَ الجُمَلِ الصّاعِقةِ في كُتُبِ الشَّعْرِ 
والفلسفَة. تلكَ التي تجلِسُ الآنَ قُربَ سَريرِكَ بطمأنينَةٍ، بعدَ أن حَرَّكْتَ 
أكْواناً، بعد أن غَيَّرتَ عوالِم. 
بدونِكَ لَن ينظُرَ أحَدٌ في عَينَيْ أحَد، لَن تلتَقي الأيدي، 
لن يأخُذَ أحَدٌ صُوَراً للمَوجِ الذي يرتَطِمُ بالأسْوار، 
ولا قِمَمِ الجِبالِ الثَّلجيَّة، ولا ابتساماتِ الأطفال. 
بِدونِكَ قِصَصُ الحُبِّ ناقِصَةٌ، وبِدونِكَ 
لَن يجتمِعَ الناسُ في الليالي الحالِكَة 
لن يُضيئوا الشُّموع، لن يخترِعوا تهويداتٍ، 
بِدونكَ لم يكُن الناسُ لِيَعرفوا أبداً 
بأنَّ الليلَ يُحارَبُ فقَطْ بالحِكاياتِ الهامِسَة، 
بل كانوا سيُجَرِّبونَ السُّيوفَ 
والقنابل، الأسوارَ العاليةَ، كاميراتِ المُراقبَة، كُلَّ هذا الهُراء  
بدونِكَ لن تستوقِفَنا المَكتبات، ولا أيُّ زهرَة. 
الصُّخورُ مُمِلَّةٌ، وبدونِكَ، أيضاً، لن يظلَّ قتلى المجازِرِ أحياءً ويُحدِّقونَ بِنا رُغمَ كُلِّ هذهِ العِماراتِ الشّاهقة، رُغمَ كُلِّ هذهِ المُتَنَزَّهاتِ الوديعَة. 
أيُّها الرُّعبُ بِدونِكَ لن يَدُلَّنا الشِّعرُ على أيِّ شيء.  
أنتَ الغابَةُ الوحيدةُ التي نجِدُ فيها زهرةَ الطَّمأنينَةِ المُتوحِّشَة  
الأرضُ التي ما إن نَغرقُ في وَحْلِها سينفَتِحُ قلبُك  
ومِن هذهِ الهاويةِ التي انفتَحَت في قلبِك 
تستطيعُ الآنَ أن تتفهَّمَ الهاويةَ التي تُحيطُك: الكَون. أن تفتحَ لها بابَ قلبِكَ 
دونَ أيِّ شرط، أن تكتَشِفَ جَمالَها المُرعِب. 
أيُّها الرُّعبُ: أنتَ صوتُ المُغنّي 
الذي يَصِلُنا بِوُضوحٍ مِن وَراءِ الحُدود 
في الجَوْلان. أنتَ الأسرى مُكَتَّفينَ وجَبابِرَة 
في الصَّباح. أنتَ اسمُ الحَبيبِ   
يُضيءُ، فجأةً، شاشةَ الهاتف. بِدونِكَ، لا نستطيعُ أن 
نفتَحَ أيَّ هَديَّة. 

Quiet is not silence. Silence is absolute like never and forever. Quiet invites attention to cicadas, the warbling vireo on the wire, the cardinal’s whistle as it wings its brightness over the horizon of the Blue Ridge Mountains, then disappears amid the crape myrtles’ baroque blossoms.

It almost speaks to me. / Then as Horizons step, I take a photograph of artists chatting on the gravel path that opens to the studio barn silos.

The rabbit lets me come close—It waits upon the lawn / It shows the furthest tree—before it leaps into tall grasses, shelter for fireflies.

The limestone statue of the cherubic naked boy smiles down at butterflies and bees feeding on zinnia pollen. Good are those who plant flowers to save our pollinators.

Yet I mourn. The air conditioning kicks in. I examine the light on the drainage bed of small stone—a narrow beach outside my glass door—and listen to the distance, the highway sounds rising and falling like wind in spring.

A quality of loss / Affecting our content, Emily Dickinson wrote.

Before bed, sitting beneath the gazebo’s white dome where there’s cell reception, I talk to my love. We’re interrupted by the long train passing by. Is it nostalgia to love the sound of trains? Is it forward-thinking looking back?

A fascist is president: infection in the sentence breeds. We can’t help talking about him.

The comedian says people can’t think when they’re afraid. Satire makes them laugh, forget their fear, 
so they can think, a little newer for the term / upon enchanted ground.

Every day more evil against the Earth, the hate cult shouting epithets, hoarding their guns. As Trade had suddenly encroached / Upon a Sacrament.

When the artists gather for meals, they ask “How was your day?” which means, “Did you travel in your studio?” which translates into resistance beyond the borders of this quiet estate.

The priest smears the dark—a cross.
The paste of burned palm an anointing
The symbol of mythic penitence.
But repentance eludes me, the turning from sin.
I want to smear the black across my teeth
the way old women do with snuff and spit.
An endless night, the universe, a curse.
I am at home with blood and death and loss. That epiphany
every woman knows the day life rips from her womb.
In that sunlit church, genuflecting before
that tortured body of hope, I curse you.
I will leave you the way flame curls from wood
smoke giving half-hearted chase. This is
how I leave you. In my heart. Leave you.
In my mind. Leave you. In my desire.
With a relentless burn I leave you.
What remains, curdled by water boiling over
from the rice pot is not mere ash.
Not even night. Or the erasure of things
once alive. This thing is more. A devastation
no wind can lift. This is how I leave you.

How like a star you rose upon my life, 
   Shedding fair radiance o’er my darkened hour! 
At your uprise swift fled the turbid strife 
   Of grief and fear,—so mighty was your power! 
And I must weep that you now disappear, 
   Casting eclipse upon my cheerless night— 
My heaven deserting for another sphere, 
   Shedding elsewhere your aye-regretted light.

An Hesperus no more to gild my eve, 
   You glad the morning of another heart; 
And my fond soul must mutely learn to grieve, 
   While thus from every joy it swells apart. 
Yet I may worship still those gentle beams, 
   Though not on me they shed their silver rain; 
And thought of you may linger in my dreams, 
   And Memory pour balm upon my pain.

We roam but see nothing of the moss-colored divine 
while noon throws a redwood shadow on the plaza.  
On the screen: two sallow-skinned children embrace. 
Their bodies say, fight; their bodies say, hide. 

While noon throws a redwood shadow on the plaza; 
summer flecks by, and you are almost gone.   
Your body says, fight; your body says, hide.  
You speak to a girl in the wind-swept garden.

Summer flecks by, and you are almost gone. 
You donate your secret to June’s long days. 
You speak to a girl in the wind-swept garden. 
The color of my suffering is green unaware.

You donate your secret to June’s long days. 
I retrieve my guilt and confess it to the sky.  
The color of my suffering is green. Unaware,  
you touch me like sunset on granite.

I retrieve my guilt & confess it to the sky.  
This solstice may be the end of me, I say. 
You touch me like sunset on granite. 
Sometimes, I giggle at the drama of our age.

This solstice may be the end of me, I say. 
Your eyes turn Maine Coon, choked, lionlike. 
Sometimes, I giggle at the drama of our age.  
Whose unmooring prowls in us now?

Your eyes turn Maine Coon, choked, lionlike. 
Why do we short the long of desire? 
Whose unmooring prowls in us now? 
We roam but see nothing of the moss-colored divine.  

I wanted to write you a poem tonight,
but all I could think of
was our two nights in the city last week
and how perfect it was
to eat again at Trailer Park  
with its flotilla of votive candles in the window
close enough to set our coats on fire
and cupcakes at Billy’s afterwards,
to sleep in the cramped little guest house
next to the toilet with its extended roaring flush,
and later gaze at Madame X and her delinquent strap
and Washington stuck in the Delaware forever.
Mummies, jackals, Buddhas,
and the long stalled ride back
with a Sikh cab driver as guide.
I love going back.
I think, in a way, going back
is the subway to love.
Easy, noisy, and very close.

A white curtain turning in an open window. 

A swan, dipping a white neck in the trees’ shadow, 
Hardly beating the water with golden feet. 

Sorrow before her 
Was gone like noise from a street, 
Snow falling. 

sees my mother seated up in bed, unable to move 

of her own accord, lips parched from medication, 

she begins to sing, a chant, an Arab song, 

from her childhood, eyes almost transparent.  

My two aunts, or they would have been my aunts, 

who died in infancy . . . from pneumonia? . . .

scarlet fever? . . .  no one alive now knows. 

What was, when my mother was a child, in the air

of the world’s most industrialized city? Blessings 

and horrors, raw orange sunsets, that blue flame 

burning is industry, the smell of incense rising 

in the fabulous churches, Latin, Greek, Arabic, Aramaic 

liturgies, descendants of inventors of alphabets. 

After midnight humid and hot. The dead are wherever 

we are. They’re not just details, these tears of bliss. 

Survival’s what’s involved. Furious, the fate

that keeps watch. Everything’s something else and yet itself

at the same time. Home, you know? Everyone 

and everything is related. Wet steel-blue morning, thin, 

purple salvias near the backyard fence. Your Grandpa’s 

dead, I, the baby, must have heard it said.  

where the light, at this hour, fails 
to encounter my body—body

of cold grass & grammar; body 
of calcium & sound. I emerge

from the room, stripped of all 
urgency: runny with vowels

a e i o u  behind my teeth, like some 
old tide I’ve known forever, come

rushing over my mouth: each 
syllable a chime across a horizon-

line, each syllable nudging 
the scalloped edges of a chestnut

tree—melt a unit into a word 
into a sound. leaves sway

& prickle. I hold the words 
by their roots & quietly, let

them go. they land on another 
boulder, lurk in a body of water,

strum someone else’s tongue. in 
my body, I am spun by a frequency

of vibrations, a vocal chord slipping 
into labor. to speak of prayer

is one thing. to swim 
through it? another.

The things I know 
are almost completely 
in the direction of the familial, 
like a bird who 
is flapping and not
thinking, it just 
infinities into air, 
and hovers 
around a seed 
shoot—
all instinctual all
reactionary, like 
me dabbing 
a cracked phone 
with cotton when I 
swiped a slit out 
of my thumb; 
like a different bird 
who, peaking into 
a blind, watched 
something unchirpable 
happen; 
as I wait for them 
to see past what I am 
chasing, I long to be 
myself today, or a version 
of myself today; like a bird 
cawing other birds 
to its sounds 
pointing with its 
beak at us shifting 
angrily 
in our deluge of name, 
as I command a pattern 
most violent, to 
dissolve; 
like a human bird, 
working to not be thrown 
down the stairs because
he shouldn’t fly in the
house, and like a house,
I don’t own, being
painted by 
the ambulances that come
to pick me up with
bandages for my 
wounds— 
you never liked birds
anyway they filled our 
broken chimney, infinitying
around the dusty black 
mats and holey birch 
wood, you called 
sparrows, hummingbirds 
and crows, dogs; you 
called me, son; like a
bunch of birds breaking
out of their comfortable 
prisons 
into prisms of flap
and fold; like a boy 
sharing his name 
with a 
mockingbird—
am I supposed to 
be like you, are our 
names just an 
assemblage 
of funneled angsts 
that we’ve felt from 
our fathers?—am I 
supposed to be stronger; 
look at my chest; 
look at my flank and foot; 
my rump and bill; 
shadows of broken wing.

            Dear Mother,

Your early lessons got me to bear the fearful sounds 
that faith can make while clearing its throat. I remember

the hard man who reaped our purpling timothy-grass 
each spring unbuttoning his tanned jacket to show

a gray kitten, gunky-eyed and nestled against fleece lining. 
I remember reaching with hesitation while saying

her new name. As she grew into cat, I have no memory 
of feeling her claws. Maybe that was when I started

begging to keep buried in me what can hurt? I would never 
see her outdoors again, but she must have answered

the barn cats singing to her readiness for life. You gave me 
the word pregnant and a story for the act on its way.

I remember it was night. I remember trusting your insistence 
to leave her alone to the body-work as we prepared

a toweled box in the nearby privacy of the closet. 
You drifted toward sleep, and I forget how many times I rose

and returned her to that darkness before submitting 
to her urge to burrow beneath the low canopy my knees

were making of my blankets. In bed with this restless wonder, 
I heard a sound I knew but not, because it seemed to come

from some strange shore I couldn’t find. Until I could: 
the mewing blindness of her first kitten’s head transforming

the old boundary of her body. I cried out, certain she was 
becoming my failure to keep her locked inside the charged dark,

my betrayal breaking her into something, I still don’t 
have the words. Without language or understanding, I’d made

a hideous world. I was hideous and crying— 
then the warm safety of your hush was suddenly there,

softening the cave of uncertainty at my ear, 
leading me back into my chance to see I would survive

looking a blessing in its full face before believing 
I deserved the voice of light.

Here I am sorting old documents after breakfast.  
And here you are—bright as a bee sting!— 
clinging to my daughter’s souvenir birth certificate 
three decades old. How bold you seem, Dead 
Name, anchoring dates. How bold, corroborating  
vitals: 21 inches, 8 pounds 3 ounces, male, etc.  
How bold, floating above her tiny footprints. 

Of course, I love my daughter and her new  
name. But I still have a reluctant soft spot  
for you, splashed with myth as you are, citizen 
of the sea, the green of Wales poking through. 
Now you are cypher and palimpsest, collateral  
damage, slippage of signifier and signified.  
Syllables we’ve scrubbed from our vocabulary.

To show solidarity with her, maybe I should  
bury the birth certificate, along with her old  
report cards, along with you, out back.  
Dead Name, I swear it’s nothing personal.  
Dead Name, we selected you from a cast  
of 1000s. Dead Name, truth is I rarely think  
of you till one of your accidental appearances. 

Like today. Or like last fall, first day of class.  
I found myself reading you, Dead Name,  
from a list of hopefuls wanting to add. I paused.  
Almost couldn’t say you, like I was dropping  
F-bombs to welcome the class. Said you  
anyway. Your wild syllables waiting to home  
to whoever raised their hand and said I’m here.

I.

Months out from my bout, I return home
after training deltoids and biceps to push

past the letdown of exertion—to never
stop throwing punches. Our baby boy

bides time in L’s belly, two weeks late,
and she smiles, names me her gentle boxer

as I shadow my way down the hall
toward the shower. The next day,

after zero centimeters worth of progress,
she sends me back to the gym to spar,

to save my mind from running
the unnecessary laps. I spend round after

round risking and taking damage,
in search of that perfect left hook

to the body, that soft midsection crunch.
I land a few home and feel the accuracy

moving deeper than mechanics,
burying itself in the blue memory

below. Inside the ring I sweat out everything
but bob and weave, but balance and breath, bearing

each combination’s bad intent, until brutality
blossoms into something almost beautiful.

II.

And then it’s time—as in the dark, we’re in it:
maternity wing of the hospital, the lengthening
hours of our son’s slow arrival. As in the dark,
a contraction’s wave ends, the wash of pain receding,
and L leans back into the rocking chair, back
into the chasm of exhaustion, eyelids
locking her exit from the room. I squat before her
and wait, her body buoyed in the open sea of labor,
as in the dark. My gaze fixes on the map
of monitors, scanning that pixilated horizon
for the next contraction’s approach. When it does,
as in the dark, her eyes flare inside the room
once more, hands raising to clasp
behind my neck, as in the dark. I hear the moan
of her spirit bearing this being into light, and I lift
her loaded weight, place pressure
on her hips and say, give me everything,
darling, as in the dark. There is no word for the infinite
divide between my desire and my inability to rock
this boy’s burden from her, to rock her from the tides
of hurt he’s riding in on—this is all her. As from the dark,
as from the sea, another wave builds inside her,
and I send whispers across water, coaching her deeper
into the swallow of its force, calling it what we want,
calling it love or joy or peace, as in the dark, barely trusting
each moment that moves her further from this shore,
where I wait for her, to plant our son into these arms.

III.

When they tell us no more fluids. When they tell us time
has scorched the well of his arrival. When urgency cuts through

each gowned voice in the delivery room, the ghost in L’s face
says let them, and so we let them mine him by fire—with and through fire.

Restraints. No breath. Regional anesthesia. No breath. Nerve block.
Incision. Hemorrhage. And then he adds the sharp thunder of his cry

to the elements. They place him at the altar of her chest. With one hand
free to touch the curl and moisture of his hair, smoke clears from her smile.

IV.

In the nursery, this new kind of quiet
stretches itself inside the plastic, hospital-issued bassinet,

and I stare at my feet—
a sudden fear over the distance down

to them, over having no prayer for looking
into our son’s face, years from now, finding

it thinner, the flesh pulled tighter
around the cathedral of his skull,

the mind behind his eyes more
like ours, more tacked to the brittleness

of yesterday, days stacking into months,
memories like seeds spilled across another year.

What’s the ritual for forgiving ourselves
the mortal promise we set in motion,

pressed between the floral sheets,  
planting his life’s fabric into death’s seam?

Too soon some
           of we became
                       they

None of us
           wished this
                       for ourselves

Yet some
           wished the rest
                       less

Moved to move
           many away
                       from the most

Chose to nominate
           the preterite
                       out of our midst

And the song of agreement
           went out from amongst
                       us went wrong

In the trying
           of times
                       trials multiplied

The darkening colors
           of closing time shaded
                       our prospect

But ours was a music
           of consensus could it
                       only live

In a dissolute time
           ours was a resolution
                       were it allowed to sound

The profound space
           of ourselves
                       could it but breathe

In the free air of
           our improvisings
                       was community

Airing our differences
           to the rhythms of 
                       deep time

As deep listening 
           to the welling waves
                       of thought

Transposes into keys
           to the kingdom
                       registers of faith

We shall gather
           in the rest
                       we shall gather by the river

Scoundrel time
           is not to be
                       our time

We play 
           against it and are called
                       free

I’ve known some men. There was the one who dressed in wool suits, joined the circus at night & ate fire. There was the anthropology professor. The one I wish I had said—Yes, too, there was the one I watched canoe down a city street. That summer the weather was named after one. Harvey. There was the Chicano elder who introduced me to Baldwin, Fanon, X. There was the relative who said. Your laugh. Too loud. No man will want—No man will take—Though he wanted. Though he took. Some should’ve gone to jail. Some should’ve enjoyed a prison of one. There was Mister Piche. Pronounced Pee-Shay. Tenth grade honors lit. Girls’ school. Best teacher ever. Really. I was at the airport waiting for a flight when he phoned. He was upset I kept addressing him by his first name. Sixty years of tobacco in his lungs & a breathing machine on his back, he said—Why do you keep—Can’t you call me—I was concerned about the flight. How to get from one concourse to the next. Not the man who now wanted to be known as father. But hadn’t earned the title. Low man on totem pole. Take it like a man. A good man is hard to find. There were the poets. There was T. There was A. There was the photographer & wine connoisseur. She wasn’t a man but acted like one. Took that fruit inside my chest &—Well you might know the rest. They say a woman will always search for her father in a mate. I say mind your own business. I say remember that adage about the monkey & the show. The winter was unseasonably warm when they lowered the man who wanted to be known as father into the ground. The thawing grass. The birdsong. Made it all less somber. At least this is what I imagine. I wasn’t there. I was never there—

The sun had not yet risen  
the stars made their way to the center of the sky  
congregating on the throne of tomorrow.

The commandment of two breaths: 
Live and Pray 

            The seen and unseen.

My child reminds me 
there were once whales  
here in this expanse of sand.

            The seen and unseen.

Like the dormer that cuts through the ceiling  
and perches a body in the sky 
for the looking.

             The seen and unseen.

We float in whatever ways we can  
knowing our suspension in the sky brings us closer to our own yearnings.  
Mediates the tension of our body’s desire for earth  
and our spirit’s desire for sky. 

            The seen and unseen.

This was understood.  
Implicated in the pinnacle  
at the point of the pyramid. 

            The seen and unseen.

This was never thought of by the grave diggers  
who left their spirits to deepen their flesh into earth.

Who gave their way to the “partition of finds.”

Blinded by the seeing 
collapsing the centuries 
into cold marble halls.

If ever you see my hands in cuffs 
know that somewhere near 
a museum is burning.
 

^{—after Frank O’Hara and Katy Porter}

Dear, I wished you heavens.
If not heavens, earths.
And if a little hell, I prayed the tears
I hid as wet, incandescent smiles
were an ocean on brimstone.
You are one of one.
I never said: Good morning, my heart
but I was the indigo in your hair.
I was keeping time when you danced.
I was stillness and tremor,
break and breach, 
your pen and your cane.
No, I never said: I’m in love with you. 
I said: I dreamed of a child
with your eyes, with your hands.
You are one of one. 
The unrenounceable.
Do not fear death.
You’ll be beautiful 
in the grave.
You’ll be beautiful 
in the Judgment line,
the sun recounting sins 
against our siblings for eons. 
And the shadow I cast
standing outside your garden
will be our cover. 
Dear, I was never lonely. 
I was never cold. 
I was wreathing our canopy.
Some day you’ll love Ladan Osman.
After the hours. After all light.

^{for Kojo}

There is the fickle shadow, the dialect 
of my body; me standing before myself—  
as if the framing of this ordinary mirror,  
is the small light of a window, 
and see this naked man, no longer shy,  
move me with the muscle 
of thighs and the flattery of shoulders—  
this is a kind of art; perhaps 
the only art there is, my body 
still able to seduce me to tenderness.

My calculus of pleasure or contentment 
is the way my older self, 
that brother of mine who faced 
the wars, four years ahead, 
the blasted sight, the kidneys’ 
decay, the atrophy of bone in his 
spine. To think I found comfort  
in the slow calculation. He was 
broken long before, and I have survived 
another curse. This is as ugly 
as all love can be. And, so, I give 
thanks for this body walking 
towards the trees, away from me 
the machine of me, my backside 
a revelation.

I lost a tooth, a ring, and my weirdo shirt, 
the chapbook I tore apart and put together  
in the middle of the night, 
and that one girl’s laptop.

I still have the pictures we took near midnight;  
eyes too big for my face and head recently shaved,  
new heartbreak learned in my body. The too quiet nights  
jarring in the dark, limbs buzzing— 

On the train the fluorescent lights  
were blinding and my brain was addled  
by sleepless weeks and weeks.  
That girl’s laptop was in a tote bag in my hands and then it wasn’t  
and I was on the platform watching the train disappear.  
How helpless I felt. How everyday was that very day; 
the way everything splintered—

how the world sang. The way  
I could conjure earthquakes;  
The cold of my first winter.  
The way I came alive and burned.

***

I wish I could take it back; in your childhood bed,  
how it was my face without me behind it  
and my hands without my touch as they slipped out of view. 
I wish I could take back that messy breakfast, a racket at dawn,  
the hours smudged by time. Did I eat it? Did I clean up  
after myself? Enamored by the sharp yellowness of the yolk,  
its flavor buttery in my mouth.

I wish I could take it all back; in the hospital,  
ravaged by every dark impulse,  
your mother sitting across from me, promising me  
I would never step foot in her house again. 

The girl I had been, lost  
among the roots behind your house.  
In a black wig, holding a cigarette,  
enchanted by the whispering leaves.  
My footsteps in the snow.