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She always liked to blow the candles out. Fact: there’s only so much you can do with friction and an intentional hand before the hand burns. The sound that scissors make in a child’s hand while crunching construction paper aches when she grows older. Even popcorn ceilings lose that style, that feeling of a cereal freshly drowned in milk. Ah, the white beneath things. And the black below that. We come down from bunk beds. We come down from the funky reds and yellows of the spring’s summer tanager gone in fall. We fail to see the most vivid birds high in the trees on the other side of leaves. Where did those sad seeds come from or how take root? Her departure spun out of some samara down into a maple shadow that shadows well into night’s sweet syrup. O host, we don’t know the words for this country, and this country pretends we have no knife, no guns in the bedroom, no large car for escaping or crashing over hard hillsides or into houses. We stuff our faces, blank as pills, with pills. No one wants to open that book, but it’s a book.

From my window I watch the roots of a willow push your house crooked, women rummage through boxes, your sons cart away the TV, its cord trailing like your useless arms. Only weeks ago we watched the heavyweights, and between rounds you pummeled the air, drank whiskey, admonished “Know your competition!” You did, Kansas, the ‘20s when you measured the town champ as he danced the same dance over and over: left foot, right lead, head down, the move you’d dreamt about for days. Then right on cue your hay-bale uppercut compressed his spine. You know. That was that. Now your mail piles up, RESIDENT circled “not here.” Your lawn goes to seed. Dandelions burst in the wind. From my window I see you flat on your back on some canvas, above you a wrinkled face, its clippy bow tie bobbing toward ten. There’s someone behind you, resting easy against the ropes, a last minute substitute on the card you knew so well, vaguely familiar, taken for granted, with a sucker punch you don’t remember ever having seen.

Someone must have seen an old dog dragging its broken body through the wet grass; someone should have known it was lost, drinking from the old well, then lifting its head to the wind off the bottoms, and someone might have wanted that dog trailing its legs along the ground like vines sliding up the creek searching for sun; but they were not there when the dog wandered through Turley’s Woods looking for food and stopped beneath the thorn trees and wrapped its tail around its nose until it was covered by falling leaves that piled up and up until there was no lost dog at all to hear the distant voice calling through the timber, only a tired heart breathing slower, and breath, soft as mist, above the leaves.

(1970-2001) After the bullet discharges through the tunnel of his mouth, after it shatters the Oklahoma evening, rips through ragweed & across many rivers, my apartment in Pittsburgh, the metal clips my arm, slams into a plaster wall, & the silence is his body slackening & the black fact of the gun underwater. I compress my wound as his ghost kneels beside his body, the bathtub, & as his ghost draws the shower curtain back, I look away. No, I don’t want to know his secrets, why surer hands will tag, bag as evidence. He is a poet. He makes the difficult question of speaking a matter of remembering how he shouted the poems he loved. His outbursts were pure country. Yes, rumors circulated, how vets suffer medication, what he saw as a S.E.A.L., how weird, & no one could stand the belabored way he read aloud, & I said all the above & more, & to his face when no one was around when he finally caught on, I asked him, ‘Why are you quieter? I’ve noticed, & it scares me.’ * Even now I’m busy with details, the dirty work of gathering. Here’s rosemary & some pansies, that’s for thoughts rambled to me one Fall afternoon, Cathedral of Learning, how Komunyakaa showed him a way to anchor a moment between stillness & approach turning toward tall grass or a woman’s wet hair to braid, or how it could lock arms with an enemy, lose to an overwhelming grasp, or listen to the dying echo of paradise birds singing so much gibberish, as if a whole life could be reduced to one image dangling from a fist & engraved with a number, as if a poem wants only to be identified upon delivery, which was why Daniel read Blake, Calvino & Crane for fire & crystal. Why he shut himself up with Bishop. Why Stern’s huge breath, why Oppen, Tu Fu & Paz. Lewis & Vollmer mattered for their generosities, lines layered like the earth in his face, the reds & browns of his voice deepening to what he pursued, half-formed in haze & burrowing underneath to avoid tripwire, & Daniel yelling as he plunged after its gray, disappearing shape. * I listen to his ghost pace the hallway as if barefoot across dirt, fronds like unfurled scrolls, rustle. Root scent & rainfall stain his cheeks with welcome, risk. He has walked far to finish this conversation between us. He brushes against the wood, taps the doorknob trying to explain the jagged web of cracks in my wall, hot metal at the center like a labyrinth chamber or the slick tip of a widow hunched over & spinning a bundle or the pure ore from a journey toward sublimation, a soul’s treasure, or the soul, itself, lodged in a network & inconsolable because wings never guaranteed perfect pitch. * Daniel, the scar on my arm fades as I read your poems again, & the maps you drew time spackles over for a move out west. The twenty that someone taped to my office desk for flowers remains unspent, a bookmarker for a Ramses biography. I tried.   I couldn’t find your permanent address. Daniel, the news today proclaims disaster, code orange to survive for tomorrow’s headline that you were right could, at any moment, slip under a thicket, emerge skittish beside a pile of leaves, its long gray nose & black eyes focused on your movements. How you wrote it down, my friend, held it in the starless night & gave it pink fingers with which to scratch back.

for memorial at Zinc Bar, 23 June 2007, NYC I am your sugarplum fairy commodore in chief. —kari edwards conturbabimus illa (vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus [let us live, my Lesbia, and let us love]) —Catullus V.II damesirs of fishairs princes reginae I dont need this botheration guilded toe in a gendered pension embedded narcissism skirts can or could be worn w/ intentional disgrace getting oh-aff I sleep where I sit gog and magog ope myopia sweetness and delight do it for sidney, as starlover did rue on star, thir mistress cloying the lack, with thir poesis toying twill never hurt regina prince alack, areft locks beset candle agrove a buck in a corridor as like with likeness grace the tongue and sweets with sweets cloy them among conturbabimus illa let us confound them beasts implored and character impaled agathas breast in a 14 th century pincer anon 7 heads w/ 7 comings on horns on their horns wings at their feet and at their wings well you have three seconds to live bespeckled apprentice freckled daylilly a penny uneasily pleaded myrtle iron bootblackening at the speed we levatate con there is no missus I am among limbed elms colluding with doves nor tide nor tail angels w/ svelte angles the rub and tug goils languid as jersey too early for supper etc was their pimp and whatever their sucker shitslinger master cleanser w/ corporate coffee and torture pâté my present page in l-l-livery old glut of a beast’s spleen the glory over lordling socked ajaw nassau ablog by fairly a sweepmate a swoopster bedeviled in gullet swashbuckld by proxy homosexuality eh? red river andaloos funny albeit friday all the dork-rock gender suggests we levitate avec held captive patrón, bothermonger ah myrtle why sie is taken my mind impertinent parasol glossy wit promise of salt caint leave thir cellphone alone ipode eternal satellite viscera muscadetted papillon (that one) strident 17 stallions with horns on their heads and horns coming out of the horns a papillon that one a buck in a corridor conturbabimus illa let us confound them all ridded of giggling anthropomorphia aghast DL in the bowries the tee hee ambigenuity of amputee-wannabees googling tee hee silly faggot dicks are for chicks dicks are for chicks wicked hee to bury my heart at my heart was in my knee

Let it be said that Tim's year was divided into two seasons: sneakers and flip-flops. Let us remember that Tim would sometimes throw a football with all the requisite grip, angle and spiral-talk. Let us recall that for the sake of what was left of appearances, my mother never once let him sleep in her bed; he snored all over our dog-chewed couch, and in the mornings when I tip-toed past him on my way to school, his jowls fat as a catcher's mitt, I never cracked an empty bottle across that space where his front teeth rotted out. Nor did I touch a struck match to that mole by his lip, whiskery dot that—he believed—made him irresistable to all lovelorn women. Still, let us remember sweetness: Tim lying face down, Mom popping the zits that dotted his broad, sun-spotted back, which, though obviously gross, gets the January photo in my personal wall calendar of what love should be, if such a calendar could still exist above my kitchen table junked up with the heretos and therefores from my last divorce. Let us not forget how my mother would slip into her red cocktail dress and Tim would say, "Your mother is beautiful," before getting up to go dance with someone else. In fairness, let me confess that I pedaled my ten-speed across the Leaf River bridge all the way to Tim's other woman's house and lay with that woman's daughter beside the moon- cold weight of the propane tank, dumb with liquor, numb to the fire ants that we spread our blanket over until I stopped for a second and looked up because I wondered if her mother could hear us, or if Tim might not have stood in the kitchen, maybe looked out the window and saw my white ass pumping in the moonlight, and whispered to himself, "That's my boy."

For Marilynn Nihideezhí, it was a moist June afternoon when we buried you. The Oak Springs Valley was dense with sage, cedar, and chamisa; and gray, green, and brown shrubs cradled the small cemetery. The sky was huge overhead. Your son said later, "Did you see the sky? It was purple. I knew it would rain," he said. The dark Carrizo Mountains were so clear. There were so many people, Sister. Many of your friends whom we didn't know, and your former schoolmates whom we remembered as children, and Sister, we met many relatives for the first time. We cried, not wanting to leave you in that serene place. We hesitated, though our father, his parents, and their parents are buried there. Our older sisters thought ahead to bring flowers for them. They huddled quietly over their graves a few feet away. Shideezhí, remember how red the sand is? The men—your sons, our nephews, grandsons, and various in-laws— took turns filling your grave. Their necks and arms were streaked with dusty sweat. They kept their heads down; their faces were damp and eyes, swollen. We had to get it all out; we cried and held each other. My granddaughters hovered near me as if I might faint or fall unexpectedly. Did you see, Sister, the way the grandchildren fed and served everyone? They guided the grandparents and the elderly to their chairs. Once seated, they served plates filled with mutton ribs, potato salad, corn, thick slabs of oven bread, crispy fry bread, and Jell-O salad. They placed the salt and pepper—that enduring couple— before us and implored us to eat. The two delights we relished were good— hot, strong coffee and cold, crisp diet pop. We ate for you; we consumed your meal, Shideezhí. We ate to honor the times you cooked for us— those tasty dishes, scrumptious pastries combined with laughter, silly childhood memories, and always teasing jokes. Sister, I didn't know how we would make it; it is still too much to think of you not being here.

Silence augmenteth grief, writing increaseth rage, Staled are my thoughts, which loved and lost the wonder of our age; Yet quickened now with fire, though dead with frost ere now, Enraged I write I know not what; dead, quick, I know not how. Hard-hearted minds relent and rigor's tears abound, And envy strangely rues his end, in whom no fault was found. Knowledge her light hath lost, valor hath slain her knight, Sidney is dead, dead is my friend, dead is the world's delight. Place, pensive, wails his fall whose presence was her pride; Time crieth out, My ebb is come; his life was my spring tide. Fame mourns in that she lost the ground of her reports; Each living wight laments his lack, and all in sundry sorts. He was (woe worth that word!) to each well-thinking mind A spotless friend, a matchless man, whose virtue ever shined; Declaring in his thoughts, his life, and that he writ, Highest conceits, longest foresights, and deepest works of wit. He, only like himself, was second unto none, Whose death (though life) we rue, and wrong, and all in vain do moan; Their loss, not him, wail they that fill the world with cries, Death slew not him, but he made death his ladder to the skies. Now sink of sorrow I who live—the more the wrong! Who wishing death, whom death denies, whose thread is all too long; Who tied to wretched life, who looks for no relief, Must spend my ever dying days in never ending grief. Farewell to you, my hopes, my wonted waking dreams, Farewell, sometimes enjoyëd joy, eclipsëd are thy beams. Farewell, self-pleasing thoughts which quietness brings forth, And farewell, friendship's sacred league, uniting minds of worth. And farewell, merry heart, the gift of guiltless minds, And all sports which for life's restore variety assigns; Let all that sweet is, void; in me no mirth may dwell: Philip, the cause of all this woe, my life's content, farewell! Now rhyme, the son of rage, which art no kin to skill, And endless grief, which deads my life, yet knows not how to kill, Go, seek that hapless tomb, which if ye hap to find Salute the stones that keep the limbs that held so good a mind.

We wash up side by side to find each other in the speakable world, and, lulled into sense, inhabit our landscape; the curve of that chair draped with your shirt; my glass of  water seeded overnight with air. After this bed there’ll be another, so we’ll roll and keep rolling until one of  us will roll alone and try to roll the other back — a trick no one’s yet pulled off — and it’ll be as if   I dreamed you, dear, as if   I dreamed this bed, our touching limbs, this room, the tree outside alive with new wet light. Not now. Not yet.

Now that the salt of their blood Stiffens the saltier oblivion of the sea . . . —Allen Tate We leave Gulfport at noon; gulls overhead trailing the boat—streamers, noisy fanfare— all the way to Ship Island. What we see first is the fort, its roof of grass, a lee— half reminder of the men who served there— a weathered monument to some of the dead. Inside we follow the ranger, hurried though we are to get to the beach. He tells of graves lost in the Gulf, the island split in half when Hurricane Camille hit, shows us casemates, cannons, the store that sells souvenirs, tokens of history long buried. The Daughters of the Confederacy has placed a plaque here, at the fort’s entrance— each Confederate soldier’s name raised hard in bronze; no names carved for the Native Guards— 2nd Regiment, Union men, black phalanx. What is monument to their legacy? All the grave markers, all the crude headstones— water-lost. Now fish dart among their bones, and we listen for what the waves intone. Only the fort remains, near forty feet high, round, unfinished, half open to the sky, the elements—wind, rain—God’s deliberate eye.