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There was a ship went into the sea over the body of my brother I am just a boy he was not much older than me the goddess is good and cruel wants her share of life, like us sparkling dust of birds far away whom we follow, the stars the blood red dust of life as my brother’s face disappeared beneath us beneath the ship which carried us and the goddess to where we do not know leaving the war of my grandfather the smell of smoke following us our keel, my brother, knocking down the doors of the sea the tall, and the wild waves coming, crashing under the keel of my brother’s name far from the sound of places we were leaving the roads we followed marching past my uncle’s crooked mountain forts while his men called out at us with our long hair on our shoulders first by my brother’s name who was this girl with him, leave her with us she is my brother, he said not glancing at me our songs we sang in the warm rain for the goddess blessed be her name her cloak the wild wood pigeons turning her crown the lone plover’s crying where now are you brother?

uuuuuuuuuu uuuuuuuuuu uuuuuuuuuu   uuu   ray light morning fire lynch yet uuuuuuu, yester-pain in dreams comes again. race-pain, people our people our people everywhere . . . yeh . . . uuuuu, yeh uuuuu. yeh our people yes people every people most people uuuuuu, yeh uuuuu, most people in pain yester-pain, and pain today (Screams) ooowow!      ooowow! It must be the devil (jumps up like a claw stuck him) oooo wow! oooowow! (screams) It must be the devil It must be the devil it must be the devil (shakes like evangelical sanctify shakes tambourine like evangelical sanctify in heat) ooowow! ooowow! yeh, devil, yeh, devil ooowow! Must be the devil must be the devil (waves plate like collection) mus is mus is mus is mus is be the devil, cain be rockefeller (eyes roll up batting, and jumping all the way around to face the other direction) caint be him, no lawd aint be dupont, no lawd, cain be, no lawd, no way noway, naw saw, no way jose — cain be them rich folks theys good to us theys good to us theys good to us theys good to us theys good to us, i know, the massa tolt me so, i seed it on channel 7, i seed it on channel 9 i seed it on channel 4 and 2 and 5. Rich folks good to us poor folks aint shit, hallelujah, hallelujah, ooowow! oowow! must be the devil, going to heaven after i die, after we die everything going to be different, after we die we aint gon be hungry, ain gon be pain, ain gon be sufferin wont go thru this again, after we die, after we die owooo! owowoooo! after we die, its all gonna be good, have all the money we need after we die, have all the food we need after we die have a nice house like the rich folks, after we die, after we die, after we die, we can live like rev ike, after we die, hallelujah, hallelujah, must be the devil, it ain capitalism, it aint capitalism, it aint capitalism, naw it aint that, jimmy carter wdnt lie, “lifes unfair” but it aint capitalism must be the devil, owow! it ain the police, jimmy carter wdnt lie, you know rosalynn wdnt not lillian, his drunken racist brother aint no reflection on jimmy, must be the devil got in im, i tell you, the devil killed malcolm and dr king too, even killed both kennedies, and pablo neruda and overthrew allende’s govt. killed lumumba, and is negotiating with step and fetchit, sleep n eat and birmingham, over there in “Rhodesia”, goin’ under the name ian smith, must be the devil, caint be vortser, caint be apartheid, caint be imperialism, jimmy carter wdnt lie, didnt you hear him say in his state of the union message, i swear on rosalynn’s face-lifted catatonia, i wdnt lie nixon lied, haldeman lied, dean lied, hoover lied hoover sucked (dicks) too but jimmy dont, jimmy wdnt jimmy aint lying, must be the devil, put yr money on the plate, must be the devil, in heaven we’all all be straight cain be rockefeller, he gave amos pootbootie a scholarship to Behavior Modification Univ, and Genevieve Almoswhite works for his foundation Must be niggers! Cain be Mellon, he gave Winky Suckass, a fellowship in his bank put him in charge of closing out mortgages in the lowlife Pittsburgh Hill nigger section, caint be him. (Goes on babbling, and wailing, jerking in pathocrazy grin stupor) Yessuh, yessuh, yessuh, yessuh, yessuh, yes- suh, yessuh, yessuh, yessuh, yessuh, put yr money in the plate, dont be late, dont have to wait, you gonna be in heaven after you die, you gon get all you need once you gone, yessuh, i heard it on thejeffersons, i heard it on therookies, I swallowed it whole on roots: wasn’t it nice slavery was so cool and all you had to do was wear derbies and vests and train chickens and buy your way free if you had a mind to, must be the devil, wasnt no white folks, lazy niggers chained theyselves and threw they own black asses in the bottom of the boats, [(well now that you mention it King Assblackuwasi helped throw yr ass in the bottom of the boat, yo mamma, wife, and you never seed em no more)] must a been the devil, gimme your money put your money on this plate, heaven be here soon, just got to die, just got to stop living, close yr eyes stop breathin and bammm-O heaven be here, you have all a what you need, Bam-O all a sudden, heaven be here, you have all you need, that assembly line you work on will dissolve in thin air owowoo! owowoo! Just gotta die just gotta die, this ol world aint nuthin, must be the devil got you thinkin so, it cain be rockefeller, it cain be mor- gan, it caint be capitalism it caint be national oppression owow! No Way! Now go back to work and cool it, go back to work and lay back, just a little while longer till you pass its all gonna be alright once you gone. gimme that last bitta silver you got stashed there sister, gimme that dust now broth- er man, itll be ok on the other side, yo soul be clean be washed pure white. yes. yes. yes. owow. now go back to work, go to sleep, yes, go to sleep, go back to work, yes owow. owow. uuuuuuuuuu, uuuuuuuuuuu, uuuuuuuuuuu. yes, uuuuuuu. yes. uuuuuuuuuu. a men.

Sees him at the far end of the strand, squamous in rubbery weed, his knees bobbing urchins, his lean trunk leaning, sea-treasure for her. After it all (they mate, like carapaces, in parentheses) Dora feels coolness in new places, lifts a reused razor shell, mother-of-pearly and straight and signals out to the swell of moldering green. Dora is electric, in love, and deep water. Dora, Dora, Dora, in which dread is. People people the beach, peering through splayed hands, appealing: DAW-RAAaargh. A boat sees her passing. Sea-scribbler’s chest buckles in aftershock: his quill is primed: squid-inked and witful.

When Reuben Pantier ran away and threw me I went to Springfield. There I met a lush, Whose father just deceased left him a fortune. He married me when drunk. My life was wretched. A year passed and one day they found him dead. That made me rich. I moved on to Chicago. After a time met Tyler Rountree, villain. I moved on to New York. A gray-haired magnate Went mad about me i so another fortune. He died one night right in my arms, you know. (I saw his purple face for years thereafter.) There was almost a scandal. I moved on, This time to Paris. I was now a woman, Insidious, subtle, versed in the world and rich. My sweet apartment near the Champs Élysées Became a center for all sorts of people, Musicians, poets, dandies, artists, nobles, Where we spoke French and German, Italian, English. I wed Count Navigato, native of Genoa. We went to Rome. He poisoned me, I think. Now in the Campo Santo overlooking The sea where young Columbus dreamed new worlds, See what they chiseled: "Contessa Navigato Implora eterna quiete."

With her hair closely cropped up to the nape Like Dorian Apollo’s, the girl lay on the narrow Pallet, keeping her limbs stiffly frozen Within a heavy cloud she could not escape... Artemis emptied her quiver—every arrow Shot through her body. And though very soon She’d be no virgin, like cold honeycomb, Her virgin thighs still kept her pleasure sealed... As if to the arena, the youth came Oiled with myrrh, and like a wrestler kneeled To pin her down; and although he broke past Her arms that she had thrust against his chest, Only much later, with one cry, face to face, Did they join lips, and out of their sweat, embrace...

Well yes, I said, my mother wears a dot. I know they said "third eye" in class, but it's not an eye eye, not like that. It's not some freak third eye that opens on your forehead like on some Chernobyl baby. What it means is, what it's showing is, there's this unseen eye, on the inside. And she's marking it. It's how the X that says where treasure's at is not the treasure, but as good as treasure.— All right. What I said wasn't half so measured. In fact, I didn't say a thing. Their laughter had made my mouth go dry. Lunch was after World History; that week was India —myths, caste system, suttee, all the Greatest Hits. The white kids I was sitting with were friends, at least as I defined a friend back then. So wait, said Nick, does your mom wear a dot? I nodded, and I caught a smirk on Todd— She wear it to the shower? And to bed?— whie Jesse sucked his chocolate milk and Brad was getting ready for another stab. I said, Hand me that ketchup packet there. And Nick said, What? I snatched it, twitched the tear, and squeezed a dollop on my thumb and worked circles till the red planet entered the house of war and on my forehead for the world to see my third eye burned those schoolboys in their seats, their flesh in little puddles underneath, pale pools where Nataraja cooled his feet.

So these are the hills of home. Hazy tiers nearly subliminal. To see them is to see double, hear bad puns delivered with a wink. An untoward familiarity. Rising from my sleep, the road is more and less the road. Around that bend are pale houses, pairs of junipers. Then to look reveals no more.

Driving through hot brushy country in the late autumn, I saw a hawk crucified on a barbed-wire fence. I guess as a kind of advertisement to other hawks, saying from the pages of a leading women’s magazine, “She’s beautiful, but burn all the maps to your body. I’m not here of my own choosing.”

Valentine’s Day breakfast at Baker’s Square: Laura drinks coffee while I watch Andrew, who refuses to sit but chooses instead to stay in the restaurant’s vestibule where he opens and closes the big double doors over and over again, as if he’s practicing a grand entrance–entering, crossing the threshold, and letting the doors close behind him. I’m thinking, it wasn’t so long ago I carried my tiny son piggyback through the woods to a waterfall; wasn’t long ago I kissed Laura for the first time; wasn’t long ago I lived in the house with my dog and sat with my notebook at the kitchen table on Sunday morning after working all night– sipping burnt coffee and scratching out lines, lighting my hundredth cigarette, starting over again, determined to write a love poem.

The girls turning double-dutch bob & weave like boxers pulling punches, shadowing each other, sparring across the slack cord casting parabolas in the air. They whip quick as an infant’s pulse and the jumper, before she enters the winking, nods in time as if she has a notion to share, waiting her chance to speak. But she’s anticipating the upbeat like a bandleader counting off the tune they are about to swing into. The jumper stair-steps into mid-air as if she’s jumping rope in low-gravity, training for a lunar mission. Airborne a moment long enough to fit a second thought in, she looks caught in the mouth bones of a fish as she flutter-floats into motion like a figure in a stack of time-lapse photos thumbed alive. Once inside, the bells tied to her shoestrings rouse the gods who’ve lain in the dust since the Dutch acquired Manhattan. How she dances patterns like a dust-heavy bee retracing its travels in scale before the hive. How the whole stunning contraption of girl and rope slaps and scoops like a paddle boat. Her misted skin arranges the light with each adjustment and flex. Now heather- hued, now sheen, light listing on the fulcrum of a wrist and the bare jutted joints of elbow and knee, and the faceted surfaces of muscle, surfaces fracturing and reforming like a sun-tickled sleeve of running water. She makes jewelry of herself and garlands the ground with shadows.