Red crop milk of the greater flamingo makes the blue sky blush
each dusk. At last, love has woven itself into my life like a rumor. It bleeds 
 
into every dream and atmosphere, every bite, so even the hot white 
cream of rice I eat while reading our synastry before I sleep turns
 
rose. Red crop milk of the greater flamingo carries carotenoids
to the magenta neck of a pink gladiolus bloom, one of twelve that burst
 
from a single spike, each with its trio of anthers dancing atop the ovary
just like the joyous ladies on the Three of Cups whose chalices tilt
 
to spill red crop milk of the greater flamingo. Gladioli transubstantiate
the water in my bedside vase from clear to crimson, while your Moon 
 
touches my Venus and my Mars dwells in your eighth house, so our home
would be a haven and the rest is too carnal to tell without blushing
 
fuchsia. Red crop milk of the greater flamingo infuses every form of life 
with that delicate animal tenderness—you know, the way a heart beats
 
inside a creature feathered or furred, or beneath grasses in the wind, deep 
under the pelt of the Earth, or under my skin as I lie here thinking of you,
 
blue. Red crop milk of the greater flamingo pulses through the puddle
of porridge my brain has become because when I fall in love, love bleeds
 
into everything. Just imagine how it must be for the maker, the mind 
behind creation who weaves it all together in an expansive act of love, who
 
makes red crop milk of the greater flamingo, who sees the florist’s neon
sign in space and decides to send sumptuous bouquets of magenta-necked
 
gladioli stems to a few particular stars. The consequent outburst of stellar
delight is explosive, and that’s how Earth is born. Earth’s umbilical cord
 
contains red crop milk of the greater flamingo. Imagine what it’s like to be
the one who wove and weaves and weaves, whose love and longing to be 
 
loved bleeds through every seen and unseen strand of life: the lonely inability,
because you’re God, to write in ink I must go to bed O go with me go with

me. Red crop milk of the greater flamingo tints three gray-downed chicks 
light pink. At night it drips slowly from my pineal gland into the diocese

of my brain that’s obsessed and blue because I can’t write go with me 
to one who’s already tugged a garter from the thigh of his bride. At night it 
 
drips: red crop milk of the greater flamingo drips, converts an earthly feeling
into a thing divine, transforms my blue to violet, purest violet of the seventh 
 
ray, meaning even if I can’t have you, I can love you
anyway. And I can love the lonely one who wove you, anyway.

called death, I hope
to be thinking about
the texture of the bucatini
at Campiello, how they seated us
in the bar by the pizza cooks, but when we asked to sit elsewhere

they put us beside
a giant strangler fig
with fake orchids we thought were real.
Al dente, which I pronounced al Dante, in honor of my nephew,
in honor of the circles of hell, my heritage. When I’m on the bed called            death

I hope I recall your smile that evening
when you learned budino means pudding,
a butterscotch pudding, which we more than managed
despite finishing our entrées. In la stanza della morte, shoving off
my mortal foil, may I be dreaming of butterscotch pudding, the feel of 
     my hand

on your back, recalling the call you made
from a mile down the beach to tell me there were no
yellow hilly hoop hoops, greater cheena reenas, or froo froostilts.
I walk back to the car while you call again, this time to tell me you found
a flock of dunlins and semipalmated sandpipers. There’s an actual flush            toilet 

at the parking lot! And potable water! And my love calls again,
this time to say he’s nearing the path to the parking lot. No, I don’t have
the keys to the car or a single coin, but I’ve got water, binoculars, and my          phone,
a little notebook to write down the species—tricolored heron, royal tern,          wood stork—
which I’ll add to my list of what to think about when I’m on my giant                  bucatini platter of a bed.

After I fumble another conversation about love, I think, 
Bird wouldn’t have hesitated for a moment, played 
coy as if everyone didn’t already know what #33 would do, 
daggers for eyes, soft hands ready to guide that orange ball 
exactly where he said he would. I’ve taken shots before, 
fear be damned, and missed more than I made, 
gone up and down the court enough to know 
halftime won’t fix everything. 
I’m bruised, my knee barks, my shot is shit, and I 
just need the bank to be open for once, for the glass to 
kiss the ball back, softly. I’m always writing to you 
like a last-ditch prayer, a heave from halfcourt 
moving like a meteor, like I could turn this white page of 
nothing into a night sky, these words constellations, 
old messages that would say in a hundred different 
shapes that I love you. All I ever wanted was Bird’s game, 
quietly telling opponents the spot on the floor where he would 
rise, after a screen and two dribbles, in the corner like a yellow 
sun and let the ball fly. I’m always writing to you 
to remind myself that all love poems are about the future. 
Under the bright lights of this metaphor, I’m digging deep, not 
vanishing when it matters most, to find the heart to take a shot 
when the clock winds down to nothing. The X-Man, 
Xavier McDaniel, laughs when he tells of how Bird took his heart once. 
You already know you have mine when the clock says 
zero my no-look mouth, my honey crossover, my silky net.

^{translated from the Korean by Younghill Kang}

If you were a love, you would love me, but every night
   outside the window you make the sound of footsteps alone;
     without once entering you go back. Is that love?

But never once have I made footsteps outside love’s window.
Perhaps love stays in the lover alone.
Ah! ah! but if there had been no sound of footsteps,
   the dream would not have been startled awake,
      it would have continued to mount into the clouds, seeking you.

꿈 깨고서

님이면은 나를 사랑하련마는 밤마다 문밖에 와서 발자취소리만 내이고 한번도 들어오지 아니하고 도로 가니 그것이 사랑인가요 
그러나 나는 발자취나마 님의 문밖에 가본 적이 없습니다 
아마 사랑은 님에게만 있나봐요 

아아 발자취소리나 아니더면 꿈이나 아니깨었으련마는 
꿈은 님을 찾아가려고 구름을 탔었어요

I had somehow not remembered
that any number times zero is zero.
David said, think of it this way,
20 zeros are nothing. We were in bed,
teeth cleaned, night guards ready
on the bedside tables. His three pillows
stacked behind his head, my five arranged like a boat
to cradle my back, an almost orange
moon penetrating our window through
smoky darkness like a blaze about to leap
across an expanse of pine forest. How
did this happen? All these years together
compressed into this moment of repeating
moments, so many of them indistinguishable;
so few of them recallable. What does dividing
any number by zero do to that number?
This is sort of fascinating, he says, that you
don’t remember any of this. He rolls
toward me, glides his hands around my hips.
His breath is minty, the skin on his face, flushed.
You’re cute, he says, what else
don’t you remember?
I remember running into you
at the Albuquerque airport, honey,
I say, after not seeing you for so many years.
You wore black jeans and a black tee shirt,
a black belt with a sliver buckle, black
Dr. Martens; I looked at you, your jet-black hair,
and somehow I saw that we were about to combine
sorrows and joys into the terrifying equation
of two people equaling one home. I remember
being panicked, my heart leaping into an abyss,
then sinking to my stomach as I watched
what was to become the rest of my life
glide his luggage off the carrousel. I remember
every minute of each labor, each delivery
for both children, and how going into the birthing
room for the second time, I remembered:
pay attention as the baby exits, that final
wet sliding out of me. I remembered
to pause for one of the swiftest moments
in my life, a whole new warm body
joining the living.

i read somewhere

that a group of ladybugs is called

          a loveliness. and i wonder

what the person who gave them

that name (surely someone of at least

              measurable humanity) knew,

or thought they did, about what love

—what kind, specifically—so embeds

            itself in a thing that the thing,

subsequently, becomes an embodiment

of that love: the way river breaks into current;

the way trees make forest, simply

             by standing closer to each other

than to anything else…

               …by which I mean: i need you

to tell me which of my black spots

             you find loveliest. which interruption

of my red feels most human

to the forest of your fingers; the current

            you river into touch

along my breaking skin.

Today the dragonflies return.
The courtyard bursts an insanity of roses.

Today is dense with love perfume.
Ardent sun. The proximity of birds.

Roses bloom just to be noticed. The blessed
blossoms know this is their only purpose.

I await my sojourner, again weary 
from his wandering, and putting to rest 

my witch’s ways. In love I pine
for him but it is air that sustains me.

My Father-light rises spinning, fueling
the world. Life is renewed.

An admirer could remark God is good to me. 
I pray to amplify the burgeoning. Sanctified

I summon a storm, track its thrust with slow eyes.
The lightning will be startling and insistent,

thunder’s belated warning full of bravado.
Mother Moon will kiss withered petals full again.

Fortified by dancing planets, my warrior
will be valiant against the humors of the day, 

I sing a lullaby. It will be a night of dreams.
He will wake refreshed.

His sleeping breath frees me
from the prison of my sorcery.

It’s better to want nothing

more than a voice

to say what is sweet

what is sacred

but not what you can’t say.

The sky & earth sundered

diamond dust froze

for a child to speak at home.

Say what you must to the house

where your parents live/d

even if it’s not the same

door you remember.

The former house hears you

the land remembers all

buildings, homes, temples

and never forgets a foot

that traipsed over its face.

I’ve forgotten what I said

I wanted to tell you

but no matter

the wind says it for me

the wind says it for you

to know a secret

weather holds.

It’s raining again and on

your birthday

droplets are heavy.

Your lover has left you

an umbrella.

^{to Mary Rose}

Here is our little yard  

too small            for a pool  
or chickens   let alone 

a game of tag or touch 
football       Then 

again   this stub-  
born patch  

of crabgrass  is just 
big enough      to get down  

flat on our backs 
with eyes wide open    and face 

the whole gray sky  just 
as a good drizzle 

begins                   I know  
we’ve had a monsoon  

of grieving to do  
which is why  

I promise    to lie 
beside you  

for as long as you like  
or need  

We’ll let our elbows 
kiss     under the downpour  

until we’re soaked  
like two huge nets  
                    left  

beside the sea  
whose heavy old

ropes strain  
stout with fish 

If we had to     we could  
feed a multitude  

with our sorrows  
If we had to  

we could name   a loss  
for every other  

drop of rain   All these  
foreign flowers 

you plant from pot  
to plot  

with muddy fingers  
—passion, jasmine, tuberose—  

we’ll sip 
the dew from them  

My darling                here
is the door I promised  

Here
is our broken bowl Here  

                        my hands  
In the home of our dreams  

the windows open  
in every  

weather—doused  
or dry—May we never  

be so parched