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Nothing but hurt left here. Nothing but bullets and pain and the bled-out slumping and all the fucks and goddamns and Jesus Christs of the wounded. Nothing left here but the hurt. Believe it when you see it. Believe it when a twelve-year-old rolls a grenade into the room. Or when a sniper punches a hole deep into someone’s skull. Believe it when four men step from a taxicab in Mosul to shower the street in brass and fire. Open the hurt locker and see what there is of knives and teeth. Open the hurt locker and learn how rough men come hunting for souls.

Dark days when I awaken so I slump back to the swamp of his armpit, a whit from the arachnid he inked to the stump that’s left. So close to the vestige of it, the danger he’s a reliquary of: tattooed noose to venerate the fist of a slug buried still in his butt above a white cross for the men he didn’t miss. If only I could strip off the black map I sleep against and be his liniment, gloss over the explosion, the mishap phantom he feels in a forearm itch. He won’t leave the long tale his tattoos read for me, so I amend the story.

My mother likes a man who works. She likes my husband’s muddy knees, grass stains on the cuffs. She loved my father, though when weekends came he’d sleep till nine and would not lift his eyes up from the page to move the feet she’d vacuum under. On Saturdays my husband digs the holes for her new roses, softening the clay with peat and compost. He changes bulbs she can no longer reach and understands the inside of her toaster. My father’s feet would carry him from chair to bookshelf, back again till Monday came. My mother likes to tell my husband sit down in this chair and put your feet up.

for my son The way a tired Chippewa woman Who’s lost a child gathers up black feathers, Black quills & leaves That she wraps & swaddles in a little bale, a shag Cocoon she carries with her & speaks to always As if it were the child, Until she knows the soul has grown fat & clever, That the child can find its own way at last; Well, I go everywhere Picking the dust out of the dust, scraping the breezes Up off the floor, & gather them into a doll Of you, to touch at the nape of the neck, to slip Under my shirt like a rag—the way Another man’s wallet rides above his heart. As you Cry out, as if calling to a father you conjure In the paling light, the voice rises, instead, in me. Nothing stops it, the crying. Not the clove of moon, Not the woman raking my back with her words. Our letters Close. Sometimes, you ask About the world; sometimes, I answer back. Nights Return you to me for a while, as sleep returns sleep To a landscape ravaged & familiar. The dark watermark of your absence, a hush.

Hush-a-bye, baby, on the tree top, When the wind blows the cradle will rock; When the bough breaks the cradle will fall; Down will come baby, cradle and all.

Hush little baby, don't say a word, Papa's gonna buy you a mockingbird. And if that mockingbird won't sing, Papa's gonna buy you a diamond ring. And if that diamond ring turns to brass, Papa's gonna buy you a looking glass. And if that looking glass gets broke, Papa's gonna buy you a billy goat. And if that billy goat won't pull, Papa's gonna buy you a cart and bull. And if that cart and bull turn over, Papa's gonna buy you a dog named Rover. And if that dog named Rover won't bark, Papa's gonna buy you a horse and cart. And if that horse and cart fall down, You'll still be the sweetest little baby in town!

You can tell by how he lists to let her kiss him, that the getting, as he gets it, is good. It’s good in the sweetly salty, deeply thirsty way that a sea-fogged rain is good after a summer-long bout of inland drought. And you know it when you see it, don’t you? How it drenches what’s dry, how the having of it quenches. There is a grassy inlet where your ocean meets your land, a slip that needs a certain kind of vessel, and when that shapely skiff skims in at last, trimmed bright, mast lightly flagging left and right, then the long, lush reeds of your longing part, and soft against the hull of that bent wood almost im- perceptibly brushes a luscious hush the heart heeds helplessly— the hush of the very good.

WTF texts Josey, and I text back OMG. We had to tell Maggie what LOL meant– it's not Lots Of Love, though that almost always fits. Major emailed LMAO when I assumed his inbox gets dealt with by an underling, some undergrad, assumed it was Major's minor who invited me to read but "can not pay much sum of monies."Sum of Monies? I emailed back. Who wrote this? Your assistant's a Nigerian prince? WTF. For a while we just played with these, joking, like I tried on Wicked when I moved to Boston, called Lisa Liser, pizza pizzer, said Fucken, wicked, pissah, dood. But before you know it, it's part of how you talk, how I talk, fucken guy. Dude. When my ex student saw me she said Sick a dozen times, amazed, delighted, meant it's super I've moved back, and, whoda thunk it, come in to her cafe. She checked out Josey, my instant street cred. Josey bought new pants for work with a cell phone pocket; the cell phone pocket pants are Husky Boys' Dickies, which I can't get enough of, laugh every time I think of them, or try to name them out loud. Josey wears Husky Boys' Dickies. My darling, my husky, my husky little boy. Hey, Husky, we say, around the house, just waking up, just bumping into each other en route from basement to garden to kitchen.Hey, Husky, do you want coffee? Hey Husky, Hey Bunny, Hey Hon. When I'm helping my students translate Sappho's Fragments 1 and 31, I get them to make a list of many-colored things, so they don't feel stuck with colorful throne. One girl can't think of anything but Skittles.Terrific, I tell her, you're breaking product placement ground. Then I ask them to think of voices they love, the voice of someone they love. It's hard to describe a voice, but I ask them each to try, put his or her beloved in the place of Sappho's, make her theirs, more real than just sweet-voiced and lovely-laughtered.You have three minutes. Get something down, I tell them,some adjective or comparison, even if you just write the same word over and over again. 5:47 p.m. on a Wednesday, me saying Do your best and You could just say husky husky husky husky husky.

They lie like stones and dare not shift. Even asleep, everyone hears in prison. Dwayne Betts deserves more than this dry ink for his teenage years in prison. In the film we keep watching, Nina takes Darius to a steppers ball. Lovers hustle, slide, and dip as if none of them has a brother in prison. I eat with humans who think any book full of black characters is about race. A book full of white characters examines insanity—but never in prison. His whole family made a barricade of their bodies at the door to room 403. He died without the man he wanted. What use is love at home or in prison? We saw police pull sharks out of the water just to watch them not breathe. A brother meets members of his family as he passes the mirrors in prison. Sundays, I washed and dried her clothes after he threw them into the yard. In the novel I love, Brownfield kills his wife, gets only seven years in prison. I don't want to point my own sinful finger, so let's use your clean one instead. Some bright citizen reading this never considered a son's short hair in prison. In our house lived three men with one name, and all three fought or ran. I left Nelson Demery III for Jericho Brown, a name I earned in prison.

Make me, O Lord, thy Spining Wheele compleate. Thy Holy Worde my Distaff make for mee. Make mine Affections thy Swift Flyers neate And make my Soule thy holy Spoole to bee. My Conversation make to be thy Reele And reele the yarn thereon spun of thy Wheele. Make me thy Loome then, knit therein this Twine: And make thy Holy Spirit, Lord, winde quills: Then weave the Web thyselfe. The yarn is fine. Thine Ordinances make my Fulling Mills. Then dy the same in Heavenly Colours Choice, All pinkt with Varnisht Flowers of Paradise. Then cloath therewith mine Understanding, Will, Affections, Judgment, Conscience, Memory My Words, and Actions, that their shine may fill My wayes with glory and thee glorify. Then mine apparell shall display before yee That I am Cloathd in Holy robes for glory.