I had no idea that the gate I would step through 
to finally enter this world 

would be the space my brother’s body made. He was 
a little taller than me: a young man 

but grown, himself by then, 
done at twenty-eight, having folded every sheet, 

rinsed every glass he would ever rinse under the cold 
and running water. 

This is what you have been waiting for, he used to say to me. 
And I’d say, What? 

And he’d say, This—holding up my cheese and mustard sandwich. 
And I’d say, What? 

And he’d say, This, sort of looking around. 

My parents took me to Red Lobster to tell me they were getting a
divorce. Parents always take you to Red Lobster when they need to
tell you something awful and important, like failure. They figure if
they’re going to ruin a restaurant for you, it should be somewhere
lame, like Red Lobster or Olive Garden. We went to Red Lobster.
They couldn’t bring themselves to say anything. I was confused. My
brother, visiting, offered to tell me. He told me. I didn’t take it well.
To calm me down, he tried to read “Macavity: The Mystery Cat” to
me while I was throwing things. He ruined it. We were supposed to
ruin Red Lobster. I tried to break a toy school bus that he had given
me but it was too well made and solid wood so I gave up. It’s not
that I don’t want to be your mom, it’s that I don’t want to be anyone’s
mom. You can call me Phyllis and we can work on being friends. When 
I get back. My father hired a housekeeper. She wasn’t a good cook 
but she made a lot of Mexican food, which I liked. The first time
she made albondigas, my father thought it was matzo ball soup
made by a crazy person. He accused her of being a crazy person.
He raised his voice and gripped the edge of the table to keep his
hands down, so that was ruined for me as well. She should have left
but she didn’t, she stuck around until my future stepmother entered
the competition for the slot in the kitchen and won. They took me
to Red Lobster to let me know they were getting married. I had
popcorn shrimp and nodded along. My mother sent me a postcard
with a picture of the Eiffel Tower, telling me how great things were.
It had domestic postage.

^{for Kojo}

There is the fickle shadow, the dialect 
of my body; me standing before myself—  
as if the framing of this ordinary mirror,  
is the small light of a window, 
and see this naked man, no longer shy,  
move me with the muscle 
of thighs and the flattery of shoulders—  
this is a kind of art; perhaps 
the only art there is, my body 
still able to seduce me to tenderness.

My calculus of pleasure or contentment 
is the way my older self, 
that brother of mine who faced 
the wars, four years ahead, 
the blasted sight, the kidneys’ 
decay, the atrophy of bone in his 
spine. To think I found comfort  
in the slow calculation. He was 
broken long before, and I have survived 
another curse. This is as ugly 
as all love can be. And, so, I give 
thanks for this body walking 
towards the trees, away from me 
the machine of me, my backside 
a revelation.

^{after Hikmet/O’Hara/Reeves/Vuong}

Someday, I’ll love Dean Rader
                                                          the way the blue jay
loves the sparrow egg,
or perhaps the way the waves love the curve they give
themselves to when giving is no longer an option
like falling or dreaming
                                           or even being on this earth,
in this body.
                          Someday I’ll love my body, itself a form of silence,
which is not the same as being quiet, 
even though we are sentenced to this language with its strange letters,
their shapes like bowls, small sticks, the bellies of pregnant women, 
as though everything spelled 
                                                      must also be birthed and broken,
cracked open and spilled, 
                                                filled with the absence of what won’t do,
like waiting for the earth to tap out your name.
                                                                            I never knew I loved my name, 
can someone who has never believed his name love it? 

Once on a train to Serbia a soldier woke me from a dream I still remember
and pointed a gun at my right shoulder. 
                                                                                              I never knew 
I loved my shoulder until I placed my son’s head there 
our first night home from the hospital, 
                                                                      his chest lifting like an umbrella
in a storm. I don’t like comparing my son to an umbrella,
though he has known what it is to be folded, 
                                                                                to be wet and cold.
Someday I will love the cold,
                                                     not just as metaphor but as a means to clarity,
which is what I need this November night, 
the moon swinging in its black noose over the city,
the entire world hooded, 
                                             blindfolded perhaps,
lined up against a wall and waiting,
                                                                       the way a reader waits,
for a poem to get where it’s going. 

Someday I will love the poem, 
                                                         the way I will love being afraid,
but this is not what I want to say.
It is something more like this: 
                                                       the future is not what it used to be,
and even that is only part of it.
The other part has something to do with speculation, 
like what awaits us when we remove the hood. 
                                                                           I never knew I loved blindness. 
The punishment for sight is always forgiveness.
Someday I will love forgiveness, 
                                            but it is difficult to love what has not been earned.

My grandfather when he was tenderest would call me Dean Dean,
and I felt like a child 
                          in the body of a boy who believed he had the ideas of a man.
Every morning after breakfast he and my grandmother
would throw leftover toast into the backyard for the birds.
I just remembered the birds and the bread. 
                                                                                          I love them both. 
Someday I will love more things, 
                                                                   and I will not think of death,
and even if I do I will not feel saddened by the end
of the person who wears my name, 
                                                               even though it is always easy to mourn 
                            a stranger.

^{*To read this poem in its intended format, please click here from your laptop or desktop.}