In the burned house I am eating breakfast.
You understand: there is no house, there is no breakfast,
yet here I am.

The spoon which was melted scrapes against 
the bowl which was melted also.
No one else is around.

Where have they gone to, brother and sister,
mother and father? Off along the shore,
perhaps. Their clothes are still on the hangers,

their dishes piled beside the sink,
which is beside the woodstove
with its grate and sooty kettle,

every detail clear,
tin cup and rippled mirror.
The day is bright and songless,

the lake is blue, the forest watchful.
In the east a bank of cloud 
rises up silently like dark bread.

I can see the swirls in the oilcloth,
I can see the flaws in the glass,
those flares where the sun hits them.

I can’t see my own arms and legs
or know if this is a trap or blessing,
finding myself back here, where everything

in this house has long been over,
kettle and mirror, spoon and bowl,
including my own body,

including the body I had then,
including the body I have now
as I sit at this morning table, alone and happy,

bare child’s feet on the scorched floorboards
(I can almost see)
in my burning clothes, the thin green shorts

and grubby yellow T-shirt
holding my cindery, non-existent,
radiant flesh. Incandescent.

must look so small, undetectable even,
from the vantage point where I imagine 

a god could see me, and I do sometimes  
imagine a god like a sentient star

out beyond where our instruments 
could find it, then I talk myself 

out of the image. Out of the concept
entirely. From a distance, I know 

I’m an ant tunneling my way 
through sand between plastic panels, 

watched—or not—from outside. 
My puny movements on this planet, 

all the things I’ve done or built 
with my own body or mind, seem 

like nothing at all. But from the inside 
this life feels enormous, unlimited 

by the self—by selfness—
vaster even than the sparkling 

dark it can’t be seen from.

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.

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.

We’ve beaten the ornery hours down between us
Their gold teeth spill onto the floor rattling for the corners
Yesterday the wolf took his tickets and ran
That thing that kept jumping in our business
Raising sand collapsed last week
Its wife came for the hog maws this morning
Now it’s just you and me
Caldonia

Caldonia

And that old at last
That’s got up next to us
It unclasps the bitter necklace from around your throat
It whistles Leadbelly between the lips of the bedroom door
What made your big head so
Suddenly doesn’t seem to be 
Such a burning question anymore
Dripping ignorant oil
By the dim light of a neckbone I wonder
Why I’ve never noticed
The dream book pages you’ve plaited
Into your hair
You shake your head slowly clicking
New beads together
And I see in that
Shimmer of glass an end of numbers
You pull me down with you onto the buffalo grass mat
That old at last has laid out for us
And just before the walls come
Tumbling down I hear you singing
Work with me baby

Work with me

              10

maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach(to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn’t remember her troubles,and

milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

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

if i am a woman 
at my breaking point 

in my mouth the last chirp
from a porous bird nested extinct 
watch it fly through my teeth—
a gap there 
an empty tweet of wings 

break me open like any gourd 
& sing inside my flesh 

in my mouth truth like black licorice
too strong       too chewy
for this erasure of a tongue
the blood of many 
& the crust so fisty                so knuckled & bedazzled with furry

if i am a woman 
at my breaking point 

break me (even) into pieces 
of dancing cowrie shells 
& bouncing pelvises 
turning counterclockwise 
to receive my broken intonation 

in my mouth 
the hoodlums’ prayers a sacred detour 

into each molar
& secret cavity
cast me
on one side
                                                    yes yes 
                                                    yes yes

if i am a woman 
at my breaking point

                                                   i dare you
                                                   all of you
                                                   to break me
                                                   & put me back together
                                                   as a nod to reparations 

                                                   in my mouth 
                                                   the first period
                                                   all that innocence & shame
                                                   & power tart & spicy like 
                                                   a fire jolly rancher

baldwin, kitt & clifton 
lorde in the form of a crispy cross 

at my breaking point—

in my mouth a closed-door splintering
cuts in the shape 
of a wedge 
in my cheeks
bulging

in my mouth              the only friend
waiting at the floodgate of my tonsils
always in danger of being                         removed
& still—i stay here

& that is the point.

i know the grandmother one had hands

but they were always in bowls

folding, pinching, rolling the dough

making the bread

i know the grandmother one had hands

but they were always under water

sifting rice

bluing clothes

starching lives

i know the grandmother one had hands

but they were always in the earth

planting seeds

removing weeds

growing knives

burying sons

i know the grandmother one had hands

but they were always under

the cloth

pushing it along

helping it birth into

skirt

dress

curtains to lock out

night

i know the grandmother one had hands

but they were always inside

the hair

parting

plaiting

twisting it into rainbows

i know the grandmother one had hands

but they were always inside

pockets

holding the knots

counting the twisted veins

holding onto herself

let her hands disappear

into sky

i know the grandmother one had hands

but they were always inside the clouds

poking holes for

the rain to fall.

My swimmer’s body a slash at the door,
I listen to you thrash against the shore of sleep
I think we owe this to each other, to never dream
Alone again, to come home when asked. You would
Say I want for you the world, its favors. But the world
Is ending, its favors few. I want for us a future
No longer wrecked against the animal love made of us
I want to say I bore witness to the world
And mean I did not flinch when it felled you
I tried. I didn’t, not really. I held my hand out
Shielding only my face from the sun.
The most American disease is the dis-
ease of self-obsession. In its ruins I find
there are questions I never quite learned to ask:

How can I help?
What did you need?
How will I know?

^{translated from the ancient Greek by Bliss Carman}

I seek and desire, 
Even as the wind 
That travels the plain 
And stirs in the bloom 
Of the apple-tree. 

I wander through life, 
With the searching mind 
That is never at rest, 
Till I reach the shade 
Of my lover’s door.

Is it love that drifts your head toward your white, cool shoulder, heat-smitten rose too tense for the white throat? Is it love that paints the eyelid ledge with iris; the weariness of days I dare not know you suffered? Is it love that hurts or thought?

Has sleep conquered love? Have you spent your love on the white cytisus ridges, the Nereid-blue water, the wing-dip of the hills?

Are my own limbs but a sheath for your intensity, my love. 

    I have a friend
And my heart from hence
Is closed to friendship,
Nor the gods’ knees hold but one;
He watches with me thru the long night,
And when I call he comes,
Or when he calls I am there;
He does not ask me how beloved
Are my husband and children,
Nor ever do I require
Details of life and love
In the grave—his home,—
    We are such friends.

On the fringes of conversations
surging around me in a different language,
my tongue is frozen in English.
Silence funnels into my body
I reach for words I recognize—
‘kitap’ book, ‘café,’ brand names.

I nod and smile trying not to look demure,
use abhinaya, throw open the nine gates of emotion,
let wonder, worry, fear, ire, envy, disgust,
piety, surprise, and love cavort on my face,
my hands aiding me, a language refugee,
roaming bazaars and sun-weathered ruins.

“Thank you,” I say to the waiter, touching my heart
as he places aromatic coffee on the table.
Beyond the courtyard, the peach dome of a mosque.
I expect the muezzin to sing at noon,
remember Haji Ali dargah, a moon on the bay
on my bus rides home from college.

In Kolkata when I was 9, I’d played silently,
my ear tuned to my classmates chattering in Bengali,
drinking their words until they became mine.

You only respond
to marrow
scooped clean.

You stare. I touch
your silk. Shiver. Some nights,
you let in a kiss abruptly

through the mask. Pant.
            Here, your bread,
sliced into neat warm ovals.

Whisper. It’s impossible. Is it
that you have nowhere
to go? No. Your family

loves you. But here you are
the only monster. The last
and first star: the one
in the clan who won’t stay put.

Tonight, you arrive;
you said you wouldn’t.
Here, a linen napkin;
we can't always afford it.

I do not always have
what you lope about
seeking. It isn’t so easy
to keep the harness buckled.
            Be still. Only we know
how this works.

You hurt my feelings 
I say to the trees. You never 
ask me how I am I whisper 
to the breakfast taco, before 
an indelicate but determined bite. 
I miss you, I confront
the chair in the stranger’s yard. 
Your strong + silly arms. Your sin-sturdy legs. 

Why don’t you                  me I embroider
in green thread onto a yellow t-shirt 
on sale (jk I don’t do that. I pur-
chase bananas and toothpaste). Oh, 
is this where you go? I murmur 
to my car, who has a secret name. 

Can you hear me? I gesture
mutely to the parking lot. The trees
do not answer; they’re trees, 
                        and know better.