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Day after day, along with his placid automobiles, that well-groomed sallow young man had been waiting for me, as in the cheerful, unchanging weather of a billboard—pacing the tiles, patting his tie, knotting, un- knotting the façade of his smile while staring out the window. He was so bad at the job he reminded me of myself the summer I failed at selling Time and Life in New Jersey. Even though I was a boy I could feel someone else’s voice crawl out of my mouth, spoiling every word, like this cowed, polite kid in his tie and badge that said Greg, saying Ma’am to my wife, calling me Sir, retailing the air with such piety I had to find anything out the window. Maybe the rain.  It was gray and as honestly wet as ever.  Something we could both believe.

A kind in glass and a cousin, a spectacle and nothing strange a single hurt color and an arrangement in a system to pointing. All this and not ordinary, not unordered in not resembling. The difference is spreading.

When you show yourself to the woman you love, you don’t know your fear is not fear, itself. You have never been good, but now you are so good, who are you? Is it the liquidity of her skin that bathes the world for you, or her face, captured like a she-lion in your own flesh? This summerbed is soft with ring upon ring upon ring of wedding, the kind that doesn’t clink upon contact, the kind with no contract, the kind in which the gold is only (only!) light. Cloud covers and lifts, and sleep and night and soon enough, love’s big fire laughs at a terrible burn, but only (only!) because pain absorbs excess joy and you shouldn’t flaunt your treasures in front of all day’s eyes.

A fourth was needed so one of the three Invited a friend and I came along as a spare In case a chair was empty since I could fill In as easily as I could shout out a rhyme. As the jive flowed like the River Jordan And Joshua and his trumpets sounded the alarm The winning cards slam damned on the table And I laughed along with morning noon and night. My three big brothers: bold smart handsome. One slim as a stick of dynamite, the second solid As a line backer and the third crazy enough To fight them both if they let it roll beyond talk. Treated me like a child even after I had my first. The three of them (ace king and a wild card) Improbably born within four years as if Daddy And Momma were trying to break a record Or win a bet about how many diapers a woman Could change in a single day without cursing The hand God had dealt her; the odds were even Until I came along years later to tell their story.

Stop playing. You do remember the card tables, Slick stick figures like men with low-cut fades, Short but standing straight Because we bent them into weak display. What didn’t we want? What wouldn’t we claim? How perfectly each surface was made For throwing or dropping or slamming a necessary Portion of our pay. And how could any of us get by With one in the way? Didn’t that bare square ask to be played On, beaten in the head, then folded, then put away, All so we could call ourselves safe Now that there was more room, a little more space?

Dear Frustrated in Flatbush, Gurl, just go on ahead then. You waiting for your Daddy to give you the thumbs up? Do what you like. Do what makes your ass happy. They gon’ call you all makes and sizes of hoe anyway. That’s how this thing been set up. But just cuz they name a thing a thing, don’t mean it ain’t still named God in some other language. Your fortune cookie say you poppin’. You a full spread of good shit. Your rotten wisdom tooth. Your pockmarked shoulders. Those eyelashes ain’t come here to talk about the weather. You the hottest day in July and every fire hydrant in this city is written out to your name. Whatchu dead fish for? Whatchu call that stroke? Drowning? Baptism? Gurl, you betta lick that collection plate clean and stop pretending you just got off the first canoe from Heaven. You ain’t nothin but a big bowl of sweat rice. You wring your left thigh, they call you Vintage JuJu. They like, “This some kind of nightmare?” And it’s just you, smoking a blunt in the dark, cackling like rain. Like your grandmama at her ain’t-shit husband’s funeral. Bitch, you been a woman. This ain’t new skin. Slap some Lycra on it and call yourself a predicament. You ain’t just somebody’s meal plan. Pull back your hair and eat. And look at this muhfukka, sittin across the table, lookin like he wanna bite you. Tonight is tonight and tomorrow might be somewhere else, serenading some lesser bitch. Throw his ass a bone and stop worrying about your credit score. You stay banging your tambourine to the wrong hymnal. I’m sure they had names and inescapable mouths but what your ex gotta do with this? Why you still got his body in your linen closet? That’s nasty. Bitch, keep your house clean. You crying over spilled dick. Gurl buh-bye. Getchu a free refill. You too black for indie film housewife. You too naked for conversation like this. Too much soft brutality, too much bathtub depression. Why you always got your neck swung open? Free throat don’t pay for your boy’s sneakers. You already know I don’t even sigh for free. Shit, I stroke a shallow strobe light, inchworm down 4 feet of greasy pole, and I still don’t feel like any less than a miracle.

I don't love my son the way I thought my mother should love me so I handed him a shoe box to put the dead bird in and shut the door. It was a mistake, not to be sure he buried it, not to grab the children gathered at my back door by their shoulders to push them into a half-circle and a prayer. Should have made them take turns digging the hole, each one of their pudgy hands finger stiff red's box to lower it to the ground. It wasn't my place to teach other women's children about death, so my own son snuck the shoe box into his backpack, dead-eyed bird rolling like a plastic prize ball, told the principal this cold puff of field bird had been his pet. See him clutching a coffin the size of his feet, eyes wide over a pout, giving a man a reason good enough to hold him. after Louise Glück

Not to conform to any other color is the secret of being colorful. He shocks us when he flies like a red verb over the snow. He sifts through the blue evenings to his roost. He is turning purple. Soon he'll be black. In the bar's dark I think of him. There are no cardinals here. Only a woman in a red dress.

Dress like you care! Eat like you care! Care like you care! You don’t think apples just grow on trees, do you? • A fish taps a clam against a bony knob of coral to crack its shell — which demonstrates intelligence yes, but is the fish pleased with itself? • Alone in your crib, you form syllables. Are you happy when one is like another? Add yourself to yourself. Now you have someone.

Care for thy soul as thing of greatest price, Made to the end to taste of power divine, Devoid of guilt, abhorring sin and vice, Apt by God’s grace to virtue to incline. Care for it so as by thy retchless train It be not brought to taste eternal pain. Care for thy corse, but chiefly for soul’s sake; Cut off excess, sustaining food is best; To vanquish pride but comely clothing take; Seek after skill, deep ignorance detest. Care so, I say, the flesh to feed and clothe That thou harm not thy soul and body both. Care for the world to do thy body right; Rack not thy wit to win thy wicked ways; Seek not to oppress the weak by wrongful might; To pay thy due do banish all delays. Care to dispend according to thy store, And in like sort be mindful of the poor. Care for thy soul, as for thy chiefest stay; Care for thy body for thy soul’s avail; Care for the world for body’s help alway; Care yet but so as virtue may prevail. Care in such sort that thou be sure of this: Care keep thee not from heaven and heavenly bliss.