I shall hate you
Like a dart of singing steel
Shot through still air
At even-tide,
Or solemnly
As pines are sober
When they stand etched
Against the sky.
Hating you shall be a game
Played with cool hands
And slim fingers.
Your heart will yearn
For the lonely splendor
Of the pine tree
While rekindled fires
In my eyes
Shall wound you like swift arrows.
Memory will lay its hands
Upon your breast
And you will understand
My hatred.

Sudden cold or the sudden sense of having been cold for a long time

He said he was getting back some things that had been lost like what

Love oh great looking out across the river he wouldn’t meet my eyes either

Something flashed up and fell back down into the water there look no

I told him about the time I saw them feeding the crowd up out

Of the dark water of paler mouths opening closing like what

Getting the strength to say lost he was beautiful the play

Of that muscle I make you tense don’t I just under the tan skin of his jaw

I keep coming back to the surface that river your wrist I must have

Pressing my mouth I can’t look at your hands thinking of how you

Touched me hurt you a lot love like what those memories

Saying you’re wearing mallard colors after I chased to frighten

For no reason the ducks because I can’t stand still enough if I could

I would be so still you would think I would never hurt you

Screaming what was her last name what was her name

The wind-scarred surface of the water

What I'm not allowed to feel what I’m not allowed to say pressing up

As though feeding my heart is everywhere under my skin

And rising up to the surface of the water clenching and unclenching

The thick grey muscle the dense shoal of fish brought to just beneath

The surface the grotesque bouquet of their rapidly blossoming and

Shutting the crowd but as if behind glass so there was no sound

Of people screaming I feel helpless and cold saying please believe

I did not mean to hurt you you could say that to me too in Orphée

The poet presses against the mirror which wavers like water which lets him in

I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I watered it in fears
Night and morning with my tears,
And I sunned it with smiles
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright,
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine,--

And into my garden stole
When the night had veiled the pole;
In the morning, glad, I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

Odd how you entered my house quietly,
Quietly left again.
While you stayed you ate at my table,
Slept in my bed.
There was much sweetness,
Yet little was done, little said.
After you left there was pain,
Now there is no more pain.

But the door of a certain room in my house
Will be always shut.
Your fork, your plate, the glass you drank from,
The music you played,
Are in that room
With the pillow where last your head was laid.
And there is one place in my garden
Where it’s best that I set no foot.

^{after Gwendolyn Brooks}

My wild grief didn’t know where to end.
Everywhere I looked: a field alive and unburied.
Whole swaths of green swallowed the light.
All around me, the field was growing. I grew out
My hair in every direction. Let the sun freckle my face.
Even in the greenest depths, I crouched
Towards the light. That summer, everything grew
So alive and so alone. A world hushed in green.
Wildest grief grew inside out.

I crawled to the field’s edge, bruises blooming
In every crevice of my palms.
I didn’t know I’d reached a shoreline till I felt it
There: A salt wind lifted
The hair from my neck.
At the edge of every green lies an ocean.
When I saw that blue, I knew then:
This world will end.

Grief is not the only geography I know.
Every wound closes. Repair comes with sweetness,
Come spring. Every empire will fall:
I must believe this. I felt it
Somewhere in the field: my ancestors
Murmuring Go home, go home—soon, soon.
No country wants me back anymore and I’m okay.

If grief is love with nowhere to go, then
Oh, I’ve loved so immensely.
That summer, everything I touched
Was green. All bruises will fade
From green and blue to skin.
Let me grow through this green
And not drown in it.
Let me be lawless and beloved,
Ungovernable and unafraid.
Let me be brave enough to live here.
Let me be precise in my actions.
Let me feel hurt.
I know I can heal.
Let me try again—again and again.

is the one in which she devours an egg sandwich on the overcast train ride to Montauk. Both of us desperate to quit the city, even just for one day, so foolishly we underdressed for the sea. How far a few bucks take us: to the top of a lighthouse, a tote bag full of ceramic souvenirs, a single lobster roll. She poses for photos along the bluffs. I dip my feet into the cold ocean. We talk about our parents, their failures, our own. As she naps on the sand, wrapped in a gauzy scarf, I shiver and watch the clouds move fast across the horizon to reveal sunset’s approach. It is just a sunset. It’s beautiful, and means nothing more than the end of a long day. At dinner, we bicker about the bacon in our pasta. The argument is more about exhaustion than it is about pork. We spend what feels like hours in silence drinking water from a patient bartender. We don’t speak again till we board the last train back to the city when she offers me gummy candy from the depths of her bag. She is alive, and our bodies recline on the train’s seats and thrash with laughter from a joke only we know.

Thanks for the tree
between me & a sniper's bullet.
I don't know what made the grass
sway seconds before the Viet Cong
raised his soundless rifle.
Some voice always followed,
telling me which foot
to put down first.
Thanks for deflecting the ricochet
against that anarchy of dusk.
I was back in San Francisco
wrapped up in a woman's wild colors,
causing some dark bird's love call
to be shattered by daylight
when my hands reached up
& pulled a branch away
from my face. Thanks
for the vague white flower
that pointed to the gleaming metal
reflecting how it is to be broken
like mist over the grass,
as we played some deadly
game for blind gods.
What made me spot the monarch
writhing on a single thread
tied to a farmer's gate,
holding the day together
like an unfingered guitar string,
is beyond me. Maybe the hills
grew weary & leaned a little in the heat.
Again, thanks for the dud
hand grenade tossed at my feet
outside Chu Lai. I'm still
falling through its silence.
I don't know why the intrepid
sun touched the bayonet,
but I know that something
stood among those lost trees
& moved only when I moved.