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Alone
Lying, thinking
Last night
How to find my soul a home
Where water is not thirsty
And bread loaf is not stone
I came up with one thing
And I don't believe I'm wrong
That nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.
There are some millionaires
With money they can't use
Their wives run round like banshees
Their children sing the blues
They've got expensive doctors
To cure their hearts of stone.
But nobody
No, nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Now if you listen closely
I'll tell you what I know
Storm clouds are gathering
The wind is gonna blow
The race of man is suffering
And I can hear the moan,
'Cause nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.
I Don’t Know What Will Kill Us First: The Race War or What We’ve Done to the Earth
so I count my hopes: the bumblebees
are making a comeback, one snug tight
in a purple flower I passed to get to you;
your favorite color is purple but Prince’s
was orange & we both find this hard to believe;
today the park is green, we take grass for granted
the leaves chuckle around us; behind
your head a butterfly rests on a tree; it’s been
there our whole conversation; by my old apartment
was a butterfly sanctuary where I would read
& two little girls would sit next to me; you caught
a butterfly once but didn’t know what to feed it
so you trapped it in a jar & gave it to a girl
you liked. I asked if it died. you say you like
to think it lived a long life. yes, it lived a long life.
[you fit into me]
you fit into me
like a hook into an eye
a fish hook
an open eye
Nine Spice Mix
First they tango on my tongue,
nimble couples careening,
then together
form an Arab-style line dance
stepping, stomping, swaying.
West Indies allspice dazzles,
berries tangling with cinnamon sticks,
while cloves, Indonesian natives,
lead with a spirited solidarity solo.
Coriander seeds offer greetings in Hindi
as others toast comrades in languages
beyond borders and blockades.
Lifting up sisterhood, sun-wizened nutmeg
starts a sibling dance with mace.
Cumin demurs, then surprises
with subtle exultation.
Queen of spices cardamom,
host of the party, gives a nod to flavors
in hiding: lemony, sweet, warm,
fragrant, nutty, pungent, hot.
Encouraged, feisty black peppercorns
shimmy center stage, organizing
the unique union of nine
for a vivacious global salute.
Trash
Attack, balderdash, blackness (they call from the rafters), blather
-skite, claptrap, crap, codswallop, a dollop of damns in generally
pristine prose or speech, drivel, dross, effluvia, fiddle-faddle, flap
-doodle (a personal favorite), folderol, garbage, guff, hogwash,
hokum, horsefeathers (you can almost envision Pegasus mid-flight),
humbug, imitation (not the thing itself but the accusation), jazz, junk,
kaput, lambast, loss, malarkey, mass entertainment, mass incarceration’s
psychic aim (a problem isn’t real if you no longer see it), muck, mush,
nonsense, nuts, oblivion, piffle, poppycock, quagmire, refuse, rubbish,
slush, tommyrot, tosh, trash (as in the everyday phenomenon but
also talk), twaddle, undercard (ostensibly), underdog (mentally,
you recite their harms before the fight begins), vilipend, wreckage,
excess, extra, yack, youth that cannot be used, zip, zero, easy.
One Art
The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.
—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
Second Helpings
I wear my heart on my sleeve,
or rather both sleeves, since
it's usually broken.
Sometimes when I join my hands
to pray, the jagged edges
briefly touch,
like a plate that fell and cracked
apart from being asked
to hold too much.
a song in the front yard
I’ve stayed in the front yard all my life.
I want a peek at the back
Where it’s rough and untended and hungry weed grows.
A girl gets sick of a rose.
I want to go in the back yard now
And maybe down the alley,
To where the charity children play.
I want a good time today.
They do some wonderful things.
They have some wonderful fun.
My mother sneers, but I say it’s fine
How they don’t have to go in at quarter to nine.
My mother, she tells me that Johnnie Mae
Will grow up to be a bad woman.
That George’ll be taken to Jail soon or late
(On account of last winter he sold our back gate).
But I say it’s fine. Honest, I do.
And I’d like to be a bad woman, too,
And wear the brave stockings of night-black lace
And strut down the streets with paint on my face.
Paul Robeson
That time
we all heard it,
cool and clear,
cutting across the hot grit of the day.
The major Voice.
The adult Voice
forgoing Rolling River,
forgoing tearful tale of bale and barge
and other symptoms of an old despond.
Warning, in music-words
devout and large,
that we are each other’s
harvest:
we are each other’s
business:
we are each other’s
magnitude and bond.
Labor
I spent what light Saturday sent sweating
And learned to cuss cutting grass for women
Kind enough to say they couldn’t tell the damned
Difference between their mowed lawns
And their vacuumed carpets just before
Handing over a five-dollar bill rolled tighter
Than a joint and asking me in to change
A few lightbulbs. I called those women old
Because they wouldn’t move out of a chair
Without my help or walk without a hand
At the base of their backs. I called them
Old, and they must have been; they’re all dead
Now, dead and in the earth I once tended.
The loneliest people have the earth to love
And not one friend their own age—only
Mothers to baby them and big sisters to boss
Them around, women they want to please
And pray for the chance to say please to.
I don’t do that kind of work anymore. My job
Is to look at the childhood I hated and say
I once had something to do with my hands.
The Laughing Heart
your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.
There You Are
There you are
this cold day
boiling the water on the stove
pouring the herbs into the pot
hawthorn, rose;
buying the tulips
& looking at them, holding
your heart in your hands at the table
saying please, please to nobody else
here in the kitchen with you.
How hard, how heavy this all is.
How beautiful, these things you do,
in case they help, these things you do
which, although you haven’t said it yet,
say that you want to live.
excerpt from “Black History Month (As Told By My Spam Folder)”
excerpt from “Black History Month (As Told By My Spam Folder)”
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New Message Draft
Subject: How Do I Put It?
My existence can be boiled down
to a litany of companies trying
to sell back to me their abuses.
My freedom is conditional and therefore
worth only as much as I’m willing
to subscribe. My life cannot be bought
but it can be marketed to. Question:
If a Black person is alive but no one
is around to profit off of them,
do they make a sound? A different way:
Can anyone hear me when I ask
to be left alone? What are my wishes
worth? Does the hand that feeds me
reach out to smother me in my sleep?
Does anyone see the hand? If
it kills me, who lays claim to my
bones? How much will it make them?
Somehow
You visit me in a dream after passing,
after I’ve been awaiting you for weeks,
because Chinese belief teaches us our
loved ones will appear when we’re asleep.
It’s real when I enter the hotel restaurant
in the middle of nowhere town I live in,
as the Midwest architecture transforms
into Kowloon at evening time. We eat
bird’s nest soup, and I remember the time
my father ordered me this four-hundred-
year-old delicacy at Hong Kong airport.
Out comes the Peking duck, and I ask you:
“Why did it take you so long?” You answer:
“I arrived once you were strong and ready.”
Celebrate Good Times
The regime is having a birthday party, so we turn off the lights
and pretend we’re sick. All night, happy americans
honk their horns. We did it! they scream into our window.
In the morning, We is all over the floor. We sweep We
into a paper bag and label it EMERGENCY. The good news
is that things will go back to the way they were,
which is also the bad news. Meanwhile, I cut
an onion, and it’s onions all the way down, and that’s a fine
reason to cry at the sink on a Monday after the empire
congratulates itself on persisting again. No, thank you,
I’m stuffed, I couldn’t possibly have more hope. I haven’t finished
mourning the last tyrant yet. I haven’t said enough
goodbyes to—oh, what was her name? And hers?
How many We’s did they cut out of me? And whose country
was I standing on, the last time we survived?
breaklight
light keeps on breaking.
i keep knowing
the language of other nations.
i keep hearing
tree talk
water words
and i keep knowing what they mean.
and light just keeps on breaking.
last night
the fears of my mother came
knocking and when i
opened the door
they tried to explain themselves
and i understood
everything they said.
whose side are you on?
the side of the busstop woman
trying to drag her bag
up the front steps before the doors
clang shut i am on her side
i give her exact change
and him the old man hanging by
one strap his work hand folded shut
as the bus doors i am on his side
when he needs to leave
i ring the bell i am on their side
riding the late bus into the same
someplace i am on the dark side always
the side of my daughters
the side of my tired sons
Like You
Like you I
love love, life, the sweet smell
of things, the sky-blue
landscape of January days.
And my blood boils up
and I laugh through eyes
that have known the buds of tears.
I believe the world is beautiful
and that poetry, like bread, is for everyone.
And that my veins don’t end in me
but in the unanimous blood
of those who struggle for life,
love,
little things,
landscape and bread,
the poetry of everyone.
I’m Nobody! Who are you?
I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there's a pair of us!
Don't tell! they'd advertise – you know!
How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one's name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!
I'm a Fool to Love You
Some folks will tell you the blues is a woman,
Some type of supernatural creature.
My mother would tell you, if she could,
About her life with my father,
A strange and sometimes cruel gentleman.
She would tell you about the choices
A young black woman faces.
Is falling in with some man
A deal with the devil
In blue terms, the tongue we use
When we don't want nuance
To get in the way,
When we need to talk straight.
My mother chooses my father
After choosing a man
Who was, as we sing it,
Of no account.
This man made my father look good,
That's how bad it was.
He made my father seem like an island
In the middle of a stormy sea,
He made my father look like a rock.
And is the blues the moment you realize
You exist in a stacked deck,
You look in a mirror at your young face,
The face my sister carries,
And you know it's the only leverage
You've got.
Does this create a hurt that whispers
How you going to do?
Is the blues the moment
You shrug your shoulders
And agree, a girl without money
Is nothing, dust
To be pushed around by any old breeze.
Compared to this,
My father seems, briefly,
To be a fire escape.
This is the way the blues works
Its sorry wonders,
Makes trouble look like
A feather bed,
Makes the wrong man's kisses
A healing.
Who Burns for the Perfection of Paper
At sixteen, I worked after high school hours
at a printing plant
that manufactured legal pads:
Yellow paper
stacked seven feet high
and leaning
as I slipped cardboard
between the pages,
then brushed red glue
up and down the stack.
No gloves: fingertips required
for the perfection of paper,
smoothing the exact rectangle.
Sluggish by 9 PM, the hands
would slide along suddenly sharp paper,
and gather slits thinner than the crevices
of the skin, hidden.
Then the glue would sting,
hands oozing
till both palms burned
at the punchclock.
Ten years later, in law school,
I knew that every legal pad
was glued with the sting of hidden cuts,
that every open lawbook
was a pair of hands
upturned and burning.
Come Let Us Be Friends
Come, let us be friends, you and I,
E’en though the world doth hate at this hour;
Let’s bask in the sunlight of a love so high
That war cannot dim it with all its armed power.
Come, let us be friends, you and I,
The world hath her surplus of hatred today;
She needeth more love, see, she droops with a sigh,
Where her axis doth slant in the sky far away.
Come, let us be friends, you and I,
And love each other so deep and so well,
That the world may grow steady and forward fly,
Lest she wander towards chaos and drop into hell.
Lady Jordan
It didn’t matter that I married the game
or slept with a ball under my arm, Mom said
Girls don’t hoop, they wear hoops. And around here,
vecinas chirped: it’s always “¿Y tú novio?” season. But beauty
is a finger roll. A backdoor cut on the blacktop. A fadeaway
jump shot, two seconds left on the clock. So what mattered was Danny
talkin’ smack, even though his teeth were out of order. This isn’t the only history,
but is the history of everything: the neighborhood boys
who shot crooked, never learned my name, so I played them
Twenty-one, turned their ankles to jello,
made their backs kiss the floor, until they donned me
Lady Jordan, and who wouldn’t take that. Though I’ve never been
ladylike, I wore that rusted metal rim like a ring,
and slipped my bones through the net like a perfect white dress—
Acquainted with the Night
I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain --- and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.
I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.
I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,
But not to call me back or say good-by;
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky
Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.
Love leaves leftovers
It’s been three years and I still have the French
keyboard enabled on my phone. Occasionally,
when I comment on poems on the internet,
It autocorrects love to liberté. (Which is fitting,
I suppose.) It’s been three years and I still sleep
facing the window because it’s good
to feel the sun when you wake. Everytime I see a squirrel
I think of how you, completely amazed
by their existence, tried to feed them peanuts
off your balcony railing. And how they came
to you and gently nuzzled your hands. I’ve never [ ]-talked
squirrels since. Love leaves leftovers, I’ve learned.
It’s never a clean escape. Oh but what a way
to say goodbye: here, I’ve loved you,
save some for later.
Another Story
You didn’t like the last story in your life’s book,
so you wrote yourself another one.
In this story,
you do not wear your body as an apology.
Instead you wear it like a quiet revolution,
you carry the future in the back pocket of your jeans,
say girl, say glory
each step forward is an amen
Ode to People Who Hate Me
I hate being hated even though I
provoke it, not by committing major wrongs
like murder, more like a regular
pattern of being selfish or forgetful,
which is another word for selfish.
If you hate me, trust me I know—
in fact, I have a ledger of people, like you,
who hate me, and I rifle through it every
morning obsessing over the names more
than they think about mine—a passing
thought, a microsecond of dislike or worse,
indifference like the Godzilla rays of fire
I feel buzz out of your eyes when
you scroll past my pictures on Instagram.
I should focus on the people who love me,
every therapist I ever had has told me so,
but I don’t need them to love me more,
so that’s pointless. If we hate each other,
I assure you my hate has a trace of love
with a dash of hope. It’s the throbbing
contradiction of hate’s dark thrall.
excerpt from “Ego Tripping (there may be a reason why)”
I was born in the congo
I walked to the fertile crescent and built
the sphinx
I designed a pyramid so tough that a star
that only glows every one hundred years falls
into the center giving divine perfect light
I am bad
I sat on the throne
drinking nectar with allah
I got hot and sent an ice age to europe
to cool my thirst
My oldest daughter is nefertiti
the tears from my birth pains
created the nile
I am a beautiful woman
I gazed on the forest and burned
out the sahara desert
with a packet of goat's meat
and a change of clothes
I crossed it in two hours
I am a gazelle so swift
so swift you can't catch me
For a birthday present when he was three
I gave my son hannibal an elephant
He gave me rome for mother's day
My strength flows ever on
My son noah built new/ark and
I stood proudly at the helm
as we sailed on a soft summer day
I turned myself into myself and was
jesus
men intone my loving name
All praises All praises
I am the one who would save
I am so hip even my errors are correct
I sailed west to reach east and had to round off
the earth as I went
The hair from my head thinned and gold was laid
across three continents
I am so perfect so divine so ethereal so surreal
I cannot be comprehended
except by my permission
I mean . . . I . . . can fly
like a bird in the sky . . .
Dropping Keys
Translated by Dan Ladinsky
The small man
Builds cages for everyone
He
Knows.
While the sage,
Who has to duck his head
When the moon is low,
Keeps dropping keys all night long
For the
Beautiful
Rowdy
Prisoners.
Reckless Sonnet No. 8
My father, as a boy in Milwaukee, thought
the cicada's cry was the whir from a live wire--
not from muscles on the sides of an insect
vibrating against an outer membrane. Strange though
that, because they have no ears, no one knows why
the males cry so doggedly into the gray air.
Not strange that the young live underground sucking sap from tree roots
for seventeen years. A long, charmed childhood
not unlike one in a Great Lake town where at dusk
you'd pack up swimsuit, shake sand off your towel
and head back to the lights in the two-family houses
lining the streets. Where the family sat around the radio.
And the parents argued over their son and daughter
until each left for good. To cry in the air.
Self-Portrait as a Combination Taco Bell / Pizza Hut / KFC
the unholy trinity of suburban late-night salvation
barring seemingly endless options of worship
bean burrito breadsticks and mashed potatoes
or a soft taco pan pizza and a buttered biscuit
an unimaginable combination of food flavors
for people not ready to go home to their parents
and yet none of the options feel quite right
so maybe I should call it Self-Portrait as idling
in a drive-thru with your friends crammed
across the sunken bench seats avoiding
the glow of the check engine light with black tape
pressed with a precision unseen anywhere else
in their lives as a fractured voice says don’t worry
take your time and order whenever you’re ready
from behind a menu backlit like the window
inside of a confessional booth as the hands
of the driver open up like a collection basket
for the wadded-up bills and loose change
that slowly stack up as the years go by
and I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be
in this analogy but I know about masking
warning signs and hearing out of tune
voices scream WE’RE THE KIDS WHO FEEL
LIKE DEAD ENDS so instead I’ll call it Self-
Portrait as From Under the Cork Tree
or maybe even Self-Portrait as whatever
album people listen to when they love
their friends and still want to feel connected
to the grass walls of a teenage wasteland
that they can’t help but run away from
You Can’t Put Muhammad Ali in a Poem
If you did—
it would
knock you down (remember Liston) &
if
you were
still stand
ing you would
have to
bust out (remember the March on Washington)
of your shakin' vaulted
poor thinkin' self (oh yes!)
& change (that's right!)
this big 'ol world (say it!)
& if you did— You (yes, you)
would have to battle w/words & rhymes & body & time—for
your New Idea—(did you hear that ) you would
have to
endure (i hear you ) & propose (what?)
a new name for all
( a new name?)
it could be Peace
it could be Unity (sounds easy)
but this poem cannot
provide this
or contain this
Word —(Watch out!)
here it comes! &
(it's gonna to sting like a bee)
excerpt from “Final Hour”
I'm about to change the focus from the richest to the brokest
I wrote this opus to reverse the hypnosis
Whoever's closest to the line's gonna win it
You gon' fall trying to ball
While my team win the pennant
I'm about to begin it
For a minute then run for senate
Make a slumlord be the tenant, give his money to kids to spend it
And then amend it, every law that ever prevented
Our survival since our arrival
Documented in The Bible like Moses and Aaron
Things gon' change, it's apparent
And all the transparent gon' be seen through
Let God redeem you
Keep your deen true
You can get the green too
Watch out who you cling to, observe how a queen do
And I remain calm reading the 73 Psalm
'Cause with all that's going on I got the world in my palm
You could get the money, you could get the power
But keep your eyes on the final hour
You can get the money, you can get the power
But keep your eyes on the final hour
Postscript
What we did to the earth, we did to our daughters
one after the other.
What we did to the trees, we did to our elders
stacked in their wheelchairs by the lunchroom door.
What we did to our daughters, we did to our sons
calling out for their mothers.
What we did to the trees, what we did to the earth,
we did to our sons, to our daughters.
What we did to the cow, to the pig, to the lamb,
we did to the earth, butchered and milked it.
Few of us knew what the bird calls meant
or what the fires were saying.
We took of earth and took and took, and the earth
seemed not to mind
until one of our daughters shouted: it was right
in front of you, right in front of your eyes
and you didn’t see.
The air turned red. The ocean grew teeth.
Named
I’ve identified more dead birds than living.
An old friend used to quiz me on flora and fauna,
pointing and asking what’s that? but now won’t
even say my undeadname. A tree, I’d answer,
knowing the mutability of even that. Even that.
Tired
I am so tired of waiting,
Aren't you,
For the world to become good
And beautiful and kind?
Let us take a knife
And cut the world in two -
And see what worms are eating
At the rind.
Lavender Balloon
I have a Lavender balloon
I’m going to blow it up
Quite soon
It’s going to take me
to the Moon
I’m simply waiting for
A tune
Together we’ll Fly Away
We’re going to Float right
through the day
We’re going to Drift right
through the Night
Together we’ll be
Out of sight
Me and My Lavender balloon
And Everything Nice
After Wanda Coleman
Before we warred
there was sweet.
We would sneak the stuff—
our saccharine secret—
somehow sure it made us sinners.
It started at four (or sometime before):
Slurping of Log Cabin syrup
right down from its cap,
brother & I howling. Passed it back and
forth on Saturday mornings. We’d
rocket across grasshopper’s green yard
until fuel burnt up & needed
re-stocking. We sweetened unnatural
places. Brown rice n chicken,
Kraft mac n cheese,
or guzzled it straight, no chaser,
let grains dissolve in
gluttonous caverns.
Stirred six cups into Kool-Aid pitchers.
Before-during-after we learned
of bitterness, of absence,
we slammed sugar unsupervised.
Knew nothing of what
too much could do to our
insatiable bodies. Knew nothing
of restraint. Knew nothing of life’s
undoing. But we knew enough
to keep this secret sacred &
beneath the kitchen table.
about my father
—he became a teetotaler out of his socialist convictions; during
the war he began to drink again
—he was casual; he kept his tie in his pocket till the last minute
before oral exams
—he left me on the street to be picked up by the nuns from the
orphanage; he watched me from a distant doorway
—once he refused to hit me; he told my mother his hand was
too large
—he wrote to his aunt that he hoped the baby would be a boy
—when he was a student, jews were not permitted to sit in the
front rows of lecture halls; he made it a point to
stand through the lectures; ultimately, jews were
allowed to sit
—he was a discus thrower
—according to some, he got along with everyone: jews, goyim,
children
—he was caught a couple of times by the germans; they thought
he was a polish smuggler
—once he was put on a train for treblinka; he jumped, was shot at
and wounded, but got back to warsaw alive
—he believed in resistance
excerpt from "Freedom" by Beyoncé ft. Kendrick Lamar
Ten Hail Marys, I meditate for practice
Channel nine news tell me I'm movin' backwards
Eight blocks left, death is around the corner
Seven misleadin' statements 'bout my persona
Six headlights wavin' in my direction
Five-o askin' me what's in my possession
Yeah I keep runnin', jump in the aqueducts
Fire hydrants and hazardous
Smoke alarms on the back of us
But mama don't cry for me, ride for me
Try for me, live for me
Breathe for me, sing for me
Honestly guidin' me
I could be more than I gotta be
Stole from me, lied to me, nation hypocrisy
Code on me, drive on me
Wicked, my spirit inspired me
Like yeah, open correctional gates in higher desert
Yeah, open our mind as we cast away oppression
Yeah, open the streets and watch our beliefs
And when they carve my name inside the concrete
I pray it forever reads
Freedom
Freedom
I can't move
Freedom, cut me loose
Singin', freedom! Freedom! Where are you?
'Cause I need freedom, too
Dust
Someone spoke to me last night,
told me the truth. Just a few words,
but I recognized it.
I knew I should make myself get up,
write it down, but it was late,
and I was exhausted from working
all day in the garden, moving rocks.
Now, I remember only the flavor —
not like food, sweet or sharp.
More like a fine powder, like dust.
And I wasn’t elated or frightened,
but simply rapt, aware.
That’s how it is sometimes —
God comes to your window,
all bright light and black wings,
and you’re just too tired to open it.
Form
In pattern affirm
expansion of thought.
In vagueness draw taut.
In craft avoid charm.
When jaded, transform.
When cast small, exploit
what is small. When brought
to extremes conform
if what is conformed
takes widening weight.
When rigid be wrought.
When assumed, disarm.
When fervor is sought
yield frenzy of storm.
A Good Story
Some days—dishes piled in the sink, books littering the coffee table—
are harder than others. Today, my head is packed with cockroaches,
dizziness and everywhere it hurts. Venom in the jaw, behind the eyes,
between the blades. Still, the dog is snoring on my right, the cat, on my left.
Outside, all those redbuds are just getting good. I tell a friend, The body
is so body. And she nods. I used to like the darkest stories, the bleak
snippets someone would toss out about just how bad it could get.
My stepfather told me a story about when he lived on the streets as a kid,
how he’d, some nights, sleep under the grill at a fast food restaurant until
both he and his buddy got fired. I used to like that story for some reason,
something in me that believed in overcoming. But right now all I want
is a story about human kindness, the way once when I couldn’t stop
crying because I was fifteen and heartbroken, he came in and made
me eat a small pizza he’d cut up into tiny bites until the tears stopped.
Maybe I was just hungry, I said. And he nodded, holding out the last piece.
excerpt from “Tiananmen Square, 1989”
there are stars in their caps, soldiers
crouched as if the revolution
only walks at knee level. before them, a sea
of students: one adjusting his glasses, his face
turned towards some invisible turmoil,
this refusal that could bring everything
tomorrow or simply life. or simply
bullets slicing the Square, shouts
& fears running & running into bodies
that ripple
onto concrete
like children
napping under Beijing sun,
eyelids still as peace— still
as red pooling, as ink
resisting its meaning— resisting
the fist of a government crushing ambitions
into pennies
Sunday
And when they sat down in the morning
to bowls of cold cereal, each in turn
would notice the blades of a ceiling fan
spinning at the bottom of their spoons,
small enough to swallow, yet no one
ever mentioned it, neither looking up
nor into each other's eyes for fear
of feeding the hunger that held them there.
Places with Terrible Wi-Fi
The Garden of Eden. My ancestors’ graves. A watermelon field in Central Texas where my father once slept. Miles of rivers. The waiting room of a hospital in which a doctor, thin-looking in his coat, shared mixed results. A den of worms beneath the frozen grass. Jesus’s tomb. The stretches of highway on the long drive home after burial. The figurative abyss. The literal heavens. The cheap motel room in which I thought about praying despite my disbelief. What I thought was a voice was simply a recording playing from another room. The cluttered attic. Most of the past. The very distant future, where man is just another stratum in the ground. The tell of Megiddo. The flooded house and the scorched one. My favorite cemetery, where I can touch the white noise distorting memory. What is static if not the sound of the universe’s grief? Anywhere static reigns.
The Bees
Spanish translation by Torres Ruiz
In the street outside a school
what children learn
possesses them.
Three little boys yell
stoning a swarm of bees caught
between the lunchroom window and a grate
Their furious rocks graze metal.
The bees are cold and slow
to self-defense. One boy is stung
into quicker destruction.
School guards come
long wooden sticks in hand
advancing on the hive
they beat the almost finished
rooms of wax apart fresh honey
drips down their broomsticks
little boy-feet becoming experts
trample the rain-stunned bees
into the pavement.
Curious and apart the girls
look on in fascination learning
secret lessons one steps
across the feebly buzzing ruins
to peer up at the empty grated nook
"We could have studied honey-making!"
tries to understand
her own destruction.
Fear
If the pain doesn’t come back,
what will I write about? Will the poems
have tendon and teeth? I didn’t get
right the sonnet of all its colors.
I did not find the exact dagger of phrase
about the long loss of my life.
Hope is all I do and am.
I don’t think I’m poet enough
to make you taste this mango;
or see that sutured sunset unless
from a hospital bed.
I was good for carving.
There will be kisses, music, street names.
Loved ones will go where the gone do.
What if I don’t want to (write it: can’t)
write about these things.
What if I would rather feel
than create feeling?
What then? Go ahead.
Yesterday
My friend says I was not a good son
you understand
I say yes I understand
he says I did not go
to see my parents very often you know
and I say yes I know
even when I was living in the same city he says
maybe I would go there once
a month or maybe even less
I say oh yes
he says the last time I went to see my father
I say the last time I saw my father
he says the last time I saw my father
he was asking me about my life
how I was making out and he
went into the next room
to get something to give me
oh I say
feeling again the cold
of my father's hand the last time
he says and my father turned
in the doorway and saw me
look at my wristwatch and he
said you know I would like you to stay
and talk with me
oh yes I say
but if you are busy he said
I don't want you to feel that you
have to
just because I'm here
I say nothing
he says my father
said maybe
you have important work you are doing
or maybe you should be seeing
somebody I don't want to keep you
I look out the window
my friend is older than I am
he says and I told my father it was so
and I got up and left him then
you know
though there was nowhere I had to go
and nothing I had to do
Daybreak
Birds drip from the trees.
The moon's a little goat
over there on the hill;
dawn, as blue as her milk,
fills the sky's tin pail.
The air's so cold a gas station
glitters in an ice-cube.
The freeway hums like a pipe
when the water's on.
Streetlights turn off their dew.
The sun climbs down from a roof,
stops by a house and strikes
its long match on a wall,
takes out a ring of brass keys
and opens every door.
Gently, Gently
We, too, began with joy.
Then, sickness came;
then, poverty.
We were poor, so poor,
our children were are only friends.
Gently, gently,
through anger and pain,
love justified itself,
like the nails in the house
during a storm.
Somehow, we created hope,
reliable drum
in the shadow’s wrist;
a tuning fork
on the sidewalk of dreams.
At night, I was the one
who became a cello,
strung with all our roads,
where memory hums
to itself like a tire.
And you, mad as a clarinet
where the street divides;
a city of raindrops in a bush;
the slow honey that drips
from the sky’s old ladle…
the reason I’m frightened of death.
I swear by the wings
love spreads at my waist,
that I’ll carry your tune
until my tired strings break.
I Was In A Hurry
Yesterday I lost a country.
I was in a hurry,
and didn't notice when it fell from me
like a broken branch from a forgetful tree.
Please, if anyone passes by
and stumbles across it,
perhaps in a suitcase
open to the sky,
or engraved on a rock
like a gaping wound,
or wrapped
in the blankets of emigrants,
or canceled
like a losing lottery ticket,
or helplessly forgotten
in Purgatory,
or rushing forward without a goal
like the questions of children,
or rising with the smoke of war,
or rolling in a helmet on the sand,
or stolen in Ali Baba's jar,
or disguised in the uniform of a policeman
who stirred up the prisoners
and fled,
or squatting in the mind of a woman
who tries to smile,
or scattered
like the dreams
of new immigrants in America.
If anyone stumbles across it,
return it to me, please.
Please return it, sir.
Please return it, madam.
It is my country. . .
I was in a hurry
when I lost it yesterday.
Love in the Margins
Come on, shapeshifter—
I can’t dance either.
But I want to hold
your shadowy body,
hum crooked tunes
into your abalone ear.
Out here on the edge,
desperadas don’t always
make good lovers.
Sometimes our scars
match too well; touch
is barbed wire and border.
I’ll try not to hide behind
my bruises if you’ll
give me the hard gray line
of your shoulder.
Can’t you hear
the cricket’s ebbing
daysong? Let me
tuck that tidal melody
into the wine-colored
strands of your hair,
braid your name
with horizon’s indigo
kiss. Glorious outlaws,
we’ve got nothing to lose
but this edge.
introspection in shea butter
I am melting / a scoop of shea butter / in the palm of my hand / and reading the
label while I wait. / I have always laughed / in the face of the word //
“dime-sized”// And I think that maybe / having 4C hair was my
earliest lesson / in self-determination. / In ignoring other people’s /
judgments / of how much I am // supposed // to need. / Maybe this is
how / I taught myself / to claim / a little extra / and then a handful
more than that. / Maybe this / is how I learned / to grant myself /
abundance. / Maybe / the melting is an exercise / on the value of my
own / warmth. / I rub the oil into / an opinionated thicket / of curls. /
Anoint myself queen / of my own understanding. / I wipe my hands
clean of the extra / butter / by massaging it into the cinnamon / of my
chest and shoulders / and leave the mirror,
g l o w i n g.
Diagnostic Quiz for Human Ghost
Over the past two weeks, please list the items you have lost.
At the present moment, do you know the location & number of your teeth?
(in grams) Please estimate the weight of each of the following: Left lung, half-liver,
three fingers on your right hand.
(in miles) Please estimate the distance from the back of your skull to the skin of your
eye.
Over the past two weeks, please estimate the number of times you’ve attempted to
start a conversation and failed (including, but not limited to: grocery stores, living
rooms, when you are alone.)
(in incandescence) How much light passes through you? Is it enough to write a letter?
Pick a letter. Pick a new name.
Can you hear the woman singing?
What was your death’s taxonomy? Where is its kingdom & domain?
How important do you feel to others?
Are you sitting atop the creaking hinges of something only you can see?
Are you certain there is no part of your body that is missing.
Are you certain there is nothing missing at all.
Fences
Mouths full of laughter,
the turistas come to the tall hotel
with suitcases full of dollars.
Every morning my brother makes
the cool beach new for them.
With a wooden board he smooths
away all footprints.
I peek through the cactus fence
and watch the women rub oil
sweeter than honey into their arms and legs
while their children jump waves`
or sip drinks from long straws,
coconut white, mango yellow.
Once my little sister
ran barefoot across the hot sand
for a taste.
My mother roared like the ocean,
“No. No. It’s their beach.
It’s their beach.”
Kinds of Silence
After heavy snow.
After the last breath.
Before lightning strikes.
Before the first breath.
In a spider’s web.
In a musical rest.
Of a sleeping dog.
Of a stone general’s breast.
With an old friend.
With a favorite brother.
From the mouth of God.
From a cold mother.
On closing a book.
On fearing what’s to come.
Under a witch’s spell.
Under a dictator’s thumb.
By a frozen river.
By a stone that’s leaning.
At the end of a war.
At another war’s beginning.
Letter to the Northern Lights
The light here on earth keeps us plenty busy: a fire
in central Pennsylvania still burns bright since 1962.
Whole squads of tiny squid blaze up the coast of Japan
before sunrise. Of course you didn’t show when we went
searching for you, but we found other lights: firefly,
strawberry moon, a tiny catch of it in each other’s teeth.
Someone who saw you said they laid down
in the middle of the road and took you all in,
and I’m guessing you’re used to that—people falling
over themselves to catch a glimpse of you
and your weird mint-glow shushing itself over the lake.
Aurora, I’d rather stay indoors with him—even if it meant
a rickety hotel and its wood paneling, golf carpeting
in the bathrooms, and grainy soapcakes. Instead
of waiting until just the right hour of the shortest
blue-night of the year when you finally felt moved
enough to collide your gas particles with sun particles—
I’d rather share sunrise with him and loon call
over the lake with him, the slap of shoreline threaded
through screen windows with him. My heart
slams in my chest, against my shirt—it’s a kind
of kindling you’d never be able to light on your own.
Meet Commute
My heroes are dead,
my enemies are in power,
and still I must brave the shower,
brave the pavement,
brave the bus,
brave the slipping, sour us,
dig among the putrid bins,
dust off hope
and still give it keys,
still let it live here,
let it breathe.
Famous
The river is famous to the fish.
The loud voice is famous to silence,
which knew it would inherit the earth
before anybody said so.
The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds
watching him from the birdhouse.
The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.
The idea you carry close to your bosom
is famous to your bosom.
The boot is famous to the earth,
more famous than the dress shoe,
which is famous only to floors.
The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it
and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.
I want to be famous to shuffling men
who smile while crossing streets,
sticky children in grocery lines,
famous as the one who smiled back.
I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,
or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,
but because it never forgot what it could do.
now i’m bologna
my parents were born from a car. they climbed out
& kissed the car on its cheek. my grandmother.
to be a first generation person. 23 and Me reports
i am descendant of pistons & drive trains. 33%
irrigation tools. you are what you do. my first job
was in a lunch meat factory. now i’m bologna.
it’s not so bad being a person. the front seat of a car
is more comfortable than the trunk. when they were babies
my parents dreamt of being Lamborghinis. not
people. you are what your children grow up to do.
if i put my parents' names on papers, what happens?
the answer is no comment. the answer is quién sabe.
the answer is yo no sé, pero no es abogado.
people are overrated. give me avocados.
Tradition
the stories say Mexicans grew out of the dirt
same as the corn stalks. of course, we weren’t
Mexicans back then. whatever we were was
lost– no, not lost. submerged under empire.
dyed by blood & gun powder. believe what you want.
maybe we grew out of the dirt. maybe agave
is our sibling. maybe mountains our mother.
the oldest tradition I know is watching
my dad bet money on Mexican boxers
no matter the odds. i don’t know about y’all,
but i’m the child of loss & the inheritor of losing.
i’m not complaining though. i know the tradition:
i bet everything i have on my people
& dare the universe to beat us.
Wild Geese
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
The Rookie
America under the lights
at Harry Ball Field. A fog rolls in
as the flag crinkles and drapes
around a metal pole.
My son reaches into the sky
to pull down a game-ender,
a bomb caught in his leather mitt.
He gives the ball a flat squeeze
then tosses it in from the outfield,
tugs his cap over a tussle of hair
before joining the team—
all high-fives and handshakes
as the Major boys line up
at home plate. They are learning
how to be good sports,
their dugout cheers interrupted only
by sunflower seed shells spat
along the first base line.
The coach prattles on
about the importance of stealing
bases and productive outs
while a teammate cracks a joke
about my son’s ‘fro, then says,
But you’re not really black…
to which there’s laughter,
to which he smiles but says nothing,
which says something about
what goes unsaid, what starts
with a harmless joke, routine
as a can of corn.
But this is little league.
This is where he learns
how to field a position,
how to play a bloop in the gap—
that impossible space where
he’ll always play defense.
excerpt from "Ode"
We are the music makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams; —
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.
With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world's great cities,
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire's glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song's measure
Can trample a kingdom down.
A breath of our inspiration
Is the life of each generation;
A wondrous thing of our dreaming
Unearthly, impossible seeming —
The soldier, the king, and the peasant
Are working together in one,
Till our dream shall become their present,
And their work in the world be done.
For a Father
Remember after work you grabbed our skateboard,
crouched like a surfer, wingtips over the edge;
wheels clacketing down the pocked macadam,
you veered almost straight into the neighbor's hedge?
We ran after you laughing, shouting, Wait!
Or that August night you swept us to the fair?
The tallest person boarding the Ferris wheel,
you rocked our car right when we hit the apex
above the winking midway, to make us squeal.
Next we raced you to the games, shouting, Wait!
At your funeral, relatives and neighbors,
shaking our hands, said, "So young to have died!"
But we've dreamt you're just skating streets away,
striding the fairgrounds toward a wilder ride.
And we're still straggling behind, shouting, Wait—!
ars pasifika
when the tide
of silence
rises
say “ocean”
then with the paddle
of your tongue
rearrange
the letters to form
“canoe”
If I Must Die
Translated into Spanish by D. P. Snyder
If I must die,
you must live
to tell my story
to sell my things
to buy a piece of cloth
and some strings,
(make it white with a long tail)
so that a child, somewhere in Gaza
while looking heaven in the eye
awaiting his dad who left in a blaze—
and bid no one farewell
not even to his flesh
not even to himself—
sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above
and thinks for a moment an angel is there
bringing back love
If I must die
let it bring hope
let it be a tale
if time is queer/and memory is trans/and my hands hurt in the cold/then
there are ways to hold pain like night follows day
not knowing how tomorrow went down.
it hurts like never when the always is now,
the now that time won't allow.
there is no manner of tomorrow, nor shape of today
only like always having to leave
from and toward the future's could-be,
in order to never more see
the sí;
and if forever proves me wrong,
it'll hurt with the hurt of before the before.
it'll have to take me along:
all the never-enough of why and therefore.
life has given me much to believe,
but more is the doubt that undid what i know,
for, like night follows day, the pleasure is sure,
of forever beginning once more.
Self-Portrait as David Lynch
I wear a flower in my lapel.
I like the sweetness of its lie in my nose.
A carnation, the fool’s flower,
its heart a wilting empire.
In late-night editing sessions,
I imagine I’m planting flowers
in the sockets of eyes. Whatever helps
me reach our rigor mortis,
bound behind the wheel,
a little Bowie on the radio, maybe,
at six frames per second,
headlights plowing the dark’s divided road.
Cities grow to calcified castles.
Fish groom the coral brains
anchored in a tank’s purple volume.
I love the scratch of celluloid
and a low-register noise,
the hair of heat burning in a lit bulb.
Sometimes I swap my carnation
for an orchid or rose.
On-screen, there’s every hint
a man-child built the night.
I read it once, by flashlight, as a kid—
that Sleep and Death are brothers,
and they send our dreams through two gates,
one made of horn, for the true dreams,
and one made of tusk, for the false.
Her Kind
I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.
I have found the warm caves in the woods,
filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,
closets, silks, innumerable goods;
fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:
whining, rearranging the disaligned.
A woman like that is misunderstood.
I have been her kind.
I have ridden in your cart, driver,
waved my nude arms at villages going by,
learning the last bright routes, survivor
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind.
For the Boys Who Never Learned How to Swim
The police sirens sounded like wind
getting knocked out of our stomachs.
We tried to find a place to pull over
where there was a semblance of light.
There was no light.
They asked us to step out of the car.
I didn’t know why—they grabbed him
like he wasn't somebody's child,
palmed the back of his head
like a soft fruit ready to be dropped
from the top of the roof so everyone
could laugh at the plurality of pieces.
His face against the front of the police
car made him look like a fish out of water.
But where is the water?
When has there ever been water?
When have we ever been allowed to swim?
When has there ever been somewhere
we can breathe?
I don't remember the last time police
sirens didn't feel like gasping for air.
I don't remember what it means not
to be considered something meant
to flounder, to flap against
the surface while others watch you
until the flailing stops.
excerpt from "34"
God, we need your glitter, you know,
those wacky miracles
you do
for no reason at all?
Song
You love me like an eave
Feeding rain to the gutter
I love you like a gutter
Fielding rain from the eave
excerpt from “Ode to Los Raspados”
Papá says
They were
A shiny dime
When he was
Little, but for me,
His daughter
With hair that swings
Like jump ropes,
They’re free:
Papa drives a truck
Of helados and
Snow cones, the
Music of arrival
Playing block
After block.
It’s summer now.
The sun is bright
As a hot dime.
You need five
Shiny ones
For a snow cone:
Strawberry and root beer,
Grape that stains
The mouth with laughter,
Orange that’s a tennis ball
Of snow
You could stab
With a red-striped straw.
I know the kids,
Gina and Ofélia
Juan and Ananda,
Shorty and Sleepy,
All running
With dimes pressed
To their palms,
Salted from play
Or mowing the lawn.
When they walk away,
The dime of sun
Pays them back
With laughter
And the juice runs
To their elbows,
Sticky summer rain
That sweetens the street.
Hoof
Is it that I have had a richness
of choices, have I gazelled
sideways from one riverstone to the next?
Or has this been a series
of false starts—
the hoof withdrawn
at the slightest snow?
January’s Wolf Moon calls her pups
into the night—marks
their necessary kill. We all
need to eat
even in snow—hoof paused
over the water—my heart says
trust—my tracks say
doubt
One Cup of Chai
If I had known that the cup of chai
my mother asked me, a drifter
in the kitchen, to make her
that afternoon, which I
having blended water and milk
in such strange ratios
that when reduced and strained
the tea came up
to barely one trisection of my pinkie
(that cup was the driest well I saw,
the lowest tide) so to cover my blunder
I poured raw tap water to flood her cup
and fled her room before she could
collect her body, bring lip to saucer,
had I known that the pale, putrid mess
I presented, was after all, the only and
last cup of tea I’d ever make her
would I have suddenly been
granted the culinary wisdom to brew
instead the pot with sprigs of lemongrass,
a pod of cardamom, perhaps even
a prestigious thread of saffron
that I’d sneak from the silver hexagonal box
she kept hidden behind the airtight jars
of pricey nuts, and bring her
a creamy drink of complex caffeine, even
make some magnanimous promise
of offering her tea on tap till she lived
but knowing me, I know I’d have just
continued being the spectacular failure I was
that day, [ ]-talking my every inability
out of her sight, embarrassed by failure,
afraid of consequence and knowing her,
she would have creased her nose
at first, then continued to descend
on the plate with the hopeful pull
of her slurp, stubborn as she was,
not willing to peg one finite judgement
of adulation or derision—
on the cup she was served
excerpt from “Theology”
Do you remember when I tried to be good.
It was a bad time.
So much was burning without a source.
I’m sorry I was so young.
I didn’t mean it.
It’s just this thing is heavy.
How could anyone hold all of it & not melt.
I thought gravity was a law, which meant it could be broken.
But it’s more like a language. Once you’re in it
you never get out. A fool, I climbed out the window
just to look at the stars.
It was too dark & the crickets sounded like people I know
saying something I don’t.
I think I had brothers.
Think I heard them crying once, then laughing, until the laughing
was just in my head.
The Fool’s Song
I tried to put a bird in a cage.
O fool that I am!
For the bird was Truth.
Sing merrily, Truth: I tried to put
Truth in a cage!
And when I had the bird in the cage,
O fool that I am!
Why, it broke my pretty cage.
Sing merrily, Truth: I tried to put
Truth in a cage!
And when the bird was flown from the cage,
O fool that I am!
Why, I had nor bird nor cage.
Sing merrily, Truth: I tried to put
Truth in a cage!
Heigh-ho! Truth in a cage.
excerpt from “You Are Not Dead”
The only thing
I ever made
which is worth
anything at all
is a promise
to my friends
to keep
moving.