But why wouldn’t geometry equal divinity

1000 + 1 + 1 + 1         What is faith

but trust in one & infinity         Once

in Granada I studied a wall of polygons

or was it stars or bees         or for a second         a flash

of gladiolas in a field until I could see

a galaxy         planets spinning         spokes on a wheel

clocks or buttons         vines blooming         a tornado

from a future century              garden of ellipses

my lover’s cornea         alight each morning 

God         so far away         & right in front of me

Graceful son of Pan! Around your forehead crowned with small flowers and berries, your eyes, precious spheres, are moving. Spotted with brownish wine lees, your cheeks grow hollow. Your fangs are gleaming. Your chest is like a lyre, jingling sounds circulate between your blond arms. Your heart beats in that belly where the double sex sleeps. Walk at night, gently moving that thigh, that second thigh and that left leg.

after jorge luis borges

a yellow rose
in a hotel glass
the man had kissed her
on the neck
had kissed her
on the mouth

but these kisses belonged to yesterday
there would be no moment
of revernalization

yellow roses came from china
open in may before our hybrids
unfold pink rugosities and baroque scent
expose dusty fissured yellow pearls

A hallway full of shadeless lamps suddenly goes dark
Upon the simultaneous bursting of the globes.
Glass is everywhere, and so thin it forgets

To reflect even the tiny glimmer of your
Matchlight as you pull out your wish 
Cigarette. 

This is it. The immediacy of the final desire.

I know the dead I know where ghosts go
to feel at home in the float

And how they commune with the living
through the lightswitch 
or the smells of honeysuckles off 
the highway upstate
I say

But you don’t

since feeling is first
who pays any attention 
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate 
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don’t cry
—the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids’ flutter which says

we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life’s not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

My cousin 

had a nightmare 

that we kept 

building seawalls 

higher and 

higher 

all around 

our island 

up to 

the sky 

until suddenly 

we were 

at the bottom 

of a wishing well

looking 

up 

at the world.

Midnight empties the street
Of all but us
Three
I am undecided which way back
                        To the left a boy
—One wing has been washed in the rain
    The other will never be clean any more—
Pulling door-bells to remind
Those that are snug
                        To the right a haloed ascetic
                        Threading houses
Probes wounds for souls
—The poor can’t wash in hot water—
And I don’t know which turning to take
Since you got home to yourself—first

I looked and saw a sea
                               roofed over with rainbows,
In the midst of each
                               two lovers met and departed;
Then the sky was full of faces
                               with gold glories behind them.

Be in me as the eternal moods
            of the bleak wind, and not
As transient things are –
            gaiety of flowers.
Have me in the strong loneliness
            of sunless cliffs
And of grey waters.
            Let the gods speak softly of us
In days hereafter,
            The shadowy flowers of Orcus
Remember Thee.

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

If space and time, as sages say,
    Are things which cannot be,
The fly that lives a single day
    Has lived as long as we.
But let us live while yet we may,
    While love and life are free,
For time is time, and runs away,
    Though sages disagree.

The flowers I sent thee when the dew
    Was trembling on the vine,
Were withered ere the wild bee flew
    To suck the eglantine.
But let us haste to pluck anew
    Nor mourn to see them pine,
And though the flowers of love be few
    Yet let them be divine.
 

As she laughed I was aware of becoming involved in her laughter and being part of it, until her teeth were only accidental stars with a talent for squad-drill. I was drawn in by short gasps, inhaled at each momentary recovery, lost finally in the dark caverns of her throat, bruised by the ripple of unseen muscles. An elderly waiter with trembling hands was hurriedly spreading a pink and white checked cloth over the rusty green iron table, saying: "If the lady and gentleman wish to take their tea in the garden, if the lady and gentleman wish to take their tea in the garden..." I decided that if the shaking of her breasts could be stopped, some of the fragments of the afternoon might be collected, and I concentrated my attention with careful subtlety to this end.

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

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

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

clock that measures the opposite of time
ancient pixel built from half a breath
the seed of a perfect moon

numbers don’t lie because they can’t tell the truth
the kindling space between a choice
& its airless shadow

a polite noumenon guides my dismay
with the grace of email for doves
originating in silence like all eternal things

joystruck demon of rain
the welas at the bus stop look like potatoes
in cellophane       the milk of their laughter

Anaisa’s mirror is her palm
a plangent yellow, bones of song
tracing lines of flight

5

it was a wave, it was infectious

an occasional moment reveals nothing but a passing light

extent to which i breathe your facts

it’s haptic; it’s your membrane; it’s material clatter

sliding between your stargazing hoax and flesh

and then somebody steals your wild you

and names it

after a sharp thought

a quiet neck is often indifferent to the mismeasured noise of the world 

substrata lower than the territory concedes

sharp pointed arrows indicate the lack of an end

simulated spacial deadline

a hip, stigmata, shake

she was a threnody hit; she happened; she pitched 

i did love it

geometry of pleasure

was sex and more of it. sex and talk of it. sex and sexuality and sexism. until some among us began to differentiate it. prefix and suffix it. label it a matter of preference, genetic reconnaissance at birth. and it was it and it was not it. until some among us began to psalm. and what about doing it. and when would we do it to each other again. and it was gratuitous. the blue and white lament of it. until it moved us into ecological proximity. what was near and how loud. the flesh budding, ripening. it had always been a matter of proximity. the what it is was close to us. lewd and it was common. consumptive and it was money. extractive and it was public.

to whet the thing a finger strums a seam of glass

then spirit set its feels on us

we were tending
we were swirling

and we were sensing when it hit us

a porous limb        a glowing portal

sam rivers on repeat

the romanticism of aromanticism inside a poem
the orifice of pitch        a clutch of birds

then our dreams became tumescent
such holiness was flame


and it was fuchsia fuchsia all over the place

COUNTRY PEOPLE ENJOY DOGS like i’m
telling a story that really ought to tell itself
Sunland Discount Variety
Love-in-a-Mist
The governing taboos of figuration called remembrance
entrusted to the bodyguard of the temple
elaborate a more potent distillate, a pulse
taken at various inland locations—
Lime brief, and haze
its delicate wings to adorn
when all disappeared in the folly
and they would therefore each action upon the worm
and slow with it
And rubbing as an ‘O’
And make it all broil
And I lunatic to look up
And there is the stationmaster
close by
in our little background

You mirage a dead world
in the white pool.

White rush and silver rush at twitterlight
meet and desire as the shy boy
lifts from his lover.
White rush and silver rush at twitterlight
touch in the wind and sleep.

Duck-green and willow-silver . . .
has no wing touched your cheek?
Is there no bird
to weave a nest between your sullen limbs
and hatch a songster,
(amber with lizard eyes)
to chirp above your phrases: “Love, love, love . . .”

Your world dies from the surface of the pool.

Why are your hands not on the willow leaves
to feel the sharpness and the thin, soft flower?
To feel . . .
love wrinkle at the touch like a soft bird?

Its hot voice sizzles from some cool tree
Near-by:
It seems to burn its way through the air
Like a small, pointed flame of sound
Sharpened on the ecstatic edge of sunbeams.

^{after “Satellites 27” by Etel Adnan}

ochre starts
commence       catalyst and evensong enters
           
a flame lit arched and yearn
gleam, twofold

weary but not from this life
in time flame begets pools of
shorn Decembers
limber months evade us
            the flood
begets
burnished

catalyst and a hem
treaded red, quaked

slide gleam and slide trifold
            mirroring the fresh lake whirring
mirroring the whirring shorn wave

11 nocturnes
            you fibonacci
you catacomb

               in the dream i eat the sirens       my eyes go bloodshot & i start
               speaking     in    decibels    only    squirrels     &    vaginas     can
               hear        everythang emergency             sight of red lights criss-
               crossing makes me have to pee              some part of me always
               leaking: sweat      cherry kombucha        mysterious fluorescent
               discharge       cheap champagne        pain  liquified  &  indelible
               toughens  my  meat            but  just  when  i  think  i’m  inedible
               somebody always        nibbling at my edges        i am the square
               root of what academia alleges            my methodology is breath
               seeking a structure where i can exhale reckless         where fear
               ain’t mudded in the sheetrock & painted milk white         where
               the walls ain’t out to smother me          where the foundation is
               cracked just enough for spirit to seep in           where i can sleep
               amidst a barricade of trees &   quiet parades around the house
               disguised as technicolor sunset        disguised as deer slick with
               fog        disguised as fig bush draped in snow           disguised as
               ancestors dark & bright as—

it’s the numerous letters the magnolias make
as they open—one, then another, and then
a letter i don’t quite know yet—that makes any wounded
heart seem more wounded and, despite its chances,
not worth the time. i thought i’d be used to it
by now. i stood in the greening field, i famously
like to recount, and waved my arms
so i could, at last, be claimed, be carried away.
but nothing good descended. no avian form,
no cloud, just a swarm of blue things:
flung twilight, withdrawal, an opal blame.
 

sure, i’ve been lonely before, i always say, but not
like this. you have to survive the bad season
to make it to the season of reversals, the magnolias
leading the fray. though that’s not
what we call it, at least not where i’m from
where there is a single, impenetrable era
that begins just as soon as it ends.

^{translated by Richard Aldington}

The Morning Star flies from the clouds and the bird cries to the dawn.
Amaryllis, awake! Lead your snowy sheep to pasture while the cold grass glitters with white dew.
To-day I will pasture my goats in a shady valley, for later it will be very hot.
Among those distant hills lies a very great valley cut by a fair stream.
Here there are cold rills and soft pasture and the kind wind engenders many-coloured flowers.
Dear, there I shall be alone, and if you love me, there you will come alone also.

Lusus Pastorales continens (IV) 

Jam fugat humentes formosus Lucifer umbras,
    Et dulci Auroram voce salutat avis;
Surge, Amarylli, greges niveos in pascua pelle,
    Frigida dum cano gramina rore madent.
Ipse meas hodie nemorosa in valle capellas
    Pasco, namque hodie maximus æstus erit.
Scis ne Menandrei fontem, & vineta Galefi?
    Et quæ formosus rura Lycambus habet?
Hos inter colles recubat viridissima silva,
    Quam pulcher liquido Mesulus amne secat:
Nec gelidi fontes absunt, nec pabula læta,
    Et varios flores aura benigna parit.
Illic te maneo solus, carissima Nympha:
    Si tibi sum carus, tu quoque sola veni.

^{translated from the Icelandic by Christopher Burawa}

This poem which is a part of my life
must live on as my life: Aragon’s sun
reaching down to me. Snow flurries melting
as they fall on the slopes of Moncayo.
An April day when everything seems alive.

The peal of bells soaks into the centuries-old shadows,
and colorful butterflies tumble in the breeze,
hover above me
and settle on my book,
which lies forgotten in my hands.

Verönd 

Þetta ljóð sem er hluti af ævi minni 
mun líða eins og hún. Sól Aragón 
hremmir mig. Snjóa leysir 
í hlíðum Moncayo. 
Apríldagur þegar allt verður lifandi. 
Bjöllur koma fljúgandi úr aldagömlu myrkri 
og marglitt fiðrildi birtist í þyrlulíki, 
hangir í loftinu fyrir ofan mig 
og hættir við að setjast á bókina 
sem er opin en óskrifuð 
í hendi minni.

                                                     A l l
T       h     e                     things living on the          a     t     o      m   
f      i     n     d           surface    of     our    globe          s             w 
i     t     h      i         arrive at the equator a recital             n
i     t     s      e        of  our  uncertainties.  A touch           l     f   
T     r      u     t      of  blue devotion.  Waves and              h           a     n
d          J     u           lastly light nestling.  Trans-      s      t     i     c     e  
                                    lation  of space indicat-
                                           ing  the  future.

On a walk past bulldozers and trucks
pouring tarmac for the NJ Eisenhower highway
my grandmother said to me as we turned

into a market with olive barrels, hanging 
meat, piles of sumac and coriander—
“he shakes away my blues.” It was 1959,

and what did I know about starving  
in the Syrian desert or the Turkish whips 
that lashed the bodies of Armenian 

women on the roads of dust. I wouldn’t 
have believed that she saw 
those things. The radio 

was always on the sink in my grandmother’s 
kitchen. “He’s a whirling dervish” she said—
whirling dervish—the whoosh of the phrase 

stayed with me. I too felt his trance—
even then—as she pounded spices
with a brass mortar and pestle.

The air on fire under him
the red clay of Macon dusting his bones.

What did I know about Sufism 
Sister Rosetta or bird feet at the Royal Peacock?

In the yard the bittersweet is drying up,
the berries turning gold and red.
The way memory deepens with light. 

His shaking gospel voice. The heart
going up in flames. My grandmother
survived the worst that humans do.

^{for Hye Yun Park}

angels undress, & solstice has got us mini, stilled . . .
hot hounds thrash east into ocean’s maribou,
foam that is knowledge, our own gravy bods
veloutine as time is giving. it’s pajeon weather, krill 
pink past prime, past memory & vistas futureful.
i saw the backside of my own eyes, great no-god 
carousel rouged as nutmeg with blood. the nerve! 
i mean it was the nerve. my optics creamy yet thinning, 
hair moss in abundance, precise as the meridian.
not even a bird could escape becoming more like a bird. 
what is friendship? the same question i asked you returns,
sparkling like a hot fix comet between our minds.
a friend is someone who sits with you, amphibian.
between water & land, a friend sits with you.

& then a curtain opens. a woman reclining shines huge
in absolute tableau. linen, white. skyline, paper. gender,
dame cuchifrita, perfectly still, daring life to blink.
we can’t stop recording this immersive dream. abuse 
shook once our early worlds, & this is how we meet.
it is a miracle to be a tube with legs—it is miraculous (!)
to be a coil in a bag . . . a patty in a briefcase! a living necklace!
a two-legged descendant of clear-boned fish! an optimist!
us red-rich bums more royal than crabs predate bliss!
the washer ring oh-shape of time fits us, tilts us 
well over sky’s edge where, somehow, air sits gentlest. 
crude, blue mesmero, glistening as fresh silk,
—to wet this globe with salt & glee, to unlatch the attic,
to undo the sleeve. we finger most the principle fabric.

wedded sepal

               lupine pearl strung

with toothhole                    petaled tendons

                              or

pelvis split

in ardor’s labor                 swirling blacksmoke

             coins in the sea

the eyes                           hawkmoth

a bible palmed across                  granite telling

gin river parable                            the muddy

              waters rising over

rotted apples                    liver carved

             by eponymous

                                                                  wind

Like tiny drops of crystal rain,
       In every life the moments fall,
To wear away with silent beat,
       The shell of selfishness o’er all.

And every act, not one too small,
       That leaps from out the heart’s pure glow,
Like ray of gold sends forth a light,
       While moments into seasons flow.

Athwart the dome, Eternity,
       To Iris grown resplendent, fly
Bright gleams from every noble deed,
       Till colors with each other vie.

’Tis glimpses of this grand rainbow,
       Where moments with good deeds unite,
That gladden many weary hearts,
       Inspiring them to seek more Light.

If I grew out of your (winter,  

thought, purse, chest cavity) 

would I, I would be plant-wise 

wiser for the spiny-edge & milk  

veins, this wonder’s so ancient  

so Mesopotamian, look at Miriam  

who covers her mouth when she  

laughs, look at Miriam who wears  

her dress like a casket 
 

                                                          م
 

You have to use the telepathy machine: feelings as artifacts 

You have to use a channel (O) for an ancestor to pass through  

Yawn her up from the white space, in alphanumeric names  

their cambered arabic numerals, a semitic pneumatic, a numen:  

telepathy, yelling over the sea / machines, their quarrel, quarrel 
 

                                                          م
 

/tɛləpæθi/: farflung feeling 
 

                                                          م
 

emerge (trans., imp.): emerge the _________ out of the _________

information                         miracle                             sleep

sound                                    burning car                     throat

child                                      music                                possibility

                                                          م
 

Hippocampus  controls short &  long memory,  named horse +

sea-monster  or  seahorse for its shape,  though  the  man who

described the anatomy first called it a silkworm, then changed

his  mind.  The  silkworm  eats  of  the  mulberry  leaves.  From

holes  in   its  jaws   the   silkworm  excretes  thread  in  circular

movements,  whirl-a-world, self-cocooning.  In  this  video,  the

brain lights up where a new memory forms.

                                                          م
 

Telepathy Machine:                May lamb gone 

of its soft guts,                its life-force charged  

               into red communication: 

               —you have to use your farthest voice 

               —the world is such a _______ place 

^{translated from the Spanish by William George Williams}

When I met her I loved myself.
It was she who had my best singing,
she who set flame to my obscure youth,
she who raised my eyes toward heaven.

Her love moistened me, it was an essence.
I folded my heart like a handkerchief 
and after I turned the key on my existence.

And thus it perfumes my soul
with a distant and subtle poetry.

Mi vida es un recuerdo 

Cuando la conocí me amé á mí mismo.
Fué la que tuvo mi mejor lirismo,
la que encendió mi obscura adolescencia,
la que mis ojos levantó hacia el cielo.

     Me humedeció su amor, que era una esencia,
doblé mi corazón como un pañuelo
y después le eché llave á mi existencia.

     Y por eso perfuma el alma mía
con lejana y diluida poesía.

A firm hand. The shadow waves of satin.
I am not yet flesh. He calls me baby,
and I touch my face. I’m searching for god
when I oil my body in the mirror. To love it
means to love a man means an opening
to another man. When I take my glasses off
all the lines blur. A body is a body without
language, I tell my girlfriend and she laughs,
mouth wide enough to hide in. She shows me
my softest parts. I dissolve into what. I forget
hiding also means a good beating, the way
passion can be suffering. I can’t believe
my whole life I never touched what made me
holy. We have bread, butter and nowhere to be.

wedded sepal

               lupine pearl strung

with toothhole                    petaled tendons

                              or

pelvis split

in ardor’s labor                 swirling blacksmoke

             coins in the sea

the eyes                           hawkmoth

a bible palmed across                  granite telling

gin river parable                            the muddy

              waters rising over

rotted apples                    liver carved

             by eponymous

                                                                  wind

a hole
            a floating rib
an admirer’s shadow
            ribs with grief 
a taper hall
            an empty street
a black hole  
            named love
its low density
            like clouds, dust, cosmic ray

at the center of the milky way
            thousands of them
i bet it hurts
            your lungs
as air expands
            tears through tissue
you inhale all the oxygen
            from us in fifteen seconds
who can dust your bones?
            time is infinite

i wish upon stars
            not old enough for light to reach
 wish upon a name
            to leave your lips as print
even moon rocks crumble
            zero point zero four inches
a million years
            call it what it feels like
love
            space junk
a dirty collision
            a chain reaction
a thick cloud of debris
            traveling fast

& just the vermillion
flicker of cannas near the pane.
Our bodies too, plateaued;

my hole, newly bloomless.
Outdoors, further out, a wren
winnows, the mesquite

on whose yielding limbs the all-
but-tender fowl rests
flexes, in cold as in darkness . . .

Time, like desire, expands too—
no? My lover, nodding gently,
shakes the leaves, &

A little softer. A little softer now—
A little softer, for what’s been torn.

I build it, I build the house, I build the eaves, I build the roof where we looked for stars, I build the ever-clogged gutters for which no time could be found, I build the brick face and the curb appeal, I build the door slamming open as the child flew forth into what the window framed, the streets calling my name, I build the lintel where they bent their heads in whispers, I build the climb and precarious, I build the sky with its tiny points of light which might be my mother coming home at last, I build the last two-story she might ever own clean and free, I build the longing, I build the view to the wicked canal, I build the red front porch where the bottle fell and bled its wine, where the last chance of reconciliation also shattered and never forget it was my fault, my careless, which left the dark red stain, I build the sometime home now paved over and prime real-estate condominium, I build the memory like something I can inhabit, and the sawgrass he planted and the lemon trees she cherished, perhaps if I build it there will finally be room for the broken, the missing, therein to dwell.

next to her bed her instrument sleeps
covered for the night like a bird in a cage
night passes . . . . . . the light returns
she pulls the cover away
dust motes dance in the air
she tunes her loom
strums the white parallel lines
with a flick of her wrist
each string must vibrate
layers of notes grow upward
tamp tamp tamp tamp
she listens for the right pitch
inserts the percussion fork into
the parallel lines that lead upward
she pulls down mountains, stars, lightning, storm patterns
tamp tamp tamp tamp
she is mythic soloist, storyteller, mathematician
her concert transforms us
we soften like lambskin

^{Three Palestinian Boys, Marwan, 1970}

Death is no equalizer

Nothing is equal in the eyes of—

In the gaze of—

In the Of

Where is the third beloved head

(It is where all of our heads go)

While they stand consequential as passports

(I have hurt myself within the borders of the page)

(I have done this so they may see me)

Where are their legs their feet

(Where the soil ends and the dream begins)

I have painted myself green and mottled

I have asked my body to crumple and rupture

In the desire pulling my eyes to the paint they remain

Unreachable unreached and unreaching they remain

Where do they belong?

(Never in the marketplace of nations)

(Never in the deleterious exchange of hands)

(Never in my pitiful abject sight)

(Never in my soft abject palms)

The torsos joined into a picket line

Fused like butter in the crumpled building’s dead refrigerator

Where am I to look at them this way

As though lying down for them

(Prostrate in the tall grass waiting to be discovered)

And my hands so pitiful and empty

The language of survival cold within my teeth

Whatever I am seeking it is nowhere

And whoever I wish to be is dead

(I should kiss each of their cheeks)

(I should kiss them)

(I should have kissed them)

I should not have been born

And where do they belong?

In the gentle abjection of the cactus spine a bird impaled upon it

In the blood leaking from the general’s eyes as he gurgles

In the survival language cracking my teeth to flee my mouth

In the folding and crumpling of my fingers as they break

(Are broken)

I’m in the world but I still want the world.
I’m full of longing and can’t move,
enthralled in the garden. Having died 
all the way back to the root, I grow again 
into a version of the thing I love. I’m her 
and not her, hermaphrodite with a heart 
like a plateful of black flames.
The bees inspect me like doctors. 
All my hard little tears, future selves 
who haven’t grown. Bedclothes swell on the line
while around me giant sunflowers burn
through their masks of radiant desire.

His wind-swirled fingertips
untangle the roots of salt water,
thorned with wrens

pecking at roans
whipping their manes
toward some new sunlight,
some new charred horse bit’s history.

Cornered into being a son
he should have never
left a snow-tipped leaf’s edge

in the hillside
where a barren cloud’s porous skull
keeps a winter house.

—

Coyote, open-jawed,
limp shoulder against his ear,
its silhouette: midnight blue—
            a satchel of stars
                        where its tail snaps     awake.

—

A knot of lung steam
behind his ribs;
a meteor charring white
over yellowing aspen;

he reaches down,
loosens shoelaces—
wind-dried roots unfurl,
his new name: seven times his height.

His knees press light to dark,
creasing them over and over
until his face smears and        fades.

This thin edge of December
Wears out meagrely in the
Cold muds, rains, intolerable nauseas of the street.
Closed doors, where are your keys?
Closed hearts, does your embitteredness endure forever?
Torpidly
Afternoon settles on the town,
                       each hour long as a street—

In the rooms
A sombre carpet broods, stagnates beneath deliberate steps:
Here drag a foot, there a foot, drop sighs, look round for nothing, shiver.
Sunday creeps in silence
Under suspended smoke,
And curdles defiant in unreal sleep.
The gas-fire puffs, consumes, ticks out its minor chords—
And at the door
I guess the arrested knuckles of the one-time friend,
One foot on the stair delaying, that turns again.

No ceremony for the initiation into facts—
Only patience that is not time. The fist
Of the mind grows roots and greens into a fern.
The fern of the mind suffers a solar age
And becomes what it suffers—the sun is not
A star, but a flower. A voice in the eternal
Honey says, What is needed is to think with the flower
Of the mind. Suffer is a word meaning many words—
Endure, experience. The flower endures the sun
By eating it. I only say I when no other word
Will do. What is the world is the world, what is
Not is not. That is the nectar thought. A hive
Or is it a cloud, knowledge gathering darkly above,
Hiding lightning, hiding stings. When the air
Clenches its fist and strikes a blow the sky is clear
Again. More clear than it’s ever been. The day-shy
Stars peek out behind the blinding veil, so very faint,
The snail’s glistening path draws her singular line
West behind the mountains, and already, it’s true,
The eye on its delicate horn trembles up in the east,
That snail, the moon. The humble mind hums.
Gnosis knows. There are no words. Just a tune.

a line break        is a kind of lie       my friend says

            yet still        he writes

an encore        over and over        the lyric

            a border wall        topped        by concertina wire

improbably survives

            as does the sound       of honeybees

and monarchy

            as did the man        on the Golden Gate        who leapt

after he fed        the parking meter

8.
My father Bacchus wanted a daughter instead of me.
He felt the threat a son implies, and took you, my infant
virility, scarf-skin like a halo, angel of my innocence
fore-fledged. Before the ritual, there was guilt. You were
vestigial as the divot where the angel pinched my lips
in binding silence. Would I see myself in style or fit
if I encountered you, my soul, draped like a lost mitten
on a fencepost? Tattered as a moth-eaten turtleneck.
            Hood like the hood of a headsman.
If you were re- appended, would you lisp like chiffon
or crunch like corduroy? You are the macho my father’s
dream foretold—he who, in the end, was like a son to me,
whose own member circumscribed a foreshortened life
story mine was intended to resemble. My forebear, the brutal
gardener. He who conjured the corona must have foreseen
his own eclipse, and standing on ceremony, found at hand
a means to get my sex to bleed.

Early lexicographers and missionaries
translated the Arrernte altyerre as “God”
 
or “Dream,” in Warlpiri jukurrpa, meaning,
 
eternal uncreated mother country see
put fetch totemic time of creation eat
 
for breakfast story film sleep talk track
conceived come into being ancestors
 
roamed into existence spirit and law sites
springs water wheel bush tucker the story
 
in us, says an Arrernte elder, not a dream
like a fairytale dream, the presence of place
 
where knowledge begins celestial fires
what has happened and still happens
 
altyerre undreamt
altyerre kangaroo and honeyant
altyerre snake foot trail
 
Jesus and Mary, holy trinity, welcome
to the floating dream, “the World

his mother’s father’s country is what
Jesus called Altyerre,” says Wenten
Rubuntja, painter of law and song 
 
the changes and transformations

Which windowpane are you beating your wings against today?
I am not as stubborn as you: I am flying straight into that delicious fire.

Buckets of bubbling tar and champagne await us at the Blue Chalet.
Do you skip like this because you have been invited into our hopping choir?

I am not as stubborn as you: I am flying straight into that delicious fire.
I thought you were going to the theater in your new cabriolet.

Do you skip like this because you have been invited into our hopping choir?
Yes, I do know the difference between a martini and a matinee.

I thought you were going to the theater in your new cabriolet.
They say that the latest strain hiding in the shadows is a yellow vampire.

Yes, I do know the difference between a martini and a matinee.
You have your subdivisions and high rises, while I have my dumpy shire.

They say that the latest strain hiding in the shadows is a yellow vampire.
Don’t worry—my ancestors are sewn up in overcoats and on full display.

You have your subdivisions and high rises, while I have my dumpy shire.
When it comes to curry and gin, I say: “Let’s wallow in Combray.”

Don’t worry—my ancestors are sewn up in overcoats and on full display.
Which windowpane are you beating your wings against today?

When it comes to curry and gin, I say: “Let’s wallow in Combray”
Buckets of bubbling tar and champagne await us at the Blue Chalet.

When he becomes a monk, he says I will no longer be his daughter.
To one another, we would be people. Strangers.
But what if I have children? They will not be your grandchildren?
He pauses, considering, then grips the wheel and keeps driving.
I don’t visit him enough and when I do, I never cook for him.
Imagine his monkhood. I would have to give him more respect
as a stranger. His head shaved every three weeks.
No one is allowed to touch a monk’s head. But I am the only one
who massages my father’s temples before he goes to bed.
If I am no longer his daughter, what will I offer him then?

^{after Etel Adnan}

And there, 
between clean walls
you assume 
the position,
angled toward 
the red squares 
roiling
on her canvases.

Into the oils 
of a new tense
she herself
days before 
had dissolved.

There, impasto:
her mountain.

Trimmed down 
to the first 
seeing.

Tamalpais 
at every pitch,
pistachio 
patches scraping
against cobalt.
Edges opaque
until they refused.

Mountainous,
she, too—
which is to say 
surfacing,
color latching 
to the seasons 
where meaning
rushes.

Of this transition
the living are given 
no access.                                                                

You, turning 
away from 
the dry wall,
where nothing
tears through.

A red square
appears in your days
yet you know
not yet where.

^{translated by Babette Deutsch and Avrahm Yarmolinsky}

On a mountain of sugar-candy,
under a blossoming almond-tree,
twinkles my gingerbread house.
Its little windows are of gold-foil, out of its chimney steams wadding.

In the green heaven, above me, beams the Christmas tree.

In my round sea of tinfoil
are mirrored all her angels, all her lights!

The little children stand about
and stare at me.

I am the dwarf Turlitipu.

My fat belly is made of gumdragon,
my thin pin-legs are matches,
my clever little eyes
raisins!

aus “Phantasus”

Auf einem Berg aus Zuckerkant,
unter einem blühenden Machandelbaum,
blinkt mein Pfefferkuchenhäuschen.

Seine Fensterchen sind aus Goldpapier,
aus seinem Schornstein raucht Watte.

Im grünen Himmel, über mir, rauscht die Weihnachtstanne.

In meinem See aus Staniol
spiegeln sich alle ihre Engel, alle ihre Lichter!

Die kleinen Kinder stehn rum
und staunen mich an.

Ich bin der Zwerg Turlitipu.

Mein dicker Bauch ist aus Traganth,
meine Beinchen Streichhölzer,
meine listigen Äugelchen
Korinthen.

Hyphal tubes,   symbionts,    exudates,

glomalin proteins,  pre-soil,     prevent the leaking out . . .

Fluttered root tips of           padded prickly pear,   sand
under anxious days,           enzymes, gill ghosts,

patched necromasses       under her clothesline,

keep spirit close.    Beneath feldspar,    redbold mica.

Nets of roots,       fate-kept not-death fungal sheets,
steady there,             abiotic mediators,      ones toward all.

Crawling              now     whirred opened cells,

Pleistocene       N-rich molecules              where rhizospheres

stayed still.         Days of salts, stomata, pores in leaves.

Dirt with furry prizes        turned      zero clouds where
chores were done,            to branch near places

she had moods, mendings.   Sewed buttons on.

Ectomycorrhizal fungi, mend her there.  Her here.

Mend moods here.  Pink & beige mold moods,    stay

the feet.   Forgetters,   spun threaders,        where dots

& arcs  host sugars.    Ampersands  of storage compounds,

weaving loves.   Carbon allocators,  micro-essays

of endomycorrhizal          dappled net
of never seen, don’t.       Light carriers,    don’t forget,

fungal tracers,   hold back below.

Tubes & branches,      microbe niche of ground,   

don’t forget her,    earth      that  held her up—

It was meant to conjure the life of a fisherman—
solitude simplicity and peace—
hence the name—Master of the Nets Garden.

Not the real life, of course, but what a nobleman
(who else would bankroll such quiet grace?)
imagines when he thinks life of a fisherman:  

the sea in miniature, harnessed, halcyon 
abundant fish (giant koi, not bass). 
It’s a stand-in wilderness, a Chinese garden—

each tree a forest, each rock a mountain—
for those obliged to keep close to the house.
There are even breaking waves: our would-be fisherman 

could watch, from covered walkways, a procession
of ripples launched across his fishpond’s surface
by pelting raindrops; his master gardener

dispensed perfection even in the rain. 
I visit in a downpour—paradise—
while, out on open sea, a master fisherman,
expanse itself his garden, plies his nets.

to live / now is to speak / the
language of the tree / toppled
along the expressway / at night

perhaps / to walk the streets / that
you have always walked / until tire
dust gets distilled in / your lungs

and turns / to ashes of / infinite
radiance / that connect you to
ancestors / twice dead 

their hands / oceans as gray / as
fallen yagrumos / except the
flowers in their eyes / still bloom

let your / words improvise /
stories, bodies, forms and /
habitable words the size of /marks on

pages / provisional / these
diacritics of / our deepest solitude
become / slow fire  

since we / are being born / a
thousand times a day / in the
hands of each being that / embraced

us from / its makeshift bed /
murmuring something like / the
wisdom of a planet as / it burns 

the carved / wood of the dream /
and its antipodes / this song of
fluorocarbons and / roosters 

nature’s / border regions / the
stone sternum of night / or the
blaze of the collective / neuron

currents / that come and go / the
light goes on and off / the
neighbors writhe while carrying / what looks   

to be / sediment of / civilizations
like / ours that survive in the
warble / of birds

ancient / dinosaurs nest / in digital
gardens / with no trace other than
the sea / turtle’s

smile as / reflected in / the
turbulent waters / signifying foam
or the drool / that drips

from my / universe to / yours,
ambient, amber / necklace of
archipelagos / broken 

after / the last downpour / the
prolepsis of song / with no
safeguards other than the / curtains

that still / cover the doors / that
lead to balconies / from which you
can see port cities / larger

than the / world, smaller than / the
dewdrops of your breath / where
all possible ships anchor / away

The sound of quiet. The sky 
indigo, steeping 
deeper from the top, like tea.
In the absence
of anything else, my own
breathing became obscene.
I heard the beating
of bats’ wings before 
the air troubled above 
my head, turned to look
and saw them gone.
On the surface of the black
lake, a swan and the moon
stayed perfectly 
still. I knew this was
a perfect moment.
Which would only hurt me
to remember and never
live again. My God. How lucky to have lived
a life I would die for.

^{The subject of lesbianism is very ordinary […]
            — Judy Grahn}

in darkness of March’s midnight          she is eyes:
            moon rays rebound lake ripples to eggplant purple walls
your hands find her body         face lies upturned, opened
            smaller than weeks prior. She knows you prefer protruding hip bones,
feels hungered for by you,       not memory of the boy, her brother 
diaphragms guttural groan,      cold in body bag not on pleated comforter,
            you’ve described your favorite body your type as “heroin skinny” 
she knows you like the ripples of her torso but            before you knew her brother  
also concave trajectory to pelvis bones            as drug addict,
            loving you is an argument with the impossible.

sometimes you can’t stay on your own mainland. 
some story of exile, unique each time: a home 
you feel apart from rather than of 

the re-negotiation among space and rulership. 
an aimless god, his insistence on
a fantasy of order 

the number you call to confirm the time, that tells you 
where to go by putting you there—horizon beyond 
the heart you know best—so it hurts, so you learn. 

the aimless god in you, his lucite throne, 
the space you’ve made, what you could 
imagine from whence you came 

Looking out over the cliff, we’re overwhelmed
by a sky that seems to heap danger upon us. We
end up staring at a single white fluff in the air—
feather, fur, dandelion puff—we don’t care
to define it. The relief of having something
to focus our attention. At home, our patio furniture
unscrews itself under the usual sun. On this trip—
well, I’m not any sadder, I just have more space
for my sadness to fill. I don’t want to give
particulars. A woman huffing up the trail behind
us says to her hiking partner, It wasn’t my size,
but it was only 9 dollars. And now all I want
is to see what it is. The future refuses
to happen, so where else should I turn?

never thought I
would see it here
in this Otherwhere,
no plantation in sight

no patterned pods
for the picking,
nor calloused hands
to plow & gin

an untouched December
bluff surrounded by scrubs of green
blowing along
a dust-whipped road heading south
toward no one’s harvest.

When a mouth aboard said ship
called out to me, I was a berry
turned sour by sun’s
neglect, an old ornament gone
unglossed. It spoke to me & warranted
a new way of listening & at once
I heard two crows, heard both.
For years, that strange whistle
of new language nettled me sloppily
its orientation unmapped. I let it
holler too long untended, & after
too long an ignorance it came back
to beat me, a bullet of tenacity.
I took too long to know its nature
& now I count a debt. It takes
exactly this much effort to tell you
that I have been stayed. Stayed by
a new forgetfulness, stayed by
an urgent condition, a mother warbler
feeding me melons by the whole.
Is there a mouth as hungry
as mine? As wide in its receiving?
I open to a 30th orbit
& want for nothing more than the syrup
of fruit, than the blade of a garden
in the small of my back, than to bait
the braid of duty.
& so, for this wily bewitched reason
of little perspicuity
I regret to inform you of my imminent
departure, my eventual, divine
escape from cog-wheel
mandates, my prescriptions grown old.
What I love is a heaven
that vexes me—& to it I must become
a faithful wife.

Please tell me that I was a good child
And that I did everything right
And that the atmosphere was exactly certain
I want you to love me
In ways that you never have
So that I become a forgotten world
With rainbow sunrises over dark green trees
And the cooling of the day
Becomes normal again
We will sit and watch the body of water
That we once called a sort of death
You know even in my dreams
You say I’ll never get it right
This is not a dream
We are burning here with no escape
But no matter how many times
They talk about the moon
It does not take a poet
To know that the moon
Is still only an illusion
Only an illusion
The moon calls out to all of us
Come back, it says
But we don’t hear it
Already on our way
To somewhere

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

                          Here
                          crawls
                          moon—
                             —
                          Out
                          of
                          this
                          Hole 

                                               out
                                               of
                                               this
                                               hole—
                                                 —
                                               slips
                                               moon   —

           out
           of
           this
                          cloudhole
Traditional
        she
        points
        Lightdipped
        toetips.
                          shrill
                          insectchimes

                          turn
                          me
                                                                           Rigid.

Ain’t no form       out here   
I’m your blade cleaving        leaving 
No throat uncut        stayin’ stacked on air     People sayin’        
you can’t make me happy           
police        this corner     Politicians     police everybody 
wants us dead—gentrify this hood like they 
got us bodied     but we movin’ our stars like chess pieces my love    
don’t give them one kill-toned drop     our love don’t split or spill f
or nobody         what new approach to killing they got we can’t yeet from      
promise      we gonna be        just fine        I’ll never stop this work. 
You               streetlights on clear nights       be my song     Your heart            
my beat-drop, joy dripping       between your fingers       palm-up        
holding down tomorrow         us wishin’ a motherf—look       

blood moving      heart to hands           
freein’ space     for    opps    wanting  to pull up.

When pheromones, ignited by the promise 
in her come-and-get-it smile, our kinetic skin, 
and my hunger, sing to our son of how he got here 
and why it all started, he finds a way to prove  

umbilical cords are longer than desire. 
He cries I just want you, and everything planned 
or selfish and hard, in her, melts and is put on hold.
Something in the ether, in the dark or in our eyes 

warns my mini me that another hymn could be made
in this moment. He remembers he does not share,
wedges his head into our groove, almost reprising 
his birth. Like a wrestler needing to break a figure-four

leg lock or spill the Milk and Water Embrace,
he forces a submission, but we    are patient    and wait.

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

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

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

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

O peerless marble marvel! what of grace,
Or matchless symmetry is not enshrined
In thy rare contours! Could we hope to find
The regal dignity of that fair face
In aught less beautiful? We would retrace,
At sight of thee, our willing steps where wind
The paths great Homer trod. Within whose mind
Wast thou a dream, O Goddess? Nearer pace
Brave Hector, reckless Paris, as we gaze;
Then stately temples, fluted colonnades
Rise in their sculptured beauty. Yes! ’tis Greece,
With all the splendor of her lordliest days,
That comes to haunt us: ere the glory fades
Let Fancy bid the rapture never cease.

Harder, he pants into the scruff of my neck, our labored breath
condensing as my lover pulls my hips into wolfish grind.
From a distance, we are two curs fogging a parked Chrysler,
though this, only half-accurate. In our nest, we transcend sex
-ed things, white-hot spangles like dead gods, the glow of us
pulsing brighter & brighter in turn. I have never shouted before,
but this is how he wets my nose—open, like a howl, a deafening
unhinging of worship—from the back—this, the way he whines—
throwing his head in praise. It is ancient composition, how we fever
the dark’s bones, convince the night to do our bidding.
We collapse into each other. The moon of him eclipsing
the fullness of me, the rift of us unfolding unto new darkness
& what are we but ravenous? Here, we devour dusk, suckle
sides of cosmic gristle, mouths brimming, tearing the sky, Black.

I need you 
the way astonishment, 
which is really just 

the disruption of routine,
requires routine. 
Isn’t there

a shock, though— 
a thrill— 
to having done

what we had to?
Unequally, but
in earnest, we love

as we can, 
he used to mumble, 
not so much his

mouth moving, 
more the words 
themselves sort of 

staggering around lost 
inside it . . . Now
show me 

exactly what
you think being brave
is.

More like a basket
            of twig and hair, 
            surprisingly 
            tall
           
            and deep—

                        in a tree
            outside my bedroom
            window.

I knew 
            something lived in there
            you wouldn’t assume
                        lived in a nest.

Then I knew:
            a human lived there.

And once I knew—
            the nest, nearly 
           
            disintegrated, 
                           still in the tree. 
                                   
It wasn’t about trauma, the perfect 
            and then the broken 

                        nest 
            in which a human 
                        lived—

            Born and lit and broken
                                     comes I.

It’s autumn, and we’re getting rid
of books, getting ready to retire,
to move some place smaller, more
manageable. We’re living in reverse,
age-proofing the new house, nothing
on the floors to trip over, no hindrances
to the slowed mechanisms of our bodies,
a small table for two. Our world is
shrinking, our closets mostly empty,
gone the tight skirts and dancing shoes,
the bells and whistles. Now, when
someone comes to visit and admires
our complete works of Shakespeare,
the hawk feather in the open dictionary,
the iron angel on a shelf, we say
take them. This is the most important
time of all, the age of divestment,
knowing what we leave behind is
like the fragrance of blossoming trees
that grows stronger after
you’ve passed them, breathing
them in for a moment before
breathing them out. An ordinary
Tuesday when one of you says
I dare you, and the other one
just laughs.

When I open  the  door,  I smile  and wave to people who  only
have  eyes  and  who  are  infinitely joyful.  I  see  my  children,
but  only the backs  of their  heads.  When  they turn around,  I
don’t recognize  them.  They  once had mouths  but  now  only
have  eyes.  I  want  to leave  the  room  but   when  I do, I  am
outside,  and everyone  else  is inside. So next time, I open the
door  and  stay  inside.  But  then  everyone is  outside.  Agnes
said that  solitude  and  freedom  are  the same.  My solitude is
like the  grass.  I  become  so  aware of its presence  that it too
begins to feel like an audience.  Sometimes  my solitude grabs
my  phone  and  takes a  selfie,  posts  it somewhere for others
to   see   and    like.    Sometimes   people   comment  on   how
beautiful  my  solitude is  and  sometimes  my  solitude  replies
with  a  heart.  It  begins  to   follow  the  accounts  of  solitudes
that  are half its age.  What if my solitude is  depressed?  What
if even my solitude doesn’t want to be alone?

who cares how long i’ve spent with my poems—those shit psalms those rats of my soul—head first thru the window me at their ankles demanding substance, revelation, sudden gravity—shamed of my leafless, drug shanked brain—this grey popper worn hell—that dark dull circle i try to conquer beauty & the state from within. i’m not revolutionary i’m regular. nothing radical in being the enemy of america, the country of enemies. we find our laughter between the horror. stop asking me to explain having a body & a mind & a heart—their harmonies, their plots to murder each other. i’ve lived long in a low solstice—wife of a pipe & the blue lit plain—leo trash—saved by occasional dick & the knowledge of my mother, friends i confess my pocked seasons only after their caul. arachnid moods—self-cornered—text back weak—i haven’t been much lately—the dark season lasted years, swallowing seasons, collecting itself in my shallows like a motor-sheered fish. where did the poems go? what is their trouble? what kind of water is i?

Your mouth was a torment to me
           and I came within a hair
of telling you so.
           Your laughing mouth, on that
video you sent me. Specifically, your 
            delight, in a glittering wave,
singing karaoke
            Honky Tonk Woman in your truck
to your women’s ice hockey 
           team—bobbing back and forth
in your white oxford cloth button down
           and loosened red tie—
And the green dots everywhere. Your
           online engagements.
The sacral prana 
            flowing through
and over me, even
            at that distance,
on my tiny screen.

           I was next to the cement
floor of the peripeteia,
           where weeks before
my brother, visiting
            the same cousin
in silvery, wind-beaten Beaufort, 
           North Carolina,
nearly bled out at the foot
           of the bed, a jagged glass
in his right hand. Were it not  
           for the crash, Tipper
would not have found
           him till morning.

I’m not clear on why men
            like you can take me
down so completely.
            Why I think it would
be amusing.
           You’ve put me down
from the get-go. Craving
           is a hard mistress—a hard and
charismatic mother—.
           Ask my brother.

Where are the good ones:
the beautiful, strong, and
virtuous figures of yore?
Probably where the moon is,
hung aloft in effulgent skies:
eating nails for breakfast,
dying in childbirth, then
resurrecting to give it all
away, cyclically, once more. 
I don’t want to be the moon,
I said to Dick on the casting
couch: I want to be a flower
no one can touch without dying
of hope of touching it again.
Something rare and exotic:
throaty stamen, purple pistil.
Something that just stands
on the stage and screams.
Alas, that role is taken,
said Dick, by Suzanne.
Figures, I said. How
about the wild river,
he suggested, kindly.
Or a creek, brook,
rivulet, rill, stream?
But where do I empty,
I asked, before agreeing:
in an ocean, sea, or lake,
or do I just flow into the
ground, a dried-up shrew?
That’s between you and your
character to decide, he said.
The river, you mean, I said.
Yes, he said. For god’s sake,
you’re a woman. Just be you.  

i)         The bloom—the pretty part we want—is
ii)        often how a threatened plant screams help. 
iii)       Venus flytraps can be sedated.  
iv)       Therefore, they can wake & be made calm.  
v)        Lice hatch ravenous for blood & claw
vi)       linoleum one foot per minute. 
vii)      Mammoth sunflowers reseeded 
viii)     from previous diseased seasons sing 
ix)       the same sickness for generations.  
x)        Pepsis wasps haul tarantulas up 
xi)       mountainsides to provide warm  
xii)      meals for larvae. Imagine children 
xiii)     dragging men across highway lanes
xiv)     to eat them alive, thigh by thigh.

i)         The bloom—the pretty part we want—is
ii)        often how a threatened plant screams help. 
iii)       Venus flytraps can be sedated.  
iv)       Therefore, they can wake & be made calm.  
v)        Lice hatch ravenous for blood & claw
vi)       linoleum one foot per minute. 
vii)      Mammoth sunflowers reseeded 
viii)     from previous diseased seasons sing 
ix)       the same sickness for generations.  
x)        Pepsis wasps haul tarantulas up 
xi)       mountainsides to provide warm  
xii)      meals for larvae. Imagine children 
xiii)     dragging men across highway lanes
xiv)     to eat them alive, thigh by thigh.

What is beheld through glass seems glass.

The quality of what I am
Encases what I am not,
Smooths the strange world.
I perceive it slowly
In my time,
In my material,
As my pride,
As my possession:
The vision is love.

When life crashes like a cracked pane,
Still shall I love
Even the slight grass and the patient dust.
Death also sees, though darkly,
And I must trust then as now
Only another kind of prism
Through which I may not put my hands to touch.

Sigh of the Santa Ana through the chaparral clinging to the mountain. Through the sunflowers at night, searching for the sun, along the river no longer a river. The wind kissing the river, its stone face, and making each stone a matchbook. A match. A book on fire. The river a library on fire. The wind a woman running through the valley on fire. Searching. The sunflowers turning toward her. Her nightgown a book turning its own bright pages in the wind. Smoke the color of chaparral. Smoke clinging to her, making her a mountain of smoke. A valley of light. A sigh.

             *

You’re too afraid of who you are to know who you can be. You’re too afraid of being happy. You’re too happy being afraid. You’re afraid you’re happy. You’re afraid, the way a broken bowl gilded and glued back together with gold is still broken, that knowing makes no difference. You’re broken, still, but you’re happy. You’re afraid, too, but still, you’re happy. You’re who you can be, already, whether or not you know. You’re different, already. You don’t need to know to know. You’re ready.

             *

Yesterday, when the cake with thirty candles came out, I thought, closing my eyes, that my wish would be to go back to the moment my mother brought me home to East Mountain View, furnished with only her vanity, the mirror with us waving at us, at once Hello and Goodbye, and that I would wish to hold her bright and broken face, to look at her as she was and not as either of us wanted her to be, telling her as if telling myself that we were doing our best, and yet, today, opening my eyes and looking into my own vanity, smoking a cigarette, the tip like a sunflower scorched from searching and searching still by the light that scorched it, I think, instead, that my wish will be to keep going forward, to see what else will happen with this life, and I think I will.

This is mint and here are three pinks 
I have brought you, Mother. 
They are wet with rain 
And shining with it. 
The pinks smell like more of them 
In a blue vase: 
The mint smells like summer 
In many gardens.

American they said + + but Horse I dreamed
                                                                                 , and Horse became

                        ++            ++            ++
+  ++       +++     ++     ++    +++       ++     ++
               +            +++                           +++             +

+ + + I was cleaved + from human-earth + + +
Redsap lymph calcium + + + Atlas and femur
            , A new Chaos—
+ come forth + through the world’s foaming + crust
            + + then licked + into my roan skin

+ + + A flesh being bearing + its first dreamSelf + + +

I came to life + + how stars appear—
            , Of dust + +

collapsed + till struck
                                    +        + +
+ ++              +     ++ to light + + +       +
       +      ++   +        +            +   +     ++

            Dream-erupted—
, Gila Monsters + lavablack + +

                          +++ Land +++ +++ +++
                                                      , All its thunders + + +

            In this great magnetic field + +
I am a knowledge system + + +

My hair is a tangled Mojave Dictionary + + +
            , And my tongue + is a danger + +
I speak a darkwhip + into the haboob’s goldthrob + + +

This valley’s bright-weather is my ceremony + + +
, Flashflood + is my medicine—
            + + how I clean myself of Self

+ + + America + + Hoard of Property + is a debris
            + of my cells— limestone + + wound-porous +
sea-floor + + basalt + trilobite + camel bones +                          
            , glass and Blackmountain + + +
                                         +
                                    + + + +
                              + + + + + + +

+ + + We professional mourners + +
            crying for our lives + and for hire + + +
From dark-colonies + in the caves behind our hearts
+ + we weep the sun to fall + and bats into the sky

+ + + We weep the saguaros to bloom + Eastward
+ and moonwhite + + soft-petaled wounds +
            circling their night-wrists and crowns + + +
                        Grief is our lush and luxury—

            , The strain + of anything + that grows
+ + + Sand rose + + iron wood + + smoke tree + + +
We tend dune-gardens + from Deadlands + +
            till the halite beds + + reap selenite thorns +
from the horned toads’ backs + + + 

+ + + In the a.m. heatwarp + vultures 
+ ripple the violet skydome + + +
A swarm of bloodgloved-archivists + + +
            They sky-write                                  + +
+ + + + +                     + + +                   + +
            + + +      + + + directions—
                + + + +                        + + + + 
          + +                                            + +
    + +                                                        + +
, To the museum , To the university
            , To the hospital + + +

In this Epoch of Citizenship +
I must arrive everywhere twice—
            , Occupied and Unceded + + +
One hand The Comet + +
the other hand + Who Makes the Comet Come
+ + + So call me Lodestone + or Alone + + +
            Whisper me +
                         , Secret Magnet + + +

In pink twilight + + my love and I are effigies
            + + leaching salt +
through our terracotta hands + + +

My language clays + + and maps +
amaranth lather + along my thigh—a migration
            + of Exile—
, A self-determined Relocation of pleasure—
                         , wantneed + + +

We are the origin + + oxygen + and always becoming
            + + + Bloodworms
+ from which new land might grow + + +
            , How we make soil + +
then mud where we laid + + +
Alchemy of our wet denim skinz + and gravity + + +

We pulse animal and sensual + + +
            Thundercats of love + greening the desert—
, Pale grasses + fruit in my breath
            + + grey-green along the belly of the nightbranch + + +

            We are + unacreable
+ + + We abrade + the transit + the survey
+ + hold tight and repeat ourselves +
            in crystal lattice + + +

Come morning + + + Come Mercurylight + + +
We are blessed and scattered + + +
Shards + of a horsehead + water jar—
            , Lonely for a body + + and aching +
for the cool taste + and shape the first water once took + + +

This Nation + is a white bright + magnesium
            + NDN burn + + +
I fume and illumine + in its quantum-arson—
            , Indian Iron Alchemy Horse + + +

+ + + My brothers are the Cold Killers + +
shovelers + of silver anthracite + +
            fuelgods + of the midnight train

            + boxcar + jumptrack + jolt-light
+ + + Vaporing + + nightsalt + to cloud—
            , Mustanging + + +

Every desert highway is sacred +
            and gas station pumps + break our hearts + + +
We have pedal bones + white doctors call coffin bones
+ + + That’s why I’m always dying—

+ + + That’s why—
, I’m always halfghost + + half-back + + half-dressed
+ as the war party who will return—
, With a full tank of gas + + +
            , And a stick of scalps + + +

Tonight the city + + is a tectonic bone radio—
            , Our ancestors are on every channel + + +

Scorpions whip and fluoresce + from the shadows of Settler houses
Green-eyed wolf spiders + emerge from their dens +
            to join the dark hunt + + +

The midnight train + monsoons + around the bend
+ + recognizes me + as a relation + and cries +
            Chuk+Shon     Chuk+Shon     Chuk+Shon

            + +     + +        + +     + +        + +     + +           
            + +     + +        + +     + +        + +     + +                       
            + +     + +        + +     + +        + +     + +                       

+ + + We are each + the other’s + passenger + + +

+ + + On the horizon + my warriors volcano + + +
            + + + I shatter cinders + from my hair
+ + I’ll watch them eat the day-aliens with flame
            + + + American + NDN + horse pyre + + +

The Hohokam canals + crack awake + +
gush their ghostwaters + through the settlement streets + + +
            blister + and boneflower + + +

I war whoop out + into the empty + displaced hip +
of the Ghost-sea + + and the Ghost-sea +
            war-weeps back +
spiraling + the etched shells of my ears + + +

+  + + A + M + E + R + I + C + A—
, Haunted hotel + shiprock + rockwreck + ship of fools + + +
            , Little giant cemetery + of braids
              + +       + +       + +       + +    
                x           x            x           x
             +++     +++      +++     +++
                x           x            x           x
              + +       + +       + +       + +
                +           +          +           +

+ + + Beloved Occupiers + + I am posting notice—
            , There is no more vacancy + + +

When this world has ended + I will carry my people + Home
+ + +

            our first lightning
          strike was convulsive
         we felt sad for our
       violence after
      exterminating
      wolves and bison
      we do not need a
       doctor to say
        dance dance 
         dance before
           the song 
             runs out
               learn how
               to live so
              wilderness
             never
            becomes
          mythology
        we put them
      in parks to be
    wild on purpose
  a museum of fur
fangs and hooves

And when we are finished, I ask
            if she thinks us grotesque,
two plain monsters basking
            in our blood—our liquid plaque.

We celebrate the art of
            our unmaking. She spirals my body
into a single drop, ambrosia
            spoiled by the Gods. I copy

the signature of her sin-
            ged moan, grind it down
until it becomes my own dim
            map. Even the Gods fuck. Crown

themselves in gardens pastored
            by snakes. I am crying. Not out of shame
but out of tradition. To have mastered
            this want, only to carve for it a lock, a name

as queer as unholy. How queer it fits
            inside the mouth, how queer is my woman
and the sweat she makes of me, a sweet trick
            of her tongue. Don’t we deserve a hand-

made altar. Don’t we deserve a crowd
            of worshipers to carry our bed. And yes
please to the beads, the sacred
            wars, the body ornaments, the vain-eyed

statues pulsing deep with our flood.
            Yes to the orchestrated violence, a quiver
licked down my spine. May our love blood
            the skies like a storm of Gods high off terror.

O Zeus. O Oshun. O Ra. O Kali. O Me. O Her. O Gods—God? 
            Yes. Gods. Don’t act like you don’t know our names’ roar.
Whispered. Sweet and savage inside your temples.
            Preserved behind velvet doors.

I’m waiting for the words        to catch up to my heart    which is 
elliptical at the moment            there’s an apology 

even I am expecting to bore out of my throat

                                                                         but what for            what for 

I am continuing to write in a font        that displeasures me 
            everything shifts so rapidly

my body           the environment           my body            the environment

why not return to something as aggressively unspectacular as arial

a font for all my first thoughts             today I typed the words
                                     “someday, again”

and deleted and retyped                                   deleted and retyped

inside of the collapse                I am still holding on to narrative
            this is not sentiment                 it is how I keep my family together
when I breathe in deep enough I feel it            all the old anger 
waiting to become newer anger            not having the words 

can feel like not having something to hit          I think I wrote that in another poem 
            before

what is the equation that solves everything       ideas are commodity 
            even the idea that ideas are commodity            I don’t even know 

what I have to sell        I’ve spent my entire life living on a fault line
            I know all that’s been made is inherently broken.
This is not me being dour        this is me writing a note
that says I miss you                              I meant that the other way

but the one you were thinking works, too

Sometimes when you start to ramble
or rather when you feel you are starting to ramble
you will say Well, now I’m rambling
though I don’t think you ever are.
And if you ever are I don’t really care.
And not just because I and everyone really 
at times falls into our own unspooling
—which really I think is a beautiful softness
of being human, trying to show someone else
the color of all our threads, wanting another to know 
everything in us we are trying to show them—
but in the specific, 
in the specific of you
here in this car that you are driving
and in which I am sitting beside you
with regards to you 
and your specific mouth
parting to give way
to the specific sweetness that is
the water of your voice 
tumbling forth—like I said 
I don’t ever really mind
how much more 
you might keep speaking
as it simply means 
I get to hear you 
speak for longer. 
What was a stream 
now a river.

Another word I love is evening
for the balance it implies, balance
being something I struggle with.
I suppose I would like to be more
a planet, turning in & out of light
It comes down again to polarities,
equilibrium. Evening. The moths
take the place of the butterflies,
owls the place of hawks, coyotes
for dogs, stillness for business,
& the great sorrow of brightness
makes way for its own sorrow.
Everything dances with its strict
negation, & I like that. I have no
choice but to like that. Systems
are evening out all around us—
even now, as we kneel before
a new & ruthless circumstance.
Where would I like to be in five
years, someone asks—& what
can I tell them? Surrendering
with grace to the evening, with
as much grace as I can muster
to the circumstance of darkness,
which is only something else
that does not stay.

The noon, a mystic dog with paws of fire,
Runs through the sky in ecstasy of drouth,
Licking the earth with tongue of golden flame
Set in a burning mouth.

It floods the forest with loud barks of light,
And chases its own shadow on the plains . . .
Its Master silently hath set it free
Awhile from silver chains.

At last, towards the cinctured end of day,
It drinks cool draughts from sunset-mellowed rills . . .
Then, chained to twilight by the Master’s hand,
It sleeps among the hills.

now she’s gone my teacher wants to know 
where the speaker enters the poem

the wind blows open the screen door & it catches 
on its chain. outback my neighbors are smoking

a pig to make it last. my teacher only became 
my teacher after she passed. before that

she was a woman who had lived a long time.
as always i am an ungrateful child, a student 

first of ingratitude. ungracious as a wasp. a knot
in a history of rope your hands don’t notice 

as you hold on for dear life. dear life, the speaker 
is the chain holding the door closed & the wind 

is my teacher, the smoke curing meat,
my teacher had stories about all the dead poets

which made her, while living, prophetic. proximity
is next to godliness. for a woman who had no use 

for music or pleasure her writing beats the page 
until knuckles singe. my speaker wants to know 

when the teacher enters the poem, if she ever leaves,
if she’s always there in the text shaking her heads 
           
cutting the weeds.

A frail hepatica
Shyly holds its fragrance
Beneath the fresh morning dew.
So, Elizabeth.

some days        you seem
so disappointed, love   but you knew 

what it was.
i am your dread wife. 

you will not throw me out 
of eden            i walk myself to the door. 

o! 
there is no snake          i plant the tree. 

i pluck the apple       i bite.
the pomegranate          the passion fruit

whatever the fuck. 
i am feast unto myself.  

in this wilderness         the feral things name me. 

& i was raised to one day wash 
my husband’s feet at night.

of course i molted        made myself a woman 
who unmakes home. 

refused to be whittled to a fine point              
but you like me piercing.

beloved                        i will not 
only writhe when coming. 

my vow: break through this shell         fully impossible.
your vow: lap every slick of the yolk. 

Backlit by the glitter-chopped horizon, each of these 17 Marbled Godwits poking at the tideline must have a heartbeat; every living, perfect Whimbrel, its eyes. The surf is stacked, tilted, as if it were higher than the beach. There is an urgency to turn home, get this assignment of pleasure done, strike it off the list where vanish will be the last task, and then there is the thought of those 17 hearts. Less rain means more salt, anchovies, more whales—a ferment to savor against a distant cloud of Shearwaters above the incessant upwelling.

After my left arm I washed my right, neck, décolletage,
and navel. I ate ground meat with large crystals of imported salt.
The women and men who would stroke my hair if I asked,
I thought of them fondly then sadly. At the flea market,
what I touched with a fingernail was a copper lamp, a mundane
painting of mountains, the cashier’s hum. I bought nothing I didn’t
want. In the cul-de-sac, I found clouds on leashes, loose roosters.
I thought thoughts ugly as clothespins. Reading a used book,
I suspected I knew less about death than the last person who held it.
I spat into a mirrored sink. I lost my slippers and face. To feel more
like water, I drank it. Before bed, I walked my plank of uncertainties
and plunged further into uncertainty. Am I capturing all of history
in this gesture? I shouted into the future. In the wet air of the future,
I could have but never appeared. No one was sorry but me.

Orange tabby in the foxglove.
Four beets in a bag.
The poppy’s blocky skeleton.
A net full of mulberries,
            sweetest
                        at the point
                        they let go.

Untie
the soft knots
of the crochet.
Begin again.
Look,
there’s a lily.
Look,
there’s another one.

The Orlando  dead;  the ribbons and signs  on the  rotary’s fence.  My  mind fringed 
like  that,  bitten by  heat,  sky-kicking.  At  work the  soil was thin and  the  land
was  lent; long  rows for  kids to play at  tending.  There to help, I  once  allowed
the lettuce plants to fry to lace in minutes, like a joke. I cut my braids into the sink
and    thought     about    you    on     the    bus.    Tomatoes     bubbled    overnight,
stovetop   unattended.  What   profusion   I   found   I  made   a   little   dangerous.
The corn I’d  spaced  or planted  badly called out touch me,  lonely  perfect tassels
to   the  wind.   When   we   shucked   the   first  ripe   one,   only   half   filled   out,
even  the  cruel   twins  left  the  shed  and   pressed  to  look  and  touch  the  ear.
Its freak pearls, its cool thread. 

Tread where the name has prepared
A full name full of desire
Clay like plenty
Love is sensitive
In the space of crying
The name goes ahead
To prepare you
Grasp the vessel
With both hands and
Walk slow
A road of red clover
Opens—

One incorrect definition for conjuncture:
anecdotes, seamed and charred into process

                                           To reshape our form, towards another incomplete
                                           Hope changes the outcome of language

Each season, a chance: to send money home, to evade death
It’s easier if you promise the boss you believe

                                           A chapter titled: How the Dead Helped to Organize
                                           the Living. A chapter titled: El Clamor Por La Tierra

In the daydream he’s backlit and describing a highway
Sin embargo, love doesn’t verify its description

                                           The people closest to the land were killed first
                                           This will not be news. Look how I found you in spite of
                                           English in spite of Reagan and the Catholic Church, despite
                                           wilted certainty

Our material is Third, only desire is inevitable—of what’s next after
This could be it, the animal; this could be a misguided advertisement
for new desires: more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more,

                                           If we are waiting in line for ourselves
                                           what else could we

the ears lie but claim
the eyes lie or perhaps the body
either way the world is a ship
I call it “vestibular unease”
as I glance smartly over my glasses
motionsick in my stationary body
the fancy word just means
I live on a yellow submarine
not quite as glamorous as it sounds

you should be able to sink
your heels pleasurably into the floor
enjoy the solidity of the world
reality is not supposed to have give
like an overripe plum
I prefer wooden floors to marble
but even plastic laminate is okay
it keeps you upright and springy
I refuse to live on a ship/plum
I have no navigatory skills
and I don’t want to be the stone
inside gooey fruitflesh
straight horizons should be
mandated by law
don’t make the world turn wrinkly
like my fingers after bathing
I crave stability but
refuse to be the stone

it has the depth of human error

I say this to myself about my face

& it’s true—low & intense first

winter light                 frost

softened sky colors & your deep ear

the oars glitter         the water spires

high tide made a small

margin              a salt whisker late

autumnal excess or clutter under

foot      the salt dark comes late north


*
 

it has the depth of human error

manic pixie soccer mom

in the bleak midwinter—

hard wrackline of a year’s ebb

the tide inevitable & circumflex

a skiff of snow in the new week

the wave closes over

your point of entry

the ten a.m. bells ring six

minutes late—very gently struck—


*
 

it has the depth of human error

lowtide shipwreck greenribs

every dog likes dead things

that’s how you learn the notes on a treble clef

at five p.m. on the last day in ordinary tide

wind motion visible in sea smoke

a tidal island has

atlantic grammar

I obliterate myself with small tasks

now that I have been inland a while

a little red dot is
a laser pointer
a moving target
a danger button
a recorder button
a pottu
a pimple
a popstar
a rash
a makaan orredi?
a smile of a query unconcerned with whether
it was mealtime
a panic room
a piercing
pain
pinpointing
a period
of uncertainty asking
why can’t I question what I love?
why can’t I love what I question?
a third eye for an eye
on the prize
an accessory to murder
of crows on an angsana
a birdcall
flitting across
sky
catcalling worms
a discreet witness
to bargain basement love stories
screaming
onwards and up yours
a cockroach friend scurrying over unwashed masses
murmuring
this boy does not know anything
such a waste
thinks he is headlight
when he is just deer
a song that goes
this is
home?
is this
home?
is this
a home?
this is
a home?
what home
is this?

i’m at a party
(can you believe it?)
saturated w/
hyperpop
transxendance
a pretty girl
in a floral dress
asks me how
many books
i will have to write
to account for all the
US war crimes
HA i didn’t mean
ALL of them
I meant the
WAR ON TERROR
fragment
AFTER
the infrastructure
shudders
i wait for it to
take me home
the theatre of
war papered
everywhere
i say to my lover
it’s almost a fulltime
job to yearn
& crave
love OF COURSE
(unlike labor) a
dyke imperative

          —

My father’s name, my mother’s name
I dream the line of letters

          —

I came not before an apple tree
Malus Sieversii, seeing the faces of silk

          —

The road before this of blood
The apples tumid with grief

          —

Ad domestica
A veil of home; a state

          —

A whole life of waiting
& before that:

          —

Aeons quest eye on  
                     prob limp race  
      Eeeee burrow @ a tomb  
well arm’d glossy head Head limp 
hearT                   Never met a muscle couldn’t raptivate
        H                            inside    y/our dark neat holdshout
        R                  O                  if ever words would 
        B                   Free me 
                                        From your open book 
                   Writing in Soil  
                                          Heartheartheartearthearth glad to bee
    a live wing

of gadolinium, November-veined, copper on the tongue
            & summoning sleep & ether though wide-awake
after click & whir & click again of excision & extraction 

& artery notched & every hand in the dim back room
            summoned to press the bloodied breast to bone
& told to find calm & stay calm & O type O negative

& calm & fuck the radiologist who would remember 
            the day years after, bumbling mutters   
& with whiskey-thick fingers on black Friday & routine

gone awry & no luck for transfusion & hours later
            to be wheeled out into the familiar lobby to my 
children’s father & my father who, terse & inconvenienced

would warn me off from flying the next day & the next
            through Seattle & de Gaulle & landing bleary at Boryspil
& to blur through birch woods, woozy still, & sore

& o sour viburnum opulus & o ash & ache to come 

us  girls   amidst  girls   wield  the   weaving  material   scattered  kaleidoscopic.  This
                                     recognition  beyond   sight,  the  apparatus  of  vision pressed up
                                     against glass. Gender discontinuum, flesh of collected invention
                                     obliged to my own social contract.

                                     Tooth against tooth, braced into breaking.  This one dream I do
                                     not  write  down,  its  viscera  remains.  It  arrives  again  no  less
                                     familiar;  toolless  defanging,  making  room   in  the  mouth  for
                                     gumming.   Twin   mirror   averse  syncing   into  study  spins  of
                                     Juturna.     The     bloodied    canines     in    my    palm    do   not
                                     render   me  powerless:   now   there’s  a   new   way   to   whistle.

They say Scheherazade saved all women with storytelling
I can’t even save myself before sunrise

I feel like I’m down
there with him
pushing against
what hurts most

He shows me around his house
where a woman set herself on fire
and the walls remained unharmed

Here the ghosts slowly drag me
here the ashes mix with dust

with the smile of       a wolf-grandma
he pretends not to        hear her silence

“I thought you                 like it that way,”
he tells Scheherazade,       gives her children,


spreads across time,                 his specters in the world.

An opening to a story should be                                             When the will
unremarkable.                    of one’s willingness to work
supersedes 
After my essay                                                alphabetical
was stretched              by                                        order. When the
the love doctor,                                                           will of
I resumed a hermetic lifestyle. To manage                                               a local spirit
my               interrupts your martyrdom. A
time, I distributed water crystals                                  medium becomes a
and Kirkland                                                      medium
bottles on the highway. As                         because they can’t avoid
a side character, I have only                                         the fact of their
desired to                                                        calling.
seize                                                                     
agency                          They assume mortality.
with little to                         They eat average meals.
no knowledge.                             They excommunicate
journalists. A troupe
And you wished                                                of exorcists
that for me.                          exudes brilliance. Sure,
let’s say last
Even listening is                                                 night I was
useless. I have nothing to say.                                           an anthurium
I don’t think a man can                                          full of wonder.
understand petty                    ,                                                                     
nor                   can he                                                  Dreaming
 recognize the mercy                              on the third day. The
inherent in                                                         end of
his own killing.                fragrance, renewing stomps.

A shriek, dawn-like, birdless—an ordained
stratum—pulsing canticle of the numen. 

The chant coarsely flung at the bosky ridges 
of shattered clavicle—skull doused in lacquer. 

Hear into the negative of bone the annals of a hut,
lamina of guttural gowk. 
                                        Fluted brinks of obsidian 
cloaked dimly in canon—clamor, mist, shaping the glum 

worship. The rite of splay—to utter a corpse to dazzle—
entombing the nebulous flesh in funerary hum, a syllabic urn.

^{translated from the Spanish by Alice Stone Blackwell}

Freaks of bright crystal, airy beauties fair,
Whose enigmatic forms amaze the eye—
Crowns fit to deck Apollo’s brows on high,
Adornments meet for halls of splendor rare!
They spring from knots in tree-trunks, rising there
In sweet gradation; winding wondrously,
They twist their serpent stems, and far and nigh
Hang overhead like wingless birds in air.

Lonely, like pensive heads, all fetterless.
Lofty and free they bloom; by no dull chain
Their flowers to any tyrant root are bound;
Because they too, at war with pettiness,
Desire to live, like souls that know no stain,
Without one touch of contact with the ground.

Las Orquídeas

   Caprichos de cristal, airosas galas
de enigmáticas formas sorprendentes,
diademas propias de apolíneas frentes,
adornos dignos de fastuosas salas.

   En los nudos de un tronco hacen escalas;
y ensortijan sus tallos de serpientes,
hasta quedar en la altitud pendientes,
á manera de pájaros sin alas.

   Tristes como cabezas pensativas,
brotan ellas, sin torpes ligaduras
de tirana raíz, libres y altivas;

   porque también, con lo mezquino en guerra,
quieren vivir, como las almas puras,
sin un solo contacto con la tierra . . .

                                                       of the let 
                                                       finely 

                                                       dyed a grammar 
                                                       in that lottery staggered 

                                                       like moss 
                                                       a will blinded 

                                                       by the well 
                                                       wall of tonsil 

                                                       shot through with dross 
                                                       which is flat accompaniment 

                                                       are these vessels 
                                                       vessels 

                                                       to do with movement or arrest

                                                       .

acclaim remit for
a great availment
repertory coarsely dotted
amend flight with hand
glib remain an etch 

                                                       .

                                                       of the rid
                                                       inhere

                                                       respite of the new fled
                                                       of reconnaissance

                                                       comply to the tooth of fine
                                                       amplitude

                                                       gussy up 
                                                       to relation

                                                       solvent
                                                       ablative

                                                       transparent

                                                       .

line of the sentinel form
of the heel 
missions of capitulation
cauterized by willful sabbatical 

                                                       .

                                                       of the sort 
                                                       of verbal emollient

                                                       flattered to grease               
                                                       value

                                                       inhabited   
                                                       breathing a new murmur

                                                       out
                                                       flutter of 

                                                       additive
                                                       like a glass

                                                       fathom
                                                       docks

                                                       where i wait

                                                       .

recount near a setting dubbed
glad with inability with arrangement
loose fit the straight fit
blossoming something 
ancillary

                                                       .

                                                       of address
                                                       emerging the cut out of fluency 

                                                       more literate than
                                                       shame

                                                       could see through 
                                                       an annulment

                                                       pinioned 
                                                       in the representative floor

                                                       decanter
                                                       fixture

                                                       to imagine
                                                       the correct

                                                       routed mouth

Where the vision was is when / There are wood panels all over the house shared by many people / and I am a collective member of a white simulation in black face / There is a man with a low fade who is my friend without his dreads / Never a mirage / Never my eye casting out to itself in memory / There is a fight between the races / Water in the tiger’s mouth / A window / Twin slate moons huddle on the horizon / an oceanic circus of gray-light / a lion in a bubble / Now, all is on the surface / In the back, two blonde women sit on the floor while praying to the dead / We think this is the reason why we’re all here / Him, the white man sitting next to my friend without dreads / Unleashes his mouth / A backwards tongue gaped in riddle / In a kind of future-speak / Saying what sounds like: Is us behind us is each a door, is each a phantom, is each a pool, is each is a broken river looking back / Everyone is now frozen like statues and won’t say anything when I shake them / I lift the shades of all eyes / and every time / I see the same child

                                      the first inheritance      a puncture wound:

                                where you detach from      your mother

                                              an undug grave      call it provenance

                               In one language named       life source      هوى

                            eve. the period preceding      some say wife/mother of [  ]

                                        but origin can’t be        tethered to consequence

                                                        an oculus       doomed to gape before a mirror

                                 my abdomen rounded        a line appeared

                                          from navel to sex        linea nigra

                                        text appeared      ا         the first letter

                                                              abjad         inferred,      ا

                                                    mammalian       I, matriline

                                        I did not want this        look how

                                                     it appeared       I multiplied

                                                  from figment       I bore

                                                            witness:      your body

^{translated by Ilana Luna and Cheyla Samuelson}

Water on water: the tone and the timbre. Impossible to describe the deep empty longing in the voice of birds. This childhood happened elsewhere. The light, as thin as a thread through the eye of the astral needle. Lyme Regis is a town on the coast. The howling of the wind. The taste of salt on the lips, on the neck, right on the tip of the nose. There’s a green that can only be perceived in dreams. There’s no echo without a wall, in effect. Then the girl turned to look at me: you still don’t remember this moment? she asked. Or said. In time I grew expert in wrapping myself up in a black cloak. Someone would sing on the other side of the world; someone else would raise their hand or their voice or their gaze. As far as I know Meryl Streep was never a redhead. Turning corners: the body that departs. Tolling bells: the body that will never return. But how white the foam on the crest of the waves looks! I’ll forget it, I had to admit. The accent marks the longest separation. Skimming: two words that fly over bodies of water, the ocean. What? she asked again. Stupefied is a spectacular adjective. Nobody abandoned you, I had to yell each word for her to hear me. The echo: the wall: the effect. Understanding is just as likely as misunderstanding. A body huddled between clouds. A corner. The voices travel over extremely long distances. The childhood that’s watching me. This sky.

sábado, abril 17, 2010 12:49 am

Agua contra agua: el tono y el timbre. Imposible describir la honda vacía añoranza en la voz de los pájaros. Esta infancia ocurrió en otro lugar. La luz, tan delgada como un hilo a través del ojo de la aguja estelar. Lyme Regis es un pueblo en una costa. El ulular del viento. El sabor a sal sobre los labios, en el cuello, justo en la punta de la nariz. Existe un verde que sólo es posible percibir en sueños. No hay eco sin pared, en efecto. Entonces la niña se volvió a verme: ¿todavía no recuerdas este momento?, preguntó. O dijo. Con el tiempo me hice experta en arroparme con una capa negra. Alguien cantaría en el otro extremo del mundo; alguien más elevaría la mano o la voz o la mirada. Que yo sepa Meryl Streep nunca fue pelirroja. Doblar las esquinas: el cuerpo que se va. Doblar las campanas: el cuerpo que no regresará. ¡Pero qué blanca luce la espuma en la cresta de las olas! Lo olvidaré, tuve que admitirlo. El acento sella la separación más larga. Al ras: dos palabras que sobrevuelan las aguas, el océano. ¿Qué?, volvió a preguntar. Atolondrado es un adjetivo espectacular. Nadie te abandonó, tuve que gritar cada palabra para que me oyera. El eco: la pared: el efecto. Entender es tan posible como malentender. Un cuerpo agazapado entre nube y nube. Una esquina. Las voces viajan distancias muy largas. La infancia que me ve. Este cielo.

& each fish feels solid land before its gills
cease moving. I miss sex but can’t imagine 

dating. Glass shatters in patterns designed 
for a specific aftermath. What confession  

offers isn’t relief. From my bed, coverlet tucked 
under chin, I heard my father’s hand connect 

with my mother’s cheek. A fish slap requires 
actual fish-to-face contact. Windowpanes 

bust in shards. Car windshields spider & smash
into square chunks or mini blocks, so on impact 

they won’t decapitate or slash the face. A tank’s
ideal temperature for tropical fish is 75 to 80 degrees. 

I tried to learn how to stab the worm on the hook 
to bait the prey, but in the end I was only called 

a pussy. Tackle box tipped over, the red & white
striped sleek lure. Don’t they think of everything: 

claims to cover any minor loss, inspections to avert 
damage. Even so, at the health center, the multiple-choice

form omits the oval to fill in adopted so I leave 
the question blank. We’re here to consider my choices

in contraception, how to prevent an itchy rash down there 
& to discuss the definitions of sex & life. What’s hereditary 

gets lost to wonderland, elsewhere a consultant advises 
curators on predation, tells the team which fish to import 

for show-stopping colors & compatibility. But we know 
the inspector misses the crack, walks by the leak, & finally 

without pause someone sweeps & stuffs dozens of trash bags 
with glass & dead fish parts. We want what we want.

The hours, in a long plunge,
Swirl unconquering
Against this motion clear in steel.
Body of an older birth, like rock
That stands against a sea, this motion breaks
Time’s lesser flow. And here is raised
A symbol of the flight in emptiness
That bears the world and our own selves;
Before such clarity the days fall back; the very days
That drown our lives at last, fall spent
Before the deeper might that builds our blood.

poets in their bassinets 
dream a splendid woman holding over their baby eyes 
a globe, shining with 
possibility.    someone, 
she smiles, has to see this  
and report it, and they 
in their innocence 
believing that all will be 
as beautiful as she is, 
whimper     use me, use me 
and oh how terrifying 
that she does.

We
will not
talk about
apophasis—

neither Apophis.
The apotheosis of
Ra’s rivals, prognosis of
an apophysis;

apocryphal
epopee,
awry,
wee.

has only good news for my body
and for my mind, she warms them
and she becalms them unlike her
greek namesake who left her
listeners terrified and tense
ah the onomastic turnaround
took twenty centuries to turn
the older story on its head
which explains ex-lingua why
my modern body feels comfort
in the new diachronic goddess

          ^{a mistranslation of Ursula Andkjær Olsen’s trilogy 
          through a game of Spider Solitaire}

at all times
a sensation of intricate webs
soft, possibly smooth, and heavy

life does not mean the same to them as it does to us:
i lie on their sweat-embroidery

i am allowed to be upset here
fully plugged in
glistening and inaccessible

i eat everything and i am everything:
a garden of marble
between ornamented walls

^{with a final couplet by e. e. cummings}

As Karen Blixen said, the cure’s the sea
—or sweat, or tears—but I prefer the sea.

In fact, it’s homeopathy. Why cry
with eyes baptised (if reddened) by the sea?

The metaphors of fabric come to mind:
cool silk or aqua velvet, summer sea

            (or better, come to body: intimate,
            enveloped skin on skin, the lover sea).

The bone-ache deep, the pains gone unexplained:
for now just dive, ameliorator sea.

The “mermaid’s tears,” smoothed glass or plastic: lovely
but hazardous to creatures of the sea.

This evening’s rough: Poseidon snaps my straps.
Pathetic fallacy, bipolar sea.

And in their one-piece suits, the ladies age
and silver, laugh and rage: September sea.

For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)
it’s always ourselves we find in the sea.