Lust leaks from the inner rings of our bodies:
tree-trunks scarred with age. We say we’re tired,

but our lust surges above oceans, loosens clouds
and frees the sky. It unchains hurricanes

and brings saw-toothed parsnips into being.
Our love breeds stinging nettles that flank the woods.

No one guesses it hums within our skin.
When I was young, did I river next to fields,

feeling this much rapture? Did I break open
with more happiness, hiking along coastal meadows

or striding on city streets? Sometimes, I want to tell you,
I’m afraid of joy. Sometimes, I believe I’m worthy

only of grief. Even when dogwoods blossom,
I—a fool—cling to the faith I have only in my grief.

The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don't flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;
as Saint Francis
put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow
began remembering all down her thick length,
from the earthen snout all the way
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine
down through the great broken heart
to the sheer blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath them:
the long, perfect loveliness of sow.

Near the entrance, a patch of tall grass.
Near the tall grass, long-stemmed plants;

each bending an ear-shaped cone
to the pond’s surface. If you looked closely,

you could make out silvery koi
swishing toward the clouded pond’s edge

where a boy tugs at his mother’s shirt for a quarter.
To buy fish feed. And watching that boy,

as he knelt down to let the koi kiss his palms,
I missed what it was to be so dumb

as those koi. I like to think they’re pure,
that that’s why even after the boy’s palms were empty,

after he had nothing else to give, they still kissed
his hands. Because who hasn’t done that—

loved so intently even after everything
has gone? Loved something that has washed

its hands of you? I like to think I’m different now,
that I’m enlightened somehow,

but who am I kidding? I know I’m like those koi,
still, with their popping mouths, that would kiss

those hands again if given the chance. So dumb.

The fist clenched round my heart
loosens a little, and I gasp
brightness; but it tightens
again. When have I ever not loved
the pain of love? But this has moved

past love to mania. This has the strong
clench of the madman, this is
gripping the ledge of unreason, before
plunging howling into the abyss.

Hold hard then, heart. This way at least you live.

and I’d like to get naked and into bed and be hot radiating heat from the inside these sweaters and fleeceys do nothing to keep out the out or keep my vitals in—some drafty body I’ve got leaking in and out in all directions I’d like to get naked into bed but hot on this early winter afternoon already dusky grim and not think of all the ways I’ve gone about the world and shown myself a fool, shame poking holes in my thinned carapace practically lacy and woefully feminine I’d like to get naked into bed and feel if not hot then weightless as I once was in the sensory deprivation tank in Madison, Wisconsin circa 1992 I paid money for that perfectly body-temperatured silent pitch dark tank to do what? play dead and not die? that was before email before children before I knew anything more than the deaths of a few loved ones which were poisoned nuts of swallowed grief but nothing of life of life giving which cuts open the self bursting busted unsolvable I’d like to get naked into the bed of my life but hot hot my little flicker-self trumped up somehow blind and deaf to all the dampening misery of my friends’ woe-oh-ohs and I’d like a little flashlight to write poems with this lousy day not this poem I’m writing under the mostly flat blaze of bulb but a poem written with the light itself a tiny fleeting love poem to life hot hot hot a poem that would say “oh look here a bright spot of life, oh look another!”

^{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.

Desire is never one way. Black

          snakes crawl through your throat. The divine longs

for human proximity to divinity. The divine longs

            for touch. You have not wanted

a body. And you have

            wanted. A careless

tongue can make chatter

but unrequited love

          can make an avalanche.

Your teeth chatter and you know

            somewhere a funeral parade is moving, one ant

after another marching. Your snake shed its skins as the curve of a               pilgrimage

          awaiting dawn. Heaven is too much a metaphor

to be of use to a lover weeping for

a false love. Every shaman needs a healer

and every God a devotee they can admire.

When God comes back from the pilgrimage, you are more

          plump. Everyone can see your wisdoms

sprouting. This time — dangerous. Even women

          will cast stones. Watch the people’s hands: they carry

shards of their half-spoken dreams. But you have

                          invented an embrace. In the first worship,

you make the one devoted to devotion devoted to you.

You bring the mountain

into your lips. Without

prayer, your mouth blooms.