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I didn’t want one child. I wanted a thousand. Because though you may try, you can’t kill all of them. My body couldn’t birth a thousand, so I didn’t even bring one here. I let you have them. One by one, and I had my first surgery when I was eighteen. No, seven. No. I had my first surgery when I was thirty-five. No, when I was forty-seven. I almost had my first surgery today. The doctor drew an all-seeing eye around my wound to diagram the length and width of the scar with a purple magic marker. To be honest, I had my first surgery when they pulled me deadfirst headfirst from between my mother’s thighs. But I don’t remember that one; the separation of my flesh from the source of all I’d known. Muddy vessel, crumbling temple. This carved body, overgrown garden, nest of the narcotic. My first ten years were mostly marked by my relentless pursuit to not look pregnant when I went out in public. One of my goals each day was to not have someone ask me in public — hopeful look in their gesturing gaze, so excited by the prospect of a coming Christmas miracle, “Are you    ...?” and to have to shatter their hopes of Dream Baby, and simultaneously begin the Emotional Labor of soothing their embarrassment after hearing, “No.” Because a woman with a swollen or distended abdomen can only mean one thing. And that thing is always joyous and awaited with excited anticipation. A woman with a distended abdomen couldn’t possibly be dealing on the daily with something gone terribly awry. Couldn’t possibly be engaged in an ongoing war for her body, a custody battle for her own self. A woman’s swollen belly is everybody’s Good News, everybody’s Business. So that’s how I spent five years in my thirties: running around evading expectations my deceptive uterus induced in family, friends, and rank fucking strangers. What they took from me: What they scooped out of me: What they carved from out of me: What they excavated from me: What they dug out of me: What they released from me: What they harvested from me: What they pulled from me: What they birthed from me: — a colony of tumors — an archive of NO s — a battalion of rogue dreams — an inheritance of heartbreaks — a lockbox of my foremothers’ molestations — a cedar chest of secrets — four generations of the miscarried and stillborn — a library of zeros — a ledger of names written in decimal points — my grandfather’s shriveled aspirations — a moldy cellar of witnessed whippings — a  jewelry box of swollen tongues — a Bible of abducted children Everyone is invested in policing the Black body. Yes, even you. And there’s a particularly virulent investment in the surveillance and policing of the Black Woman (née “Female”) Body. In fact there are multiple systems, most of them economic, that hinge upon controlling, corralling, and commodifying the female body in general. Why do you suppose, in the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand and Seventeen, the ocean vomited up twenty-six dead Nigerian girls on the gorgeous Mediterranean coast? Pussy and Blackness are two of the first moneymakers ever recorded. And if you got both, well then, you know what time it is, right? [Bend over so I can swipe this credit card down your ass.] What information is passed through a genetic line? What memories are housed in our cells? Are our memories the memories of some memories of some long-dead, unknown Ancestors along the line? What traumas do we carry that we picked up along the way, that were never ours to begin with?

Extricate, but not too much, unfaithful digger of concordances, let be the whole tasty clutch of it, rhyme of I’m, not, awake, child, bequeathing willow trees beside a stream. Not only old ravines but Euclid Avenue, my first escalator (Hal-ease Department Store) were woven in the mat where sat the cat. I say Department, was a sexual story because Mother’s store it was, her bailiwick, father absent in a void called “Work.” Precarious. Don’t try get it all in. Bailey’s was another tasty store, such glitterglass. And later learned that testicles was store, alaya-vijnana. O dark dirty Cleveland, the Viking Club, the mysteries! All I want is loving you and blank-blank blank-blank blank-blank It’s only unmentionable because there’s no end to chasing it the tale of it and you and sustenance. Hundreds are fleeing, but not hurricanes. Violets, I always brought her wild violets in spring. Breathless romanzas secret in the Flats. Percolate the spiderwebs. Not what you expected, eh? I could bite you back, you furry thing, but you’d never understand.

for my pregnant wife, nālani, during her second trimester nālani and i walk to our small community garden plot in mānoa — the seed packets in my pocket sound like a baby’s toy rattle — when do they spray glyphosate along the sidewalks? from kunia to waimea, fifty thousand acres of gmo fields — how will open air pesticide drift affect our unborn daughter, whose nerve endings are just beginning to root? — we plant seeds in rows, soil gathers under our fingernails — syngenta, dupont, dow, pioneer, basf, monsanto

For my wife, Nālani, and our daughter, Kaikainali‘i, on her first birthday nālani clips kaikainali‘i’s tiny fingernails while she sleeps — “the rape of oceania began with guam” — soldiers invade okinawa, hawai‘i, the philippines, and south korea — #yesallwomen how do [we] stop kaikainali‘i’s body from becoming target practice — bullets fragment and ricochet —

LE REGARD BLEU Nous connaissons par ouï-dire l'existence de l'amour. Assis sur un rocher ou sous un parasol rouge, allongés dans le pré bourdonnant d'insectes, les deux mains sous la nuque, agenouillés dans la fraîcheur et l'obscurité d'une église, ou tassés sur une chaise de paille entre les quatre murs de la chambre, tête basse, les yeux fixés sur un rectangle de papier blanc, nous rêvons à des estuaires, des tumultes, des ressacs, des embellies et des marées. Nous écoutons monter en nous le chant inépuisable de la mer qui dans nos têtes afflue puis se retire, comme revient puis s'éloigne le curieux désir que nous avons du ciel, de l'amour, et de tout ce que nous ne pourrons jamais toucher des mains. • La mer en nous essaie des phrases. Depuis des lustres, la même voix épelle le même alphabet dans le même cerveau d'enfant. Elle balbutie des mots vite envolés, accrochés aux herbes des plages, à la peau brunie des baigneurs, à la proue des barques, aux mâtures. Des mots quelconques, pour rien et pour quiconque. Il n'y est question que de l'amour. C'est pourquoi nous ne savons trop que dire et souffrons que le regard d'autrui s'attarde sur notre visage quand nous voudrions qu'il se pose à même notre cœur. Nos lèvres sont si maladroites, notre corps invisible dans la nuit opaque, et nos mains mal-habiles, des éclairs ou des ailes pourtant au bout des doigts. from A Story of Blue THE BLUE LOOK We know through hearsay that love exists. Seated on a rock or under a red parasol, lying in the field buzzing with insects, our hands clasped behind our necks, kneeling in the cool darkness of a church, or settled on a straw chair within the four walls of the bedroom, head lowered, eyes fixed on a rectangle of white paper, we dream of estuaries, tumultuous surf, clearing weather and tides. We listen to the inexhaustible chant of the sea within us, as it rises and falls in our heads, like the approach and retreat of the strange desire we have for heaven, for love, and all that we cannot touch with our hands. • Within us the sea tries out sentences. From time immemorial, the same voice spells the same alphabet in the same child's brain. It mutters words which quickly fly off, snagged on the sea grasses, on the bathers' browned skin, on the bows of boats, on the masts. Ordinary words, for nothing and no one in particular. It is only about love. This is why we hardly know what to say and we suffer when someone's gaze fixes on our face, when we would like it to look into our heart. Our lips are so awkward, our body invisible in the opaque night, and our hands inept, yet lightening flashes or wings are at our fingertips.

Twenty-eight shotgun pellets crater my thighs, belly and groin. I gently thumb each burnt bead, fingering scabbed stubs with ointment. Could have neutered me, made extinct the volatile, romantic man I am. “He’s dead,” doctor at emergency room could’ve easily told my wife that night. Instead, “Soak him in a bath twice a day. Apply this ointment to the sores. Here’s a month’s supply of pain killers.” I remember the deep guttural groan I gave, when the doctor pressed my groin. Assured I could still make love, morphine drowsed me and in a dull stupor I don’t remember police visiting my bed, or laughing so hard, they scowled for a serious answer. I howled a U.F.O. shot me along the Río Grande, and they cursed and left. In the summer of ’88 I’d traded alfalfa for a bull calf. Still smelling of milk udders, I tied it to the truck rack and drove off. Its hooves teethed at pink roots ’til the whole lush field went bare dirt. A magnificent bull. Glowing wheel of heart breathed brimming stream of white flame at dawn. He wrangled his black brawn like a battleshield to challenge the sun, reared thick neck down and sideways, lunged at me with dart and snort, hoof-stamped and nostrilled dirt, ’til I growled him back whipping air with a limber willow branch, poured grain in trough and spread alfalfa. I respected his horns and he the whistling menace of willow. One afternoon my cousin Patricio helped me band the bull’s scrotum, usurp swollen sap in his testicle sack. It withered to a pink wattle and seeded the garden to drive cornstalks to bear hardy, golden horns. Thereafter, he grazed the fenceline, with the tempered lust and peaceful grace of a celibate priest. His bearing now arranged itself elegant as a wild flower sprung over night. ______________ Perfecto shot it. Rasping on a black rope of blood round its neck, it staggered, bouldering convulsions. Blood exploding in bright lash of earthquaked air, it stumble-butted stock trailer fender— second and third shots glowed its death. A quivering shadow of life-flame darkened the air and it sputtered a last drop of blood. I drank long swigs of whiskey and, thinking it was dead, turned to walk away, then it gave a tremendous groan, tremendous groan, a birth-letting groan . . . a moon groan . . . blood spurted out, thick, thick, thick alleys of dead star blood and I turned and said aloud to myself, “That’s the moon’s voice! That’s the moon’s voice!” And the white moon was in the sky, and I looked at the moon for a long time. ______________ I sat on the ground and gulped whiskey, drank the steer’s death still warm in my throat. A beautiful animal! I allowed to be butchered. When it trounced and galloped in the field, its body was a dark, windy cliff edge, and its eyes were doorways of a dream— now it bled a charred scroll of ancient chant in gravel, I would never know, and its blackened logs of blood smoldered dying vowels, I would never hear. My heart’s creak-n-tremble rage milled the steer’s death to red grist, I grieved, I wept drunkenly that no one cared, that humankind betrayed him, that we were all cowards. ______________ Perfecto, Valasquez and the butcher tried to stop me from driving, but now was the time to settle a bad feud with another friend. Redeem the bull’s blood with ours. I drove to Felipe’s house, anger knotted in me tight as the rope tied to the stock trailer steer strained against. I pulled, but could not free myself. (I had a dream night before— I crossed black-iron footbridge, partially collapsed by sea storm. Left-hand railing swept out to sea, I gripped bolt-studded right-hand railing, finger-clutched wire netting sides, carefully descended waist-high water. Waded through slowly and ascended other side— but had lost my sunglasses and wallet, went back, groped bottom, found them and ascended again.) Had to cross that bridge again. Full of significance . . . tonight, deepest part of flooded bridge was danger . . . drowning . . . represented years of my life collapsed and destroyed, water the cleansing element, my ascent from had healed, onto firm ground, but I went back, to re-live destruction… “Felipe!” I yelled, porch light flicked on, illuminating the yard. “Came to fight,” I said, “take off your glasses.” Bug-eyes glazed bewildered, then gray slits of lips snarled, “You motherless dog!” He withdrew in darkness a moment, reappeared on porch, serrated saw of his voice cut the chill dark, “¡Hijo de su pinche madre! ¡Mátalo!   ¡¡Mátalo!!” First shot framed darkness round me with a spillway of bright light, eruption of sound, and second shot roared a spray of brilliance and the third gave an expanded halo-flash. My legs woozed, and then I buckled to the ground. (I thought, holy shit, what ever happened to the old yard-style fight between estranged friends!) I groaned with the steer, and crawled my dead legs to the truck, lunged on elbows into the cab, hand lifting the dead stone beneath my waist to clutch and brake. Following morning calls came, “Tell us who did it Gato!” “Our rifles are loaded!” I said, “Leave it alone. What would you do if a drunk man came into your yard, threatened to beat you?” I wanted peace, wanted to diffuse the immovable core of vengeance in my heart, I had carried since a child, dismantle the bloody wheel of violence I had ridden since a child. During my week in bed, pellets pollinated me with a forgotten peace, and between waking thoughts of anger and vengeance, sleep was a small meadow of light, a clearing I walked into and rested. Fragrance of peace filled me as fragrance of flowers and dirt permeate hands that work in the garden all day. Curandero came to visit, and said, “The bull in ancient times was the symbol of females. Did you know that? Killing the bull, is killing the intuitive part of yourself, the feminine part. Did you realize, when Jesus was raising Lazarus, he groaned in his spirit and that bull groaned, and when you killed the bull, it was raising you. The dying bull gave birth to you and now you are either blessed or cursed. The flood of that bull’s blood, is either going to drown you or liberate you, but it will not be wasted.”

at the third floor window of the tenement, the street looks shiny. It has been washed and rinsed by rain. Beyond the silver streaks of the streetcar tracks a single streetlight stands in a pool of wet light. It is night. St. Louis. Nineteen forty-seven. I have just come home from the orphanage to stay. Years later, I will be another person. I will almost not remember this summerónot at all. But for nowówith the streetlight reflecting an aura on the wet sidewalk, with dark behind me in the dirty two rooms we call home, for now, I see it all. Tomorrow I will begin to try to forget. But in this moment everything is clear: who I am, where I am, and the clean place that I have left behind. As clear as the streetlight: how distinct its limits in the vast dark and the rain.

When one stands before the throne of glory, he begins reciting the hymn that the throne of glory sings each day:

At the airport, we all take a shot of aguardiente because we all had each other’s faces When I saw my brother I saw my face I saw my grandmother I saw my face I saw my aunt I saw my stupid face On the way up the mountain I saw my face in a pile of trash I saw my face in the mule’s ass I saw my lover I saw my face but it was white&weary I saw my brother again and there was my face; my other brother, my other face I saw my face in the American Apparel ivory chiffon blouse I brought for this occasion In the occasion I saw my face, I did I saw my face in the pankekes the next morning My face was in the talk of death My face was in her teeth, the pavement, etc., There was a jail cell at the Museo Nacional, I saw my face A woman flowercunted & crosslegged, my face & my face Everywhere my face like I didn’t have one Botero’s asses all my faces I took down notes when it came to torture & the inquisition and saw my face in the leather swing set Clavicle spikerest & eye ruptrest Faces, I suppose, are a type of torture to look like one but never be one

The Frost performs its secret ministry, Unhelped by any wind. The owlet's cry Came loud—and hark, again! loud as before. The inmates of my cottage, all at rest, Have left me to that solitude, which suits Abstruser musings: save that at my side My cradled infant slumbers peacefully. 'Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs And vexes meditation with its strange And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood, This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood, With all the numberless goings-on of life, Inaudible as dreams! the thin blue flame Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not; Only that film, which fluttered on the grate, Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing. Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature Gives it dim sympathies with me who live, Making it a companionable form, Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit By its own moods interprets, every where Echo or mirror seeking of itself, And makes a toy of Thought. But O! how oft, How oft, at school, with most believing mind, Presageful, have I gazed upon the bars, To watch that fluttering stranger! and as oft With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt Of my sweet birth-place, and the old church-tower, Whose bells, the poor man's only music, rang From morn to evening, all the hot Fair-day, So sweetly, that they stirred and haunted me With a wild pleasure, falling on mine ear Most like articulate sounds of things to come! So gazed I, till the soothing things, I dreamt, Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams! And so I brooded all the following morn, Awed by the stern preceptor's face, mine eye Fixed with mock study on my swimming book: Save if the door half opened, and I snatched A hasty glance, and still my heart leaped up, For still I hoped to see the stranger's face, Townsman, or aunt, or sister more beloved, My play-mate when we both were clothed alike! Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side, Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm, Fill up the intersperséd vacancies And momentary pauses of the thought! My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heart With tender gladness, thus to look at thee, And think that thou shalt learn far other lore, And in far other scenes! For I was reared In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim, And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars. But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds, Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible Of that eternal language, which thy God Utters, who from eternity doth teach Himself in all, and all things in himself. Great universal Teacher! he shall mould Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask. Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee, Whether the summer clothe the general earth With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch Of mossy apple-tree, while the night-thatch Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall Heard only in the trances of the blast, Or if the secret ministry of frost Shall hang them up in silent icicles, Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.