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When I cannot believe, The brown herds still move across green fields Into the tufty hills, and I was born Higher, where I could watch them as a bird might. When even memory seems imagined, what Can I bring to prayer? A pair of knees. The great faith that built a stair to heaven As now my memory tries to climb a hill, Becomes an old stone building, a deaf priest Whose hand is in the pockets of his parish, Who longs to buy a bell he'll never hear. The water in the font is cold, I trace A circle on my brow and not a cross.

It was Sunday, before dinner. My uncles were listening to the opera. O.Z. and I carried my brother in And laid him on the table. The women started screaming. My brother raised up on his side With dried blood on his hands, We killed those goddamn Canale brothers And nobody is ever going to touch us! The men shut their eyes and danced. We drank until morning When everything was quiet. They wiped their eyes, kissed us goodbye and left.

Slowly the women file to where he stands Upright in rimless glasses, silver hair, Dark suit, white collar. Stewards tirelessly Persuade them onwards to his voice and hands, Within whose warm spring rain of loving care Each dwells some twenty seconds.Now, dear child, What’s wrong,

“Faith” is a fine invention For Gentlemen who see! But Microscopes are prudent In an Emergency!

In flowerbeds we crowd, some praying, some bowing as the world, minute as it is, stays in motion: box stores doing business, fast food joints, and above us a crow, secular bird, lighting on a lamppost while we take pictures or cry as if we could live forever in this gloried surround, gazing up at the window holding her bleared hair, her mouth that is a frenzy of trapped pollen or dust, eyes like smooth shells that make us forget what fertilized the flowers at our feet, bulbs fortified with potash or bone meal, dried blood, which reminds me of the Annunziata I saw in Italy, painted by those who thought color itself was divine: crushed shell, coral and ash, pigments mixed with egg in a man’s mouth, and I worry about standing too close to the believers, I who rubberneck and lie, do I stand too close to the woman at least six months along with her own child, waving a sonogram with a faint infant shape inside, an image scratched by waves: light squandered here, dilated there, compressed oil and dust as every body contains its atlas of salt, kiss-worn, and always some bud dreamed in springtime, and though I’m a yarner and one for whom doubt is a clutched root, I can’t yet walk to my car, standing here wondering if after His birth the virgin girl saw the rest of her life would be nothing but a way to talk about that morning: gold nearly blinding, herdsmen and kings, and with its broad warm tongue a cow licking the afterbirth from the hay.

I would have freed thousands mo, If dey had known dey were slaves. Harriet herd on da wind you come back fo me didn’t think you come back fo me didn’t think you come back at all been so long my skin grew tired dis life too hard to know all alone caroline cover me jus fine she a quilt ginst the cold in ma blood she mend de torn spots in ma soul aint got no mind ta leev dis place go on moses   find yo promise lan mines is here beside dis fire wid folks we knows from when we’s born

Fake Hula for Alien Tiki, 2014

Crows, crows, crows, crows then the slow flapaway over the hill and the dead oak is naked

Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away; Lengthen night and shorten day; Every leaf speaks bliss to me Fluttering from the autumn tree. I shall smile when wreaths of snow Blossom where the rose should grow; I shall sing when night’s decay Ushers in a drearier day.

Gainesville, Florida An empire of moss, dead yellow, and carapace: that was the season of gnats, amyl nitrate, and goddamn rain; of the gator in the fake lake rolling his silverish eyes; of vice; of Erotica, give it up and let