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Read in my face a volume of despairs, The wailing Iliads of my tragic woe, Drawn with my blood and printed with my cares Wrought by her hand, that I have honor'd so. Who, whilst I burn, she sings at my soul's wrack, Looking aloft from turret of her pride; There my soul's tyrant joys her in the sack Of her own seat, whereof I made her guide. There do these smokes that from affliction rise, Serve as an incense to a cruel Dame; A sacrifice thrice grateful to her eyes, Because their power serve to exact the same. *** Thus ruins she, to satisfy her will, *** The Temple where her name was honor'd still.

Unhappy pen and ill accepted papers, That intimate in vain my chaste desires, My chaste desires, the ever burning tapers, Enkindled by her eyes’ celestial fires. Celestial fires and unrespecting powers, That deign not view the glory of your might, In humble lines the work of careful hours, The sacrifice I offer to her sight. But since she scorns her own, this rests for me, I’ll moan my self, and hide the wrong I have: And so content me that her frowns should be To my infant style the cradle, and the grave. What though my self no honor get thereby, Each bird sings t’herself, and so will I.

Fair is my love, and cruel as she's fair: Her brow shades frowns although her eyes are sunny, Her smiles are lightning though her pride despair, And her disdains are gall, her favours honey; A modest maid, deck'd with a blush of honour, Whose feet do tread green paths of youth and love, The wonder of all eyes that look upon her: Sacred on earth, design'd a saint above. Chastity and beauty, which were deadly foes, Live reconciled friends within her brow; And had she pity to conjoin with those, Then who had heard the plaints I utter now? For had she not been fair and thus unkind, My muse had slept, and none had known my mind.

died June 1916 Under your illkempt yellow roses, Delia, today you are younger Than your son. Two and a half decades – The family monument sagged askew, And he overtook your half-a-life. On the other side of the country, Near the willows by the slow river, Deep in the earth, the white ribs retain The curve of your fervent, careful breast; The fine skull, the ardor of your brain. And in the fingers the memory Of Chopin études, and in the feet Slow waltzes and champagne twosteps sleep. And the white full moon of midsummer, That you watched awake all that last night, Watches history fill the deserts And oceans with corpses once again; And looks in the east window at me, As I move past you to middle age And knowledge past your agony and waste.

So by sixteen we move in packs learn to strut and slide in deliberate lowdown rhythm talk in a syn/co/pa/ted beat because we want so bad to be cool, never to be mistaken for white, even when we leave these rowdier L.A. streets— remember how we paint our eyes like gangsters flash our legs in nylons sassy black high heels or two inch zippered boots stack them by the door at night next to Daddy’s muddy gardening shoes.

for M.H. Friend, remember how you showed us beasts love beauty? We were wading in your lake with bluegills and you said, Be careful, you will lose your beauty marks To their little jaws. We were a delicacy. From us they purchased The darkest part of the skin, only what contrasts on us. And it was more than a pinch or sting, It’s a sensation of hunger That makes us spring off the bottom and swim out deep And safe. “No blue stripes on cheeks; no red on fins; Old individual’s belly coppery red or brassy.” As others see you, I think these indicate, Who would have you all one shade then wouldn’t have you. At your full table later, over muskellunge and lemon, We read in the book the fish that liked us Has certain maxillaries “wholly wanting.” Your gourmet bluegill: It lives in the eye of the beholder, it swims the vitreous Humor, would eat even your blind spot! But we think we can paddle out there until all Goes dark, and we are wholly desirable, and too much.

A sweet disorder in the dress Kindles in clothes a wantonness; A lawn about the shoulders thrown Into a fine distraction; An erring lace, which here and there Enthrals the crimson stomacher; A cuff neglectful, and thereby Ribands to flow confusedly; A winning wave, deserving note, In the tempestuous petticoat; A careless shoe-string, in whose tie I see a wild civility: Do more bewitch me, than when art Is too precise in every part.

Such green, such green, this apple-, pea- and celadon, this emerald and pine and lime unsheathed to make a miser weep, to make his puny bunions shrink; these seas and seas of peony, these showy tons of rose to urge a musted monk disrobe, an eremitic nun unfold; such breathy, breathy moth and wasp, such gleeful, greedy bee to bid the bully hearts of cops and bosses sob, to tell a stubby root unstub, a rusted hinge unrust, the slug unsalt; to stir the fusted lungs to brim, the skin to sting, the dormant, tinning tongue to singe and hymn.

1. Waking First the low drone of uilleann pipes, the river of the spine just barely quivering: the froth on a half-drunk pint of Guiness shifting as the bellow breathes. 2. Waiting A pressure sprouting in the back—the joke I told about having eaten a pumpkin seed to astonish the moon- faced toddler gawping at my beach ball belly in the grocery line. 3. Pitocin What the     hell is this no one said     chaos I can't find the     cerulean beach, the sun-     rayed trail through     rain-cooled woods can't    find your face the     soft flamenco music     hurts I hate     it you turn     off it     now 4. Lidocaine Flying bullets, bats, then, finally, birds. Swallows sky-diving for mosquitos above the quiet reservoir at dusk. Iridescent synchronicity, twisting together as if on strings. You must listen hard to hear the soft applause of (closed in unison) a thousand wings. 5. Parturition Hosannas in the skull halls: I see as if from above a body brought to its knees, every one of its live cells singing Hosanna for "we praise you" and "please save us" as being trains its way into the lighted room, the ravaged world.

For Alyssa As anyone is apt to, you began as someone else’s symptom. As in other beginnings: drawn lots, blood, some dancing on the heads of pins and inside needles’ eyes, cellular revelry, hopping of microscopic turnstiles. Lucky guest, grist, leapt long odds to spark the tinder in the dark. Then, the subcommittees met: made merry in duplicate, triplicate and so on, much of themselves, divided and divined and concurred. All sides insides, pre-ambulatory perambulation meant: sure ambit, short orbit in a warm aquarium set to the muffled music of a single sphere. As in other beginnings: parting seas, the future’s violent egress, screams and sutures, aftermath’s average agony on umbilical belay but soon to solo, unfold all those origami limbs to test the inevitable debutante bawl. Wrest from the nest and the rest is you, dear: dressed for the bright lights in bits of my sister.