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for Tomás Mendoza-Harrell & Lauro Flores I cut / / / / / I multiply everyday images. I apply an aluminum point. To the landscape. To the sentence. To the photo. To the figure. To the word. And suddenly, with a slight tremor of eyes, vertebrae and fingers, I destroy everything that exists. Through the years, I’ve rebuilt the cells, uncovered the signs of the cold, immaculate, academic vestibules and of the dead lips and histories in the metropolitan streets. My surgery is criminal. No one has been able to identify the skeletons, the remains, the thousand scattered nerves of personages I’ve gathered in order to bring this figure back to life. The scars are numberless and invisible. Who would suspect a grafik artist? Who would suspect this gray table as a chamber of murders? Instruments: —The pencil sleeping with its yellow blanket and rubber crown. —A magazine of memories, smiling women, men’s suits and watches like drops, like science. —Tubes of smothered ink sounding like small seas pounding a universe of plastic. —A photo of a Chamula woman looking through these windows toward the Mission. —Watercolors: French Ultramarine, Emerald Green and Windsor Violet. —Matches thin friends identical soldiers with their red helmets thinking. —Dictionaries in Portuguese, Spanish and German, white pages beasts nobody hears moaning. —The priest lantern praying with its head pointing toward the floor in front of a fierce wall. —Solemn archives organized by syllables, breaths, laughs and love with X. —A book about an artist:The Fabulous Life of Diego Rivera, printed in New York where they listen to the wind falling from the tallest building. And the X-acto knives. Triangular. The beautiful blades / / / / / Every night cars cruise the streets of 24th and Mission. A woman from San José drives a blue Chevy with smoked windows. Estela. She has reddish hair. Tight brows and dark eyes desiring everything but this street that ends in eight blocks: Potrero Avenue. She’ll have to turn. But she won’t. She won’t go back to the home of twenty years and her father who pretends to play Santa by Agustín Lara on his old guitar and the mother organizing a Jehovah’s Witnesses’ meeting. Estela will leave the car parked between Harrison Street and Alabama in San Francisco. She’ll walk aimlessly in the warmth of the produce stores, into St. Peter’s church, by the Galería de la Raza, China Books, the bakery at La Victoria. She’ll walk in the night with her eyes burning, seeing him laughing, the young man in his black box apartment, laughing, laughing, laughing like a little man. The little man laughs. It’s an apartment of marriage and fists. The wife-beater laughs in his easy chair. Next to his bed he sees the anxious note. He focuses on the signature with the E broken in three places. He looks at the stained and unmade sheets, the dull curtains, the crushed cigarettes and the ashes. The black-and-white television announces a sale of living room furniture. With his can of beer he observes. Smokes. Thinks. Within a week or two they’ll take his cousin to San Quentin prison, again. The last time he saw him he was a gardener at a college. He imagines Estela coming home. He imagines and drinks calmly. Makes the bed. Turns off the television and turns on the fm. He amuses himself in that space or cube floating above the city. Estela walks north on the Avenue. P / O / T / R / E / R / O Grafiks require precise knives. On that day When you came to bathe me I sweated that stink That only the anesthetized Can sweat. You sponged my skin Cleaned my hair and Seeming to ignore My stunned and shriveled genitals You nonetheless bathed them . . . — michael ramsey-pérez Randi finds himself in a hospital in Los Angeles or maybe further south, in San Diego. I think his parents are from Arizona. He’s very ill. He’s in a room with a red sign hanging from the doorknob. I / S / O / L / A / T / I / O / N His liver is bloated, skin yellowed, hair long and greasy. Weakness consumes him night after night. He can’t speak, tires easily. But he can hear. He hears the white heels of the doctors and nurses running to the rooms of the dying. He hears footsteps fluttering like doves over the floor or like the leaves of fever falling from the roof of hell. It’s eleven o’clock at night. He hears the abandoned man in room 200 fall out of bed attempting to drink a glass of water. He hears the IV tubes bursting, the sweet plasma spinning between the walls, the bag slipping to the floor and splattering through the night’s open screens. The man screams. Vomits blood and ulcers. Gets tangled up in sheets and transparent plastic veins. After half an hour doves fly in. The leaves fall. Fast. After a few days a black man enters room 199. An orderly. He cleans his body with a warm sponge. His hands run slowly down the yellowed back, the belly and fragile shoulders of Randi. Dark birds fly over a forgotten landscape. Randi looks at his mother rubbing his chest with alcohol to quiet the cough before he sleeps. He turns his face. Imagines his one-room house, a trailer his father made out of an old car. They’re on a little ranch at the outskirts of an unknown town. The mountains reflect the afternoon’s coppery heat. From afar you can see birds crossing above the saguaros and the sky. The last time I saw Randi was at San Francisco City College. He had just turned in all his papers so he could drop out at midterm. He didn’t want to go on with it. It was a farce. Like when he was invited to read poetry near the Galería de La Raza in the Mission District. He never showed up. Took 18th instead of 24th Street. Some Latinos beat him up. They noticed a homosexual air about him. Lies do not exist, only the grafik. This figure has no scars / / / / / When I had you they didn’t give me anything. I grabbed onto the washbasin until I thought I’d die they did that then. They strapped . . . — alma luz villanueva Eva (circa 1946), the doctor says they have to operate. Your pelvis is too narrow. The child can’t be born. It will come out in pieces. Eva. They’ll have to operate. He says he’ll give you morphine for the stitches afterwards. Even if you scream, Eva, it’ll be alright. Even if the nurses ignore you, laugh at you as they see your bluish mouth open, your sleepwalker’s eyes, your hands scratching against the metal bed or the air or memories. For one long second they’ll study your womb in bandages stains clouds raindrops suns and rouge shadows and rage over the coffin hidden by 10 centimeters of vertical stitching. Eva. You’ll hemorrhage 29 days later while washing clothes over a tin basin. Eva. The doctor is smiling. Have faith in him. He says everything is fine. I’ve signed the papers. Everything is arranged, girl. —The pencil wakes —The sheet tightens, the rubber vibrates —The magazine fades —The watch is speechless Someone has erased all the E’s from all the pages; small empty rectangles remain. The ink runs searching for asylum. —Emerald green is the color of jagged grass diluted in great bottles of tears, spit and alcohol. It’s rain for a hell of cells. They burn and burn and burn. S / I / E / B / R / E / N / N / E / N Diego, you touch up a colossal worker with too-sad eyes, wearing a faded blue cotton shirt. His eyes are swollen. The worker wants to see, but his eyes don’t count anymore, just his hands. They fly. They untangle above new machines toward the future. Touching the atmosphere. The fingers touch the 17th of February, 1981. The National Guard enters the province of Las Cabañas in El Salvador. They trap the area, cutting off all the roads out for the campesinos. Bombs fall. The mountains explode rocks, roots and water. An iron shell splinter rips into the throats of grandfathers and little girls. The initials U S A sweat. They sweat through the paint of the Guardia helicopters swooping down over the huts and fields of corn. Seven thousand begin to run toward the Río Lempa. 15km and then the wide river. 15km and then maybe refuge in the jungles of Honduras. Only 15kms 9kms 7kms 6kms    a pregnant young woman disappears 5kms    the Guardia captured her along with the others 4kms    they rip off her clothes 4kms    soldiers in masculine green stained uniforms circle her 4kms    they tie her arms and legs 3kms    the bayonet penetrates 2kms    it etches an x of red tears over the furious womb 6kms    the proud soldier throws down his weapon 12kms   sinks his right hand 9kms    rips out the fetus with the fingernails of his hot fingers 13kms   lifts it up like a torch 1km      opening his mouth the soldier screams 15kms   One less communist in El Salvador! They reach the river. They jump in the water. Suddenly, from the Honduran side other helicopters and machine guns appear. The wind surrenders. The afternoon weakens. The giant worker’s machinery shrieks on the tiny corner of the page: Plate number 113. It’s your self-portrait that you painted on the wall of the San Francisco Art Institute. Few blades have been needed / / / / / This time. I used a few blades to fill the canvas with its dramatis personae, landscapes and scenes that have been held back and kept secret; a figure dealt out in different boxes toward different destinies. No one has been able to figure out what happened on this table. But it’s time to turn off the black lamp. If the ask me, I’ll do the only thing I can. 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Scarlet the poppies Blue the corn-flowers, Golden the wheat. Gold for The Eternal: Blue of Our Lady: Red for the five Wounds of her Son.

Shortly after the Revival of Learning in Europe Let us begin and carry up this corpse, Singing together. Leave we the common crofts, the vulgar thorpes Each in its tether Sleeping safe on the bosom of the plain, Cared-for till cock-crow: Look out if yonder be not day again Rimming the rock-row! That's the appropriate country; there, man's thought, Rarer, intenser, Self-gathered for an outbreak, as it ought, Chafes in the censer. Leave we the unlettered plain its herd and crop; Seek we sepulture On a tall mountain, citied to the top, Crowded with culture! All the peaks soar, but one the rest excels; Clouds overcome it; No! yonder sparkle is the citadel's Circling its summit. Thither our path lies; wind we up the heights: Wait ye the warning? Our low life was the level's and the night's; He's for the morning. Step to a tune, square chests, erect each head, 'Ware the beholders! This is our master, famous, calm and dead, Borne on our shoulders. Sleep, crop and herd! sleep, darkling thorpe and croft, Safe from the weather! He, whom we convoy to his grave aloft, Singing together, He was a man born with thy face and throat, Lyric Apollo! Long he lived nameless: how should spring take note Winter would follow? Till lo, the little touch, and youth was gone! Cramped and diminished, Moaned he, "New measures, other feet anon! My dance is finished"? No, that's the world's way: (keep the mountain-side, Make for the city!) He knew the signal, and stepped on with pride Over men's pity; Left play for work, and grappled with the world Bent on escaping: "What's in the scroll," quoth he, "thou keepest furled Show me their shaping, Theirs who most studied man, the bard and sage, Give!" So, he gowned him, Straight got by heart that book to its last page: Learned, we found him. Yea, but we found him bald too, eyes like lead, Accents uncertain: "Time to taste life," another would have said, "Up with the curtain!" This man said rather, "Actual life comes next? Patience a moment! Grant I have mastered learning's crabbed text, Still there's the comment. Let me know all! Prate not of most or least, Painful or easy! Even to the crumbs I'd fain eat up the feast, Ay, nor feel queasy." Oh, such a life as he resolved to live, When he had learned it, When he had gathered all books had to give! Sooner, he spurned it. Image the whole, then execute the parts Fancy the fabric Quite, ere you build, ere steel strike fire from quartz, Ere mortar dab brick! (Here's the town-gate reached: there's the market-place Gaping before us.) Yea, this in him was the peculiar grace (Hearten our chorus!) That before living he'd learn how to live No end to learning: Earn the means first   God surely will contrive Use for our earning. Others mistrust and say, "But time escapes: Live now or never!" He said, "What's time? Leave Now for dogs and apes! Man has Forever." Back to his book then: deeper drooped his head: Calculus racked him: Leaden before, his eyes grew dross of lead: Tussis attacked him. "Now, master, take a little rest!" not he! (Caution redoubled Step two abreast, the way winds narrowly!) Not a whit troubled, Back to his studies, fresher than at first, Fierce as a dragon He (soul-hydroptic with a sacred thirst) Sucked at the flagon. Oh, if we draw a circle premature, Heedless of far gain, Greedy for quick returns of profit, sure Bad is our bargain! Was it not great? did not he throw on God, (He loves the burthen) God's task to make the heavenly period Perfect the earthen? Did not he magnify the mind, show clear Just what it all meant? He would not discount life, as fools do here, Paid by instalment. He ventured neck or nothing heaven's success Found, or earth's failure: "Wilt thou trust death or not?" He answered "Yes: Hence with life's pale lure!" That low man seeks a little thing to do, Sees it and does it: This high man, with a great thing to pursue, Dies ere he knows it. That low man goes on adding one to one, His hundred's soon hit: This high man, aiming at a million, Misses an unit. That, has the world here   should he need the next, Let the world mind him! This, throws himself on God, and unperplexed Seeking shall find him. So, with the throttling hands of death at strife, Ground he at grammar; Still, thro' the rattle, parts of speech were rife: While he could stammer He settled Hoti's business let it be! Properly based Oun Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic De, Dead from the waist down. Well, here's the platform, here's the proper place: Hail to your purlieus, All ye highfliers of the feathered race, Swallows and curlews! Here's the top-peak; the multitude below Live, for they can, there: This man decided not to Live but Know Bury this man there? Here   here's his place, where meteors shoot, clouds form, Lightnings are loosened, Stars come and go! Let joy break with the storm, Peace let the dew send! Lofty designs must close in like effects: Loftily lying, Leave him   still loftier than the world suspects, Living and dying.

I cut myself upon the thought of you And yet I come back to it again and again, A kind of fury makes me want to draw you out From the dimness of the present And set you sharply above me in a wheel of roses. Then, going obviously to inhale their fragrance, I touch the blade of you and cling upon it, And only when the blood runs out across my fingers Am I at all satisfied.

When the soldiers came in their dirty blue shirts I was kneeling in the garden in the rain. That year only a few ramblers were left and the trellis had collapsed from the wind. Still I was glad for the water and darkness that clotted the air; the days had seemed sour to me in spite of the glory of the vegetables wandering into fall, the fat swollen apples and the wild roses creeping under the lilac. And there, as the men approached, I stood up near the two willow saplings sprouted from posts but driven in, the larger one, by the neighbor boy when he entered service, the smaller one when he returned home. I could see the street from where I stood, as though wrapped in gauze, heavy with the nests of caterpillars. (Next week a man with rags tied to sticks would dip them in kerosene and burn the worms that would then drop squirming onto his arms, his hair, the street.) And then I thought I was lying at the bottom of a pond edged with grayish leaves and looking up to the surface. I saw leaves, raindrops shattering the sky like splinters of glass drifting toward my body; noises seemed echoes as I continued to distance myself from what had happened. After that a disbelief, perhaps I had had a stroke, hit my head, or fallen asleep and woke to flies banging against my face. I saw edges of myself being flattened by rain, could smell the earth too and thought of the years of rot that made the smell, the rot of my father and his father and all those who had gone before and how we eat the root of the earth and then turn into rot ourselves just as pieces of dirt were grinding away between my teeth and tongue, my bit of gristle being stirred into earth’s stew. I began to raise my head and noticed for the first time the bunting, red, white, and blue, hung out for the parade.

I forgot to tell you it's almost time to go. The sun has distilled its particular worn essence And the glittering trout is flipped on the bow. A man asks me what time it is. I don't know. I have emptied my purse and wept in the presence Of onlookers. I forgot to remember to go Before eleven, when the steely arrow Shot swimming to its underneath, tense As a stream of salmon in reverse below The laureled, relentless clocks. The sceptered row Of columns dreams one o'clock, immense, Inviolate. What time is it? I don't know. This story concerns the night I tried to go— Though many times I flopped into the silence Of orange plastic seating like onto the bow Of a lonely ship, and felt my breathing slow. The frail, retreating stand of columns prevents The clocks from telling me time and time again to go. At my feet, a glittering trout swims past the bow.

She. My people came from Korelitz where they grew yellow cucumbers and studied the Talmud. He. Mine pored over the mud of mangold- and potato-pits or flicked through kale plants from Comber as bibliomancers of old went a-flicking through deckle-mold. She. Mine would lie low in the shtetl when they heard the distant thunder stolen by the Cossacks. He. It was potato sacks lumped together on a settle mine found themselves lying under, the Peep O'Day Boys from Loughgall making Defenders of us all. She. Mine once controlled the sugar trade from the islets of Langerhans and were granted the deed to Charlottesville.He. Indeed? My people called a spade a spade and were admitted to the hanse of pike- and pickax-men, shovels leaning to their lean-to hovels. She. Mine were trained to make a suture after the bomb and the bombast have done their very worst. He. Between fearsad and verst we may yet construct our future as we've reconstructed our past and cry out, my love, each to each from his or her own quicken-queach. She. Each from his stand of mountain ash will cry out over valley farms spotlit with pear blossom. He. There some young Absalom picks his way through cache after cache of ammunition and small arms hidden in grain wells, while his nag tugs at a rein caught on a snag.

As we sipped and mingled, regaled with oldfangled canapés and beguiled, or entertained at least, by gargled oldies, I disengaged and angled across grass tenderly groomed, past where electric tiki torches gleamed, and, alone, gazed, now truly beguiled, at my hosts’ grand expensive vista, mortgaged, yes, and, yes, remortgaged. A low gold moon glowed against a plush black sky gauzed, even filigreed, with stars. Gowned in old-growth oaks glazed with moonlight over their autumn gilt, the hills glowed in concord with the golden moon. I lingered, glad—discomfited and glad— at what my friends’ greed for beauty afforded me. I argued, self against self, what they’d gained and lost, and me with them, entangled as friendship entangles. I nearly groaned aloud with want before my friend grabbed my elbow. “Gorgeous, eh?” I grinned and agreed, my voice greased with hidden envy. From behind us, grilled sirloin, pedigreed meat sublimating on embers, triggered another hunger. Life was not just good, but too good: aged beef, aged wine after bourbon. We hungered, and all the way back to his engorged glass table, hunger was our guide.

My father had several times expressed a fear of being buried alive. I insisted that the doctor should do whatever was necessary. The doctor asked me to leave the room. When I came back, he was able to assure me that Renoir was dead! jean renoir It is not 1937 for long. A clump of ash trees and a walk Down the the boathouse: inside linen is tacked up In a long blank mural; the children sit on the wings Of the dry dock, and then, over the water in a circle Of rowboats, the aunts and uncles wait while At their center the projectionist, Jean Renoir, On a cedar raft, casts silhouettes of rabbits, birds, And turtles for the sleepy children. Corks Come out of old bottles, it is a few minutes past sunset And, now, a swimmer beside the raft looks Into the boathouse to the linens:at last, it is 1915! A bird screams over the lake, two bats Flitter back and forth through the beam of the lamp, Interrupting the images, the grand illusion, cast over Water the the acceptance of white tablecloths On the darkening shore of the lake. A torch is lit For its kerosene smoke is repugnant to the swarming insects. This film and its prisoners exist between extreme borders, Not music and algebra but A war and, then, yet another war. . . But we begin with the captured officers digging A tunnel that will soon be outside the garden wall. The Boches observe the Frenchmen working With their hoes as from the trousers of a boy Dirt from the tunnel secretly spills onto horse manure! The prisoners dream of crossing a meadow filled With snow, in the moonlight it is jade-green snow While Germans with rifles on a hill Are unable to kill them, for they have escaped Into Switzerland with its feather-brushed trees And patina of copper rooftops along a hillside village. Isn’t this the ending of the film? No! I’m sorry but There is a single blossom On the geranium, and when it falls, Captain de Boeldieu Dies, discovering his afterlife along a November road— He does not know that two men are hiding in the marsh Beside him; nevertheless, it is at this moment that the film Suffers its true conclusion. The two men hiding In the marsh will escape across the border, only To be returned to the continuing war. This is why there Is no importance to your version of the story. And there Will be another war. And more horror for the geranium! So, to pass the time, the imprisoned soldiers receive A steamer trunk filled with women’s clothing, They will all perform in a revue: a chorus Of boys and men, rouge and talcum, black stockings, Garters, the tonneau dresses, false breasts and Large paper carnations riding up like epaulets On their broad shoulders. These poignant inversions Are not ridiculous: the third boy from the right Has delicate milky thighs, these women are not ridiculous Until they begin to stiffen into men as they sing, In this comedy, their national anthem! The Russian Prisoners have been given a trunk, also, from their Mysterious Czarina; the men open it expecting vodka And sausages. The box is filled with straw And books on cooking, painting, and algebra. In disgust They burn these books—kiss good-bye the frontier Of algebra and the desire for wedding tripe! Now, these officers who are escape artists are moved As an elite corps and north to Wintersborn. Later, They are taken to a damp limestone castle From which no one will escape. The Commandant Is the stoic aristocrat, Rauffenstein, his head is in A brace like a white egg in a silver teaspoon. I mean no disrespect, but the balding Rauffenstein is An abject picture of suffering. His villa has but one Flower, a tall laden geranium. Rauffenstein and the other aristocrat, Boeldieu, Are friends. Both would know that to clear a monocle One uses spirits of vinegar. They stand confirmed In manner beside a squirrel cage. Rauffenstein feels Superior to the other two principals, the rich Jew, Rosenthal, and the charming emotional Marechal. These two hide in the marsh while Boeldieu dies Of a bullet wound. Only a king may kill a king! And Rauffenstein did it with his pistol; taking aim But missing the leg; he severed in three places Boeldieu’s intestine! The Captain is given a room in the turret that holds The flowering geranium. Now comes the oratio obliqua Of the marksman, Rauffenstein; the disfigured Commandant Is sincerely saddened At having killed the noble Captain. But before The shooting and escape we sensed the Captain’s Sacrifice was not sacrifice, or suicide, but The grand escape—a country road into another landscape. . . There are bells tolling down in the village. Rosenthal and Marechal with ropes have dropped Past the castle’s battlements to the ground. They run away across snowy farmland. Marechal’s teeth Are stained from chewing licorice-flavored tobacco. Rosenthal and Marechal are extremes who have Strong feelings for each other. They are befriended By a German widow, Ulsa, and her daughter, Lotte; Ulsa sleeps with the tall handsome Jew. He promises To return for her when the war is over. He Will lose both his legs at Mégéglise. This is not known within the story, but he’ll bleed To death beside a little bridge. He lived his illusion In the Orient of Delacroix, his servants were Syrians And Negroes. He loved the little ivory spoons that Chinese women in the open markets use to bathe And freshen the exotic tiny fish they sell out Of huge clay bowls. . . In the boathouse the children sleep, while Jean’s Oldest cousin, drunken, falls out of a rowboat. The lone swimmer has joined Renior on the raft. The film now reveals the first diversion As all of the prisoners of the fortress begin playing Several hundred wooden flutes, the noise is like women Crying over the fresh mounds at Verdun. This diversion Is not illusion And as the Boches collect the flutes, the drunken cousin Tries to join Renior on the raft. Boeldieu flees To the heights of the castle, the second diversion! We hear:Halt! Halt! Halt! A gunshot, and chowder with blood falls from Boeldieu’s Opened stomach all the way down to the courtyard. There are small fish bones in the viscera on the cobbled Courtyard floor. Scissors cut the blue blossom From the geranium. Boeldieu will die. . . dead, He awakens on a country road where, now a peasant, He walks a white horse under the looming, bare trees. Rosenthal and Marechal are watching As they hide in the dead marsh flowers of An early November. They are alive. They do not Recognize their friend. Renoir’s cousin, asking for More wine, climbing onto the raft, spills Everything, and the projector with its crude lamp Sinks slowly to the bottom of the lake— Its dusky lighted windows like a bathysphere Lost off a cable that frayed, whoever is alive Inside the iron bell is experiencing An eternal falling through water without the promise Of a bottom. . . it’s 1937, the children Asleep in the boathouse are being aroused, they wake To a bat caught in the wall of linen, they think it’s Their uncle still casting images of animals for them. . .

for John Holohan Jesus wound up with his body nailed to a tree— a torment he practically begged for, or at least did nothing to stop. Pilate watched the crowd go thumbs down and weary, signed the order. So centurions laid Jesus flat on a long beam, arms run along the crosspiece. In each palm a long spike was centered, a stone chosen to drive it. (Skin tears; the bones start to split.) Once the cross got propped up, the body hung heavy, a carcass— in carne, the Latin poets say, in meat. (—The breastbone a ship’s prow . . .) At the end the man cried out as men cry. (Tears that fill the eyes grow dark drop and by drop: One cries out.) On the third day, the stone rolled back, to reveal no corpse. History is rife with such hoaxes. (Look at Herodotus.) As to whether he multiplied loaves and fishes, that’s common enough. Poke seed-corn in a hole and see if more corn doesn’t grow. Two fish in a pond make more fishes. The altar of reason supports such extravagance. (I don’t even know how electricity works, but put trust in light switches.) And the prospect of love cheers me up, as gospel. That some creator might strap on an animal mask to travel our path between birth and ignominious death—now that makes me less lonely. And the rising up at the end into glory—the white circle of bread on the meat of each tongue that God might enter us. For 2000-near years my tribe has lined up at various altars, so dumbly I open this mouth for bread and song.