On the cusp of winter, under the pollution
of a hunter’s moon, I see, for once, no bird,
but a cross; no wing but a brace to bear
what must be borne. Here: the queen on her throne,
the Summer Triangle, the wingtips
of the great swan charted in the sky.
The guide says there are three great birds of the Milky
Way, the Pathway of the Birds. I make note,
try to imagine what I might fashion
in the cold night, in this place I didn’t ask to inhabit.
How did I end up here? What wind blew me
off course, took me from heart and home? My
body falters, loses feather and beak
and bone, turns to dust or ice or stone.

I am taken with the hot animal
of my skin, grateful to swing my limbs

and have them move as I intend, though
my knee, though my shoulder, though something
is torn or tearing. Today, a dozen squid, dead

on the harbor beach: one mostly buried,
one with skin empty as a shell and hollow

feeling, and, though the tentacles look soft,
I do not touch them. I imagine they
were startled to find themselves in the sun.

I imagine the tide simply went out
without them. I imagine they cannot

feel the black flies charting the raised hills
of their eyes. I write my name in the sand:
Donika Kelly. I watch eighteen seagulls

skim the sandbar and lift low in the sky.
I pick up a pebble that looks like a green egg.

To the ditch lily I say I am in love.
To the Jeep parked haphazardly on the narrow
street I am in love. To the roses, white

petals rimmed brown, to the yellow lined
pavement, to the house trimmed in gold I am

in love. I shout with the rough calculus
of walking. Just let me find my way back,
let me move like a tide come in.

To all the boys
who asked me
to dance and to 
all the boys to whom
I said yes and to 
all the steps we took
right and left and to 
the one who bought
me a corsage of roses
to match my dress and to
the one who asked me
if I wanted a kiss and to 
the one I kissed even though
I didn’t want to kiss and to 
the one who kissed the girl
I really wanted to kiss— 
I wish my wishes were kisses.

Hushed whispers in an undisclosed room

            Take it out of the girl

a child, boyish in nature             their smallness magnified.

Outcasted—the soft bodied animal you are

determined unruly animalia,

                                                   what survives inflation & inertia?

The body is a set of complex feedback systems

nothing is as it appears

                                                   the coexistence of a beard & breasts

                                                   evidence of the body’s willfully defiant nature

The body’s resilience amid the promise of perish:

                                              somehow the child survives their own hand

                                              the day’s weary edge inverted toward grace

A child, boyish in their nature           & barrel shaped

            survives sedimented against the residue

            of dunes, soil, leaf litter,       & the bodies of a lesser

What couldn’t be excised

            your boyish nature

            your untamed phylum,         your small heart pulsing loud

                                                        notes against the night.

   What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I
walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-
conscious looking at the full moon.
   In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the
neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
   What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping
at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in
the tomatoes!—and you, García Lorca, what were you doing
down by the watermelons?

   I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking
among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys.
   I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork
chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel?
   I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following
you, and followed in my imagination by the store detective.
   We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary
fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and
never passing the cashier.

   Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in a hour.
Which way does your beard point tonight?
    (I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the 
supermarket and feel absurd.)
   Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add
shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we’ll both be lonely.
   Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue
automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?
   Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what
America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you
got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear
on the black waters of Lethe?

—Berkeley, 1955