^{—after Akhmadulina}

Some things you don’t come back from.
The body carries on. Of late
it even travels, basks in light.
But knock and there’s no one home.

(How did I love you? With the taste
of iron on my tongue. Try again.
How did I love you? Like a man
destroying what he tries to save.)

The head still does light labor.
But often both the hands fall slack,
and all five senses, in a flock,
go south to weather winter.

^{translated from the Greek by Jackson Watson}

Here the days don’t dissolve in air 
they fall into the water 
shaping their own shell 
a sheen of separation. 
A hawk flies over summer’s body 
diving again, again 
feeding and drunk from the fall. 
There’s nothing here 
but manic wind alone and stones 
and sea 
a senseless promise 
sharpens our lust with the moon’s blade.

When I arrived here, in the landscape of endings, 
the wind entered my mouth with so much rage 
as if I were its only vessel 
until all my words vanished.

Each tree receives the wind’s gust differently 
some suffer, others—again—resist 
(I’ve met a palm tree that birthed the wind,
then sent it in every direction) 
others shiver all over and change colors. 
I, of course, am not a tree 
I sat down and wore the wind’s coat 
I stooped my head and looked at the ground 
through its cracks, thyme’s roots 
             & their hieroglyphics 
struggled to enter the light. 
Then the words came back.

Ταίναρο

Εδώ οι μέρες δεν διαλύονται στον αέρα 
πέφτουν μέσα στο νερό
σχηματίζοντας μια καταδική τουςστιβάδα 
Μια επιφάνεια διαχωρισμού. 
Ένα γεράκι πετάει πάνω από το σώμα τουκαλοκαιριού 
Βουτάει ξανά και ξανά 
Τρέφεται και μεθάει από την πτώση. 
Δεν έχει τίποτα εδώ
Μόνο τρελλό αέρα και πέτρες
Και θάλασσα 
Μια αναίτια υπόσχεση 
Ακονίζει τη λαγνεία μας με τη λάμα τουφεγγαριού.

Όταν έφτασα εδώ για πρώτη φορά, στοτοπίο του τέλους, 
ο αέρας έμπαινε στο στόμα μου μετέτοια μανία 
σα να ήμουν ο μοναδικός αποδέκτης του
Μέχρι όλες οι λέξεις μου ναεξαφανιστούν.

Κάθε δέντρο υποδέχεται διαφορετικά τονάνεμο 
Άλλα υποφέρουν, άλλα πάλιαντιστέκονται 
(έχω συναντήσει μια φοινικιά πουγεννούσε τον άνεμο και τον διένειμε
προς κάθε κατεύθυνση) 
άλλα τρέμουν ολόκληρα κι αλλάζουνχρώματα. 
Εγώ βέβαια δεν είμαι δέντρο 
Κάθισα κάτω και τον φόρεσα παλτό. 
Έσκυψα το κεφάλι μου και κοίταξα τοχώμα. 
Μέσα από τις ρωγμές του, οι ρίζες τουθυμαριού 
με τα ιερογλυφικά τους πάσχιζαν ναβγουν στο φως. 
Τότε οι λέξεις ξαναγύρισαν.

^{translated from the Galician/Spanish by Samantha Schnee}

There are women who, upon the bright star 
of each twenty-eighth day,
receive a stream of liquidity in their accounts, 
endometrial or financial,
a blessed
            hemorrhage of cash.

I, on the other hand, have
a costly hypothesis:
each menstrual cycle is one of pointless nostalgia—
a broken necklace of infinitesimal un-births
not this one, or this one, or this other one, or that one …
all those cells waiting just to rush
headlong into dying so easily, 
my embryonic failures, I 
build a nest to curl up close with them
I’m left alone and, softly, I whisper to my ovaries:
Couldn’t you               
                       produce
                                  something more useful?

I swallow a pill
and make haste to desecrate myself.

A Roda Da Fortuna

Hai mulleres que, co luceiro de cada día vinte oito,
báixalles un caudal de liquidez ás súas contas,
endometrio ou salario,
unha bendita
                     hemorraxia de billetes.

A min, porén, píngame
unha gravosa hipótese
—cada ciclo menstrual é unha inútil nostalxia—
ábreseme un colar de diminutos abortos
este non, este tampouco, nin este outro, nin este ...
todos eses xermes facendo quenda para precipitarse
intentando morrer e non lles custa
meus embrionarios fracasos, eu
fago un niño para me recostar con eles
quedo a soas e, en baixiño, besbéllolles aos meus ovarios:
non podedes
                         segregar
                                          algo máis produtivo?

Trago unha pastilla
e corro a abusar de min mesma.

^{translated from the Spanish by Katherine M. Hedeen & Víctor Rodríguez Núñez}

I am a descendent of stillness 
and sailors still in motion, 
a brew of saltpeter and blackbird song. 
In just one bloody wound collide 
impatience and calm. 
If I fall silent and words ripen 
it’s the voice of an olive tree in its quiet seed. 
I am the hesitation between hideout and sword, 
the yellow in all the world’s traffic lights. 
In the future I’ll serve you coffee and worship  
you—like an icon—in a picture frame. 

A dos sangres

Vengo de una ascendencia de quietud 
y marineros todavía en movimiento; 
mezclo el salitre del mar con el canto de un mirlo. 
En una sola herida de sangre colisiona 
la serenidad y el desasosiego. 
Si enmudezco y maduran las palabras 
es la voz de un olivo en su callada semilla. 
Soy la incertidumbre entre el escondite o la espada, 
luz amarillenta en los semáforos del mundo, 
quiero servir tu café en el futuro o adorarte 
—como a un icono—en un portarretrato.

^{translated from the Arabic by Kareem James Abu-Zeid}

I said these words weren’t needed
as I was sitting there,
where the road veered sharply,
without thinking for a moment
that it might only be a gentle winding.
Yet here I am, new,
like I always was.
Why should I care
if it’s the beating of tambourines
or the striking of tablas
or the madness of zurnas
that’s happening here?
I’m made of earth,
so why should I care
if I’m crumbled
or scattered on the land?

It was in this labyrinth,
in it alone,
that I found my way.

في هذه المتاهة

وكنتُ أجلس في المنعطفات  
وأقول هذا كلامٌ نافِل  
دون أن أُفكّر للحظةٍ بأنّها منحنَيات  
وها أنا أكون جديداً  
كما دوماً كنتُ  
وما هَمَّني ضَربُ دفوفٍ أم قرع طبولٍ أم جنون مزامير  
ما همّني ما همّني  
أنا من ترابٍ  
وما همّني أذبلُ أو أُحطَّم بأرضي  
وفي هذه المتاهة 
فيها وحدها 
وجدتُ طريقي.  

^{translated from the Spanish by Janet Hendrickson}

That year, we knew the sky existed 
because we believed in the storm, 
but we never saw the sky.

Shut in from morning until night, 
we couldn’t stop talking about what we’d do after. 
The sea hanging from our tongues. Extinct horses 
went up and down the hills we claimed to know.

After a while, the wind changed, 
it went from west to east and didn’t stop, 
the street filled with rooks and wild dogs, 
and the light became a cliff at day’s end.

And we were each afraid, 
afraid of the noise of the neighbors  
and the absence of noise, 
of the huge tail of the rat descending from the roof, 
of the fighting of the rooks outside

afraid of the children’s insistent question, 
which was always the same, and afraid of memory, 
since we had started to confuse the old days 
with what we imagined lie ahead 
and soon, we no longer knew whether life was just a wish.

We lived a day that went beyond its limits 
like a train longer than the city where it stops.

That year, we survived for seven hundred days. 
Thousands of hours of cold for a single night.

Invierno

Aquel año sabíamos que existía el cielo  
porque creíamos en la tempestad, 
pero jamás veíamos el cielo. 

Encerrados de la mañana a la noche,  
no dejábamos de hablar sobre lo que haríamos más tarde.  
El mar pendía de la lengua. Caballos extintos 
bajaban y subían las colinas que decíamos conocer.

Luego de un tiempo, el viento cambió,  
fue del oeste al este sin detenerse, 
la calle se llenó de grajos y perros salvajes, 
y la luz se volvió un precipicio al final del día.

Y cada uno de nosotros tuvo miedo,  
miedo del ruido de los vecinos y la ausencia de ruido, 
de la cola enorme de la rata que bajaba del techo, 
de la pelea de los grajos afuera, 

miedo de la insistente pregunta de los niños,  
que era siempre la misma, y miedo de la memoria, 
pues empezamos a confundir los días antiguos 
con lo que imaginábamos para más adelante, 
y pronto, ya no supimos si la vida era solo un deseo.

Vivíamos un día que se salía de sus márgenes  
como un tren más extenso que la ciudad a donde llega.

Aquel año, sobrevivimos por setecientos días. 
Miles de horas de frío para una sola noche. 

^{translated from the Italian by Gioia Guerzoni}

In the middle of a winter night 
my father who was not yet dead 
came to visit me in a dream as if dead. 
Wake me up I asked him but he hesitated 
and the terror that he liked death paralyzed me. 
Lift our eyelids—I said without a voice, 
let’s open our eyes wide on what is real. 
Tiredly—I knew he was struggling—I tightened his fingers 
around a dirty-green railing that needed repainting. 
Only then, I think he could feel my hands 
or maybe understand the work that remained: 
the iron to scrape the spatula the paint to choose 
he attempted his usual half smile. He let go 
and made me move on to another dream.

2022, gennaio

Nel mezzo di una notte d’inverno 
mio padre che non era ancora morto 
venne a trovarmi in sogno come morto. 
Svegliami gli chiesi ma esitava 
e il terrore che la morte gli piacesse mi paralizzava. 
Apriamo le palpebre—dissi senza voce, 
spalanchiamo gli occhi su quello che è reale. 
Con fatica—sapevo che faceva fatica—gli strinsi le dita 
intorno a una ringhiera verde-sporco da riverniciare. 
Solo allora credo sentendo le mie mani 
o piuttosto capendo il lavoro che restava: 
il ferro da scrostare la spatola la vernice da scegliere 
abbozzò il suo mezzo sorriso abituale. Lasciò la presa 
e mi fece passare a un altro sogno.

^{—after “Horse” (1980) by Deborah Butterfield}

It looks as if it has only now  
risen from the stall bed, straw

clinging to its body the color of mud, 
but we know from the artist 

it is made of rag paper pulp  
cracking, fibers like small hairs,

ribbons of bamboo leaves, steel  
and chicken wire to look like 

an animal bending down to drink   
perhaps from a bucket of water.

A hoof implies the presence of  
the whole horse. A saddle implies 

a horse and a rider. Where are you  
taking me? In the barn, they crane 

their necks to see who’s coming.  
I feel the weight, the gesture in 

my own body. You become  
the horse: Bonfire. White Crane

A horse is a prayer. 
The meaning changes every day.

Today my mum said she doesn’t remember
arriving at my house with a dishcloth,
doesn’t remember me telling her
my kitten stayed overnight at the vet,
that I’d be coming over to help with bills.
What she remembers is now.
She knows her memory is a ship
leaving port without permission,
her memory is a cloud she can’t hold.
When she asks, Why is everything so hard?
I say, I don’t think you’re the only one
asking that. When I say, I have trouble 
with loss, she says, We are all leaving.
She adds: I know I won’t be around
much longer. So I ask her 
what she’ll come back as? A pig, she says, 
then laughs. I tell her I can’t imagine 
seeing a pig and having to say, 
Oh, there’s my mom! She smiles 
and says, Then maybe I’ll return 
as a hummingbird. Another conversation 
in the present. Another conversation 
I will remember alone.

and God said Let there be light
and we stood before the sun
shed the daylight from our selves
and donned dusk

God said Let there be light
and a moth emerged
from my molasses-black chrysalis

God said Let there be light
and we became
our blackest selves

God said Let there be light
and we became our own gods

God said Let there be light
and from the shade we watched
the sky shine her brightest

Let there be light
and day became
seemingly so

Let there be light
and night was never so black

Let there be light
and flesh became skin

and skin became colored

and the light was let in the house

and the cotton rose in the fields

and the master’s tools took shape

and an ocean kept us apart

and the indigo washed the coastline

and blue-black hands worked their fingers to the bone

and the rivers teemed with teeth

and barks ran through the woods

and the days grew darker

and the heavens rose beyond our reach

and God’s absence became apparent

and smoke poured over the mountain’s edge

and the fields filled with fire

and there was light

To me, one silly task is like another.
I bare the shambling tricks of lust and pride.
This flesh will never give a child its mother,
Song, like a wing, tears through my breast, my side,
And madness chooses out my voice again,
Again. I am the chosen no hand saves:
The shrieking heaven lifted over men,
Not the dumb earth, wherein they set their graves.

^{for Mahmoud Darwish}

I missed you by a few days. We moved to the city where you were scheduled to read. But your heart had its own timeline. All my life I have listened to your voice thunder and grieve. I have memorized your words. Unoriginal, I know, given their stature and my heritage, but it was an act of devotion to poetry. When so much of the music I loved I let go, yours stayed. It’s a song, it’s a song, I’d hum to myself, between wars. Lately, I walk around with a poem of yours I did not memorize in childhood coursing through my veins. No water, no sky, no medicine. No friends and no fortresses. No sail. The sail always catches in my throat. They say you drafted it on one of those boats carrying fighters into the unknown. The lore always imagines it heightens the tragedy. It’s good you are not here. So many of us have been whispering this bitterness to loved ones who passed before the genocide began. This time, we outdid ourselves, left our Romans in the dust. This time, there were no masks to fall.

I know it to be true that those who live
As do the grasses and the lilies of the field
Receiving joy from Heaven, sweetly yield
Their joy to Earth, and taking Beauty, give.

But we are gathered for the looms of Fate
That Time with ever-turning multiplying wheels
Spins into complex patterns and conceals
His huge invention with forms intricate.

Each generation blindly fills the plan,
A sorry muddle or an inspiration of God
With many processes from out the sod,
The Earth and Heaven are mingled and made man.

We must be tired and sleepless, gaily sad,
Frothing like waves in clamorous confusion,
A chemistry of subtle interfusion,
Experiments of genius that the ignorant call mad.

We spell the crimes of our unruly days,
We see a fabled Arcady in our mind,
We crave perfection that we may not find.
Time laughs within the clock and Destiny plays.

You peasants and you hermits simple livers!
So picturesquely pure all unconcerned
While we give up our bodies to be burned,
And dredge for treasure in the muddy rivers.

We drink and die and sell ourselves for power,
We hunt with treacherous steps and stealthy knife,
We make a gaudy havoc of our life
And live a thousand ages in an hour.

Our loves are spoilt by introspective guile,
We vivisect our souls with elaborate tools,
We dance in couples to the tune of fools,
And dream of harassed continents the while.

Subconscious visions hold us and we fashion
Delirious verses tortured statues spasms of paint,
Make cryptic perorations of complaint,
Inverted religion and perverted passion.

But since we are children of this age,
In curious ways discovering salvation,
I will not quit my muddled generation,
But ever plead for Beauty in this rage.

Although I know that Nature’s bounty yields
Unto simplicity a beautiful content,
Only when battle breaks me and my strength is spent
Will I give back my body to the fields.

In the year of providence, in the year of vast greenery, in the rainy season, 
when the creeks tore through the mountainside and flooded the fields,  
when the rains cut great black gouges in the hill behind the church  
so the bones poked through where graves once were— 
In the chaotic days, in the days of mess and brilliance, in the scatter 
of bones, of coffin splinter and bits of cloth where we scavenged 
among the decayed in the afternoon mists—such treasures we  
discovered, coins with faces no one knew, a crucifix golden in the sun,  
a ring and a brooch. We were children and wild, enjoyed the muck and loam  
until the old priest waved his shotgun in the air and we scattered, laughing. 
And then such a silence while we hid among the roots and bones 
of the ancient dead. I have never been happier than that.  

+

I wrote those lines three years ago, imagining decay I’d never see, 
though perhaps you have lived something like it where you are, 
hundreds of years from now, when I have been forgotten. 
In that iteration, they are my own bones poking from the loam 
behind the wrecked churchyard of my imagination. And you, whom I’ll  
never know, pick happily through them for coins. I was thinking about this poem 
at the grocery store, by the refrigerated meats, I was thinking of my distant future, 
and you who live there, when an old man fell suddenly to the floor.   
He lay there beside a broken mayonnaise jar. When I knew he wasn’t hurt,  
I helped him to the bathroom, where I dabbed at his shirt  
with one of those brown paper towels that come on endless rolls.  
He was sweating. He smelled of wine. He offered me $5 for my trouble.  
I didn’t want his money, but I took it just to make him happy.

I do not know the ocean’s song, 
    Or what the brooklets say; 
At eve I sit and listen long, 
    I cannot learn their lay. 
But as I linger by the sea, 
    And that sweet song comes unto me, 
It seems, my love, it sings of thee.

I do not know why poppies grow, 
    Amid the wheat and rye, 
The lilies bloom as white as snow, 
    I cannot tell you why. 
But all the flowers of the spring, 
    The bees that hum, the birds that sing, 
A thought of you they seem to bring.

I cannot tell why silvery Mars, 
    Moves through the heav’ns at night; 
I cannot tell you why the stars, 
    Adorn the vault with light. 
But what sublimity I see, 
    Upon the mount, the hill, the lea, 
It brings, my love, a thought of thee.

I do not know what in your eyes, 
    That caused my heart to glow, 
And why my spirit longs and cries, 
    I vow, I do not know. 
But when you first came in my sight, 
    My slumbering soul awoke in light, 
And since the day I’ve known no night.

We laid our leather boats in a stream,
steered north for bream and bank martin,
fattish brooks and honeyed roots.
We followed the scent of pitcher plants
cast across the river, past 
plumes of bees in orange blooms, 
emerald streamers, hanging moss
where storks at rest, secure in their nests,
tossed upon us tassels of gold, 
what appeared to be various 
species of Gordonia, what the inhabitants call
the White Lily of the Swamp. 

After we came to the land 
of the inhabitants themselves,
holding their jugs in the water-drum of clouds,
waist-high, patient, in fields of floating plants
where trout passed freely,
rainbowed by the force of fresh water,
we removed their phlox-like entrails,
placed their carcasses in forked 
roads of trees, so they appeared as mere
stems, killed by winter frost.

A gift, we thought, from our benevolent god,
the sheen of wet grass in early morning light, like
the minds of those inhabitants, which we had wanted
for our own. As long as this was our dream,
no one would know what was lost. 

You drag the boat across the tallgrass, shake out 
the black snakes that made a provisional home under the bow 
through the length of winter. The rope undone 
for the first time in months, it slews behind you 
through dirt, then shallow water, a thin trail 
that follows you deeper into the afternoon, submits to the pull 
of you, or perhaps the pull of the other shore. So sure you are 
in your solitude, and I am startled to sit here, witness it. 
How smooth is your sailing away, this measured 
but steady drifting under pink, penumbral light. When we first met
you portioned your stories, or they came brash, a light tower’s 
unpredictable beam. Resolving to muteness the year your father 
could no longer hear you, then woodwork, then a decade
of travel. Tulum. The Mont Blanc where the five-foot two French guide 
hauled you out of a crevasse. The Norwegian girl you met at a bar 
in Cambodia who followed you back, wanting 
to show you the ring on her labia. Her Janis Joplin tattoo. I follow you now 
with my late summer eyes. Why do I love watching you like that, 
cruising away from me? As if you are teaching me something 
about love and distance. Two red-tailed hawks surrender 
their shadows to the thicket of spruces. You stare up, 
then past your left shoulder. I think, at me. The wind tugs at every 
boat in our world. A hushed push and pull, a measure of faith 
travels the distance between us. Buoyant as day, thin as light.

^{—after Kaveh Akbar’s “Poetry and Spirituality”}

Before me Kawishiwi stretches— 
river a palette of frost. Nearby  
glazed berries dot the cranberry bushes, 
melt into mirage. Icicles 
too drip remembrance.

But metaphors of a world asleep  
fail this place where even now 
a pileated woodpecker beats a rhythm  
of search—repeats, day by day deeper.  
Watch while the leafless oak opens.

Beneath the protective skin 
of tree, more hard-shelled beings— 
bark beetles, exoskeletons of ants. 
Hear the purr of wings landing,  
jarring rattle as head recites hunger. 

Watch the red blur of devotion—  
manic as our soul, our alone. 
Yet steadily each body maps resilience. 
Where survival turns with planet,  
chases the sun, wait is a courage

we name winter. Beneath ice 
mink, muskrat, and otter swim, 
stalk sleek shadows of fish.  
Woodland dwellers find feast each season— 
oh despair, make that your gospel.

Still, forest grandmothers—all roots 
trunks and limbs—uphold their pact. 
In rhythm of warm days and freezing  
nights, tree roots suction, sap spills 
through bark wounds. Then our tongues 
sticky with spring—then, our song. 

But, in January, we hold this promise. 
While lake ice shifts, dark a murmur, 
a creak. Now moonlight falls on snow crusts— 
always where two touch, night glistens. 
When distant wolf howls, answer comes.

Imagine the upturned muzzle, body  
a triangle of sound. Hazel eyes  
mere slits. This reverence—an ancient hunger 
for pack. See, too, each black branch; 
limbing—bare, suspended in soon.

How pristine the listening posture 
of pine marten, of fisher, of fox— 
each body cocked. To pounce, to dive 
nose-first into snow’s secrets, 
to search winter tunnels for mice.

We, too, poised like supplicants— 
rawness of the world a prayer 
we read but cannot speak. Silence 
an invocation, heavy as tobacco  
sinking into snow—into earth’s altar.

Against moon’s brilliance, slit your eyes. 
Let warmth of reflected light fill you; 
that holy—that glance of tiny gods. 
Make of your hands an empty globe, 
your body a vessel taut as river.

The priest smears the dark—a cross.
The paste of burned palm an anointing
The symbol of mythic penitence.
But repentance eludes me, the turning from sin.
I want to smear the black across my teeth
the way old women do with snuff and spit.
An endless night, the universe, a curse.
I am at home with blood and death and loss. That epiphany
every woman knows the day life rips from her womb.
In that sunlit church, genuflecting before
that tortured body of hope, I curse you.
I will leave you the way flame curls from wood
smoke giving half-hearted chase. This is
how I leave you. In my heart. Leave you.
In my mind. Leave you. In my desire.
With a relentless burn I leave you.
What remains, curdled by water boiling over
from the rice pot is not mere ash.
Not even night. Or the erasure of things
once alive. This thing is more. A devastation
no wind can lift. This is how I leave you.

In the grocery store parking lot I found 
the first orange, thrashed flat by wheel after wheel
of the regional bus that ran from there to the men’s shelter
outside the city limits. I had two red mesh sacks
of oranges dangling securely from my hand.
The fruit’s mealy organ, smeared from portico
to speed bump, was not mine, I knew it was not mine,
but somehow I needed to convince myself
that I had not thrown it on the ground. 
The next was thumb-gouged on the floor 
of a rest stop bathroom. The next, on a curb,
untouched. Its bureaucratic interior, its secret hallways. 
Halved in the dry leaves beside the bike path. 
Floating on the river. In the ATM vestibule, boldly mimicking 
the CCTV’s blank ball. I thought about my complicity 
all the time or not at all. My role in America’s joyless abundance. 
When the death toll was 15,000, in December, a woman set herself on fire
outside the Israeli consulate in Atlanta. More than 120 people
have self-immolated in the last 20 years. For the rights of fathers,
for the climate, for veterans, for the memories of comfort women,
Abdullah Öcalan, the Udmurt language, water and electricity, Tibet. 
Because I did not know what to do with my true responsibility 
I found it senseless, everywhere. Beneath the stone lions 
flanking the Language Arts building, like a dank egg. 
Perfuming blackly on my classroom’s windowsill. 
Blazing, shattered, sweet. As soon as I started to look for them
the oranges disappeared. 

Coda

As soon as the poem was finished, Aaron Bushnell lit himself on fire.  
How did I know the poem was finished? 
I did not, as other poets often claim, put my head down 
on the table and weep. He shouted “Free Palestine”  
until fire ate all the air. The poem was finished because the world  
which had given birth to the poem had ended. 

Footing our cabin’s lawn, before the wood, 
awry & uncontaining yet see walls 
deep-fissured of concrete 
that held their pleasure. Nowadays if you could 
bathe, in the far end, you’d be grassy & beat. 
Hollyhock falls

& goldenrod to seed. Summer’s fair done 
upon this mountain. Give or take a few 
New England hundred miles, 
this must be Gatsby’s terrible pool, the one 
where the Twenties drained out and what we could do— 
undefiled, ah nor defiles—

we stood to wonder. The rough bottom’s burst
with frantic plants. On Smith Point, right at the end,
around an older pool
hung over the roaring sea, except in its worst 
summers, my friend’s grandmother paddled but sunned
in circuit not, her hat horizontal. 

In any case, by the time I realized I hadn’t spoken to my father 
           for many, many years, I was distracted. It was snowing

and I was stuck on page 157 of a biography of Casanova 
           who may have slept with multitudes, but lost 

a fortune investing in a silk factory. I dreamed 
           about that story. I maintained my silence

in my cold room there, in Iowa, where industries 
           disappear the fingers and feet of its workers, a cohort

among which my dad might have been counted 
           had his travels led him farther north. Is there hazard pay

in the feeding of America? I have traveled so far from God,  
           my dad might have quoted if he kept diaries.

But who was I kidding? It was not the season of fathers.  
           It was the season of asylum. My uncle told me so. 

While I sat there, in the gauzy twilight of snowy Iowa,  
           he traveled to the edge of Arizona

where he walked himself, hands in pockets, to border patrol. 
           When I was a child, he was also a child. 

He held me down, poured wax on my neck  
           from hot devotional candles. I read in my room 

when Juan Diego bailed on his meeting with the ghost 
           of Mary, she chided him for worrying

about his terminal uncle. Am I not here, she asked, 
           I, who is your sanctuary? I dreamed about that story 

when the snow first began falling in Iowa. I was warmed  
           by the wax that tore like an arrow through my skin.

where the light, at this hour, fails 
to encounter my body—body

of cold grass & grammar; body 
of calcium & sound. I emerge

from the room, stripped of all 
urgency: runny with vowels

a e i o u  behind my teeth, like some 
old tide I’ve known forever, come

rushing over my mouth: each 
syllable a chime across a horizon-

line, each syllable nudging 
the scalloped edges of a chestnut

tree—melt a unit into a word 
into a sound. leaves sway

& prickle. I hold the words 
by their roots & quietly, let

them go. they land on another 
boulder, lurk in a body of water,

strum someone else’s tongue. in 
my body, I am spun by a frequency

of vibrations, a vocal chord slipping 
into labor. to speak of prayer

is one thing. to swim 
through it? another.

Doom is dark and deeper than any sea-dingle.
Upon what man it fall
In spring, day-wishing flowers appearing,
Avalanche sliding, white snow from rock-face,
That he should leave his house,
No cloud-soft hand can hold him, restraint by women;
But ever that man goes
Through place-keepers, through forest trees,
A stranger to strangers over undried sea,
Houses for fishes, suffocating water,
Or lonely on fell as chat,
By pot-holed becks
A bird stone-haunting, an unquiet bird.

There head falls forward, fatigued at evening,
And dreams of home,
Waving from window, spread of welcome,
Kissing of wife under single sheet;
But waking sees
Bird-flocks nameless to him, through doorway voices
Of new men making another love.

Save him from hostile capture,
From sudden tiger’s leap at corner;
Protect his house,
His anxious house where days are counted
From thunderbolt protect,
From gradual ruin spreading like a stain;
Converting number from vague to certain,
Bring joy, bring day of his returning,
Lucky with day approaching, with leaning dawn.

The family I’m staying with,  
because my father is working,  
have called their dog Darkness,  
and it is a beautiful name.  
I’ve decided to camp.  
And out here in an old tent  
on the edges of their property,  
Darkness encircles me.  
I burrow my back into the field,  
strangely soft with a grass I don’t  
know the name of. I should know  
the names of grasses, and of trees,  
and of so many things.  
                                    Soon, the thick  
wind loosens into coolness and the light  
begins to dim. As I look up into Darkness,  
the underside of her tongue is spotty  
with inky-on-pink constellations.  

Her body makes me think of my own body,  
my fingertips dry as match heads 
that will light this nameless grass if I’m  
not careful. 
                  Darkness is a good teacher,  
and she guides me to be gentle with myself.  
With a nuzzle of her head into my hand,  
she says, in her way, that I am ok.  
I stroke her so long that the heavy night  
settles, and all that is left is the white blaze  
on her chest. 
          Soon, my eyes, and I, will adjust.  
But for now, I’m suspended,  
in this moment that is the sum  
of all moments.  
The grass, it occurs to me,  
is bluestem. The air is amniotic.  
And I cry a good cry as the great dog  
keeps on guarding me. 

We roam but see nothing of the moss-colored divine 
while noon throws a redwood shadow on the plaza.  
On the screen: two sallow-skinned children embrace. 
Their bodies say, fight; their bodies say, hide. 

While noon throws a redwood shadow on the plaza; 
summer flecks by, and you are almost gone.   
Your body says, fight; your body says, hide.  
You speak to a girl in the wind-swept garden.

Summer flecks by, and you are almost gone. 
You donate your secret to June’s long days. 
You speak to a girl in the wind-swept garden. 
The color of my suffering is green unaware.

You donate your secret to June’s long days. 
I retrieve my guilt and confess it to the sky.  
The color of my suffering is green. Unaware,  
you touch me like sunset on granite.

I retrieve my guilt & confess it to the sky.  
This solstice may be the end of me, I say. 
You touch me like sunset on granite. 
Sometimes, I giggle at the drama of our age.

This solstice may be the end of me, I say. 
Your eyes turn Maine Coon, choked, lionlike. 
Sometimes, I giggle at the drama of our age.  
Whose unmooring prowls in us now?

Your eyes turn Maine Coon, choked, lionlike. 
Why do we short the long of desire? 
Whose unmooring prowls in us now? 
We roam but see nothing of the moss-colored divine.  

The mouth of the mother is the mouth of a wolf. We do not know what is wrong with her, her siblings said, your mother. She has always been that way, as though that way was specific, identifiable, understood among all creatures. She has always been full of fear, petulance, and violence, often traveling from pasture to pasture at night, lamenting her state of being with dolorous howls, her throat full of rasping teeth and starlings. She is a great reaver and spewer of blood, they said, but also flees when met with the slightest resistance, and then hunches into a shivering lump to play martyr. She birthed and devoured a hundred babies before she had you. There was nothing we could do to stop her, either from the birthing or the devouring. Why she did not eat you we do not know, but agree the living was worse for you, that is, until you escaped. We did not think it possible. She carried you around by the scruff of your neck, slung you against rocks, pinned you under her forepaws and bathed you in her moldered breath until you screamed. She taught you nothing, neither to hunt nor to flee, and left you shivering upon the cold rock, scoured by winter sun and blasting winds. She was not a wolf. Not even close. She sent you to vacation Bible school. There you learned questionable crafts and the gentle terror of Jesus. We wanted to intervene, but ancient codes prevented it. When you bled, we looked away. When you ran into the sky, we cheered for you. She raged in your absence, slaughtering rabbits in the garden and digging endless tunnels into the earth. Now you have returned. Her mind is a ruin. She is a small child trapped on a merry-go-round. It would be a kindness to sing to her.

Your father gathered what was left
after the birth, slick sack of salt
and blood coloring his hands
warm from my body. He couldn’t help 
that it felt the same as when I took him
inside me, drew him out of himself 
to be joined with what we were making. 
At the edge of our small orchard
he settled the plum seedling
he’d started three years before, 
snugged roots in the hole to eat
the placenta. The part of you 
you didn’t need fed the tree, 
and when you turned six, 
you ate from the branches. 
Your small hands clasping the dark 
shiny skin as you bit the saffron flesh, 
juice dribbling at chin, smell as sweet
as the sugar you were born in.

Too soon some
           of we became
                       they

None of us
           wished this
                       for ourselves

Yet some
           wished the rest
                       less

Moved to move
           many away
                       from the most

Chose to nominate
           the preterite
                       out of our midst

And the song of agreement
           went out from amongst
                       us went wrong

In the trying
           of times
                       trials multiplied

The darkening colors
           of closing time shaded
                       our prospect

But ours was a music
           of consensus could it
                       only live

In a dissolute time
           ours was a resolution
                       were it allowed to sound

The profound space
           of ourselves
                       could it but breathe

In the free air of
           our improvisings
                       was community

Airing our differences
           to the rhythms of 
                       deep time

As deep listening 
           to the welling waves
                       of thought

Transposes into keys
           to the kingdom
                       registers of faith

We shall gather
           in the rest
                       we shall gather by the river

Scoundrel time
           is not to be
                       our time

We play 
           against it and are called
                       free

I drive to the gulf to outrun 
his aura. The neurologist prescribed 
little white pills I place under his tongue 
to stop the seize. The ocean’s grey green 
water is as still as a man before 
he convulses. An aura comes as a breeze 
and the line between this and that 
is unclear. This buoy in the Gulf 
of Mexico, that bird in the sky 
of America, this wave laps the Gulf 
of México, then breaks on the shores 
of America. It’s always mattered 
what we name a body when it’s whole, 
in pieces we name each appendage. 
A foam I’ve never seen collects 
on the sand and I know I can’t go 
for a swim. I want to move water 
with magnets, clean it with charcoal 
and a good net. There’s a woman whistling 
on the beach. Her aura is bright and unforgiving. 
She sings “America the Beautiful.” 
She sings: From sea to every goddamn American sea. 
I walk away but her song follows me, 
carried on by some aura I can’t outrun. 
The sky turns electrical—a zephyr lifts my hair.
You can’t help the epileptic once the seizure
starts. Turn them on their side and let it run. 

Everything is fine: a means to endure  
news cycles, historic cycles, menstrual 

cycles. This is walking home after work,  
crawling into bed naked. Night, quiet with 

snow. I am an empty bank account.  
I am a pylon glowing in the dark. I am  
a primal scream. I am not here.         

The body speaks first. If that doesn’t work,  
the mind empties: a crate of crabs scuttling

toward nothingness. Authoritarianism 
blossoms like a corpse flower: foul men 

spread their stench across the globe.  
I remember these songs. It’s all on fire. 

A meteor // a virus // a bomb   
like a dark-eyed angel hurtles toward us. 

I’d like to see the ocean lap against a glacier 
before the end. I’d like to see the northern 

lights. I’d like to watch effigies of foul men  
burn in the desert. I’d like to be there, reel there, 
at the end.

As if weightlessness were aspirational―
what nonsense―

                                  your death,

        a stone 

I can only hope to shoulder forever. Imagine
it gets better―

                                  what nothing

        am I left with

then? Even despair carries a particular
charge: that fantastic

                                  last whiff of lavender

      detergent

imprinted on the collar of a holiday sweater―

                                    mama,

the mourners are assembling. March me 
up that hill …

First, the beast showed up in the middle  
of the night, entered the gates without 

a sound, sauntering through the field as if 
this was its home, my own home. Then came

the day and refused to absolve me of my girlhood, 
which was also its own. Its lovely face filled 

the streets of my imagination, & though we are  
both exhausted, it is just getting started. It does not

know what it wants with me. Its gaze, other-worldly,  
carrying with itself the portals to my other-selves

who await us patiently, bearers of thorns and honey, 
always speaking without uttering a word, leading me

to my many crucifixions, until I am readied for my own 
wanting. It has been told before, the tale of the beast 

and the man, the beast and man, the beastman. Man  
with too many eyes, limbs far reaching beyond its moat. 

I cannot say I did not see the signs; I cannot say  
I did not sleep with a sharp blade clutched in my fists. 

When, finally, the day of the awakening comes, I rise 
girl no more. Instead, I am another, I am other. 

And the gnawing has just begun. 

I’ve known some men. There was the one who dressed in wool suits, joined the circus at night & ate fire. There was the anthropology professor. The one I wish I had said—Yes, too, there was the one I watched canoe down a city street. That summer the weather was named after one. Harvey. There was the Chicano elder who introduced me to Baldwin, Fanon, X. There was the relative who said. Your laugh. Too loud. No man will want—No man will take—Though he wanted. Though he took. Some should’ve gone to jail. Some should’ve enjoyed a prison of one. There was Mister Piche. Pronounced Pee-Shay. Tenth grade honors lit. Girls’ school. Best teacher ever. Really. I was at the airport waiting for a flight when he phoned. He was upset I kept addressing him by his first name. Sixty years of tobacco in his lungs & a breathing machine on his back, he said—Why do you keep—Can’t you call me—I was concerned about the flight. How to get from one concourse to the next. Not the man who now wanted to be known as father. But hadn’t earned the title. Low man on totem pole. Take it like a man. A good man is hard to find. There were the poets. There was T. There was A. There was the photographer & wine connoisseur. She wasn’t a man but acted like one. Took that fruit inside my chest &—Well you might know the rest. They say a woman will always search for her father in a mate. I say mind your own business. I say remember that adage about the monkey & the show. The winter was unseasonably warm when they lowered the man who wanted to be known as father into the ground. The thawing grass. The birdsong. Made it all less somber. At least this is what I imagine. I wasn’t there. I was never there—