Arts & Craft

I know what I’m going to do next, and I know 
What I’m going to trace 
               Stone moon, 
Broken ship, 
               And the cloud that’s landing 
If my mother was the femme in our story, 
Raising me with her sister, the butch, 
Then whoso frees whatever masc they want 
From men is already king 
But I’ll torch my energetic sadness, pouring up 
To burn my country and my gender 
Like the mosquito in its fancy stripes 
Trying to bite through my jeans 
The doves have been so angry 
And horny in their cups 
Or in the sky’s domed cup of the season 
Around this house with friends who are saying goodnight 
From faces that have already been free and leaving, 
Taking corners slowly, greasy skids 
Going down to the same ditch of solace 
Like our kid said petitioning her way into our bed, 
I just want to lie here like a number

Meaning the many and the shape 
Seen from above when we’re going 
With the animals in the transiting black air 
Hummingbirds all over this early June 
Aren’t war gods because they startle my instruments, 
Extending only so far into the layered resin 
Darkness the park dogs howl in 
To call nearer the estranged 
I think they can choose 
A sudden give in our future, 
Playing at our daughter’s pretend deathbed 
This morning, she wanted me to be a theater, 
Resounding last words of advice 
We glued flakes from the pearlescent edge 
Of the nautilus shell to imagine all the folds 
And surface strain of a sail triangling forth 
The ark she outlined to take her

In the story my mother worked 
For a military dictatorship’s ministry 
Of health, a sisterhood of clerks 
Amid “how handsome, the officers” 
And when she chose to have me, 
I was born or let go as she screamed 
Her mother’s name, bursting 
The thinnest capillaries, purple 
About her neck—that screaming, 
To touch air without breath 
At the edges of the words 
Along which any point is creation, 
Folds a path that doubles back 
To what home? 
The river can be a border 
Or the reason for a city, 
A place for mass burials in the first days of a coup 
We drink the Euphrates, the Mapocho 
In a thirst that tracks to no writ, 
No guarantee of a systemic critique when everything 
And a people need critiques by many and many 
An elegant hand

When the fascists need to get silly 
Off themselves—no pretending—
They parade in boats, they dance 
At the rally to whatever’s playing, 
They tighten their faces 
Everyone knows the truth 
All the time 
It’s beautiful like that, abiding, 
Immovable, common 
Fady says that Darwish said, 
“No people are smaller than their poem” 
Say it again 
When they come to ask 
—Rigor, value, coinage—
Mouthfuls, heavy enough to think we’re here 
My child’s fitful, hard words in her sleep 
The quiet that follows 
The state’s circling planes 
Long avenues and different drugs 
To meet the moment, not yet dangerous 
Or disposable enough to kill or disappear

“Revolution finds a way,” Tongo says 
“You guys are negative,” Jane says through 
Wind chimes tuned to the golden ratio 
We should go 
Into a slight band of teal in the sky, 
Light the trash fire and palm fronds 
Under the new form serpent wending down 
To bring air onto Earth, stars onto my eyes 
Strung to my belly lines, the gifts—
The rain in rivers 
Given to real estate for graves 
Cold fingers, gold breastplate
As sure as I wear my grandmother’s cross 
I drop the amulet, peeled 
Black air turning somewhere in a cave 
Pisces wheeling through dream’s black water, 
While Venus goes to my mother Taurus 
Let the bull eat good grass, drink wet water 
Frame my favorite photograph of her 
A document says itself 
Plus an effluence of time waving 
Us back along geometries that adorned 
The old vessels with the shapes of the rooms 
We’ll come to pour out of

I’ve been a child surrounded 
I’ve been a fiction talking, a state flower signaling, 
A monstrance filled by everyone not-a-man, 
Casting shadows at my eastern wall 
In the work of adding one another in time 
I see an actual cricket turned gray, clung to the corner’s web 
In its deathful leaving and still 
My daughter declares that I teach her nothing’s real 
Not knowing how to look for her, 
I thought the picture held an eye to see with 
But it’s a whole head ringing 
We send her away with ideas 
We take a walk sick with finery, 
Seeing all the hill grass blown north, 
And she asks, “Why are you so angry?” 
Pretender gods, gods of leaving

Everything runs ahead 
A story promises that I’ll catch up 
But a voice that’s stretching into the words, 
So warm, not asking for anything, 
Drafts above mother of the sanitation plant, 
Mother of the second queen, 
Mother of the trees the new hive 
Will visit on their way 
As quantity, extension, inhalation 
Of the fabric that folds 
Love inside and outside at once, 
Along a transference between atomic poles 
That’s transgenerational because it got here

Onto the page where I try to write 
About my grandmother’s first pregnancy 
She was an Aleppo daughter ordered from a bride book, 
Bringing the wrong language to the Andes 
Her new stepkids took her first stillborn by the heel, 
Far from her Arabic, taunting 

I heard the story as a child, not told to me 
But strung up in the air around me 

That distance from her body to her fetus, 
My friends tell me, would be called massafa in Arabic 
But she might say it’s buʿd—a whole dimension

Where both the story 
And the state break a little, 
Dicks are just more of the porous 
Surface on the folding river running tense 
Enough for anyone to walk on 
Or soft releasing the dead 
From their shapes; they come nearer 
Inside, an increase that wants to turn out 
More accountable than each other’s healers 
Or comrades, 
To train a love for whoever, in their gesture 
And trace, would help us make of poems 
A resonance not lonely or owned, 
Opening at each heel’s step to sense 
One another having gone before

Practicing how to vacate detachment and still 
Rightly unwelcomed in the words, 
I pronounce whatever comes my conviction 
I know that the horse wading in to soak 
Holds me in the dream water 
By letting me see it, I know that when I fill 
With breath enough to float 
And fold into those already here, 
Every inch of altitude surprises, 
Falling into the mirror the sky is