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For S. S. She reads by the light of a guttering candle and likes the feel of each page's gilt edge as she lifts it slightly at the corner, readying herself to turn it. If the wind whips the sycamore branches outside her window, if her nightgowned shoulders shudder once from a sudden chill, so much the better, and the book must tell of children toiling for bread and pennies in a textile mill, or tender brothers doomed to sharpen their bayonets in opposing armies, or a family of refugees, dust in their mouths, gazing with longing at the far shore of a river. And I long only to be the author of that book she reads whose page glows from the same dim flame that illuminates her face, the author whose thought she contemplates as she touches a fingertip to a word to mark her place and turns her head toward the kettle that has begun to whistle.

culture is richest where there’s the greatest ratio land : coast — After Barry Cunliffe • this patch of the western ocean’s coruscating garden recalls my favorite song (mishearing)the sea’s very hum- drum

sometimes the deaf hear better than the blind some men when they first heard her sing were only attracted to the flower in her hair

“A Billion Things in One” is an erasure of the article “YesJulz, Snapchat Royalty” by Max Berlinger, which appeared in the New York Times on June 30, 2016.

There is little I can do besides stoop to pluck them one by one from the ground, their roots all weak links, this hoard of Lazaruses popping up at night, not the Heavenly Blue so like silk handkerchiefs, nor the Giant White so timid in the face of the moon, but poor relations who visit then stay. They sleep in my garden. Each morning I evict them. Each night more arrive, their leaves small, green shrouds, reminding me the mother root waits deep underground and I dig but will never find her and her children will inherit all that I’ve cleared when she holds me tighter and tighter in her arms.

felled 1879 My aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled, Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun, All felled, felled, are all felled; Of a fresh and following folded rank Not spared, not one That dandled a sandalled Shadow that swam or sank On meadow & river & wind-wandering weed-winding bank. O if we but knew what we do When we delve or hew — Hack and rack the growing green! Since country is so tender To touch, her being só slender, That, like this sleek and seeing ball But a prick will make no eye at all, Where we, even where we mean To mend her we end her, When we hew or delve: After-comers cannot guess the beauty been. Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve Strokes of havoc unselve The sweet especial scene, Rural scene, a rural scene, Sweet especial rural scene.

Authorized, booked By my steadfast prose The dead I ghost write Shed shadows that shine With hindsight, hearsay— The last word is mine

When is a poem one word? Even at 17 he was Baraka on the court, Coltrane gold toned, a kind of running riff, more than boy-child, man-child, he was one word like Prince. How back in those drunken days when I still ran in bars & played schoolyard ball & wagered fives & tens, me & my colleague the psych-prof drove across Eastern Ohio just to see this kid from powerhouse St. Vincent, grown out of rust-belt-bent-rims, tripped with the hype & hope & hip hop blaring from his headphones, all rubber soled & grit as the city which birthed him. We watched him rise that night scoring over 35, drove back across the quiet cut cornfields & small towns of Ohio, back to the places where we slept knowing that Jesus had been reborn, black & beautiful with a sweatband crown rimming his brow. He was so much more than flipping burgers & fries, more than 12-hour shifts at the steel plant in Cleveland. More than the shut-down mill in Youngstown. More than that kid selling meth in Ashtabula. He was every kid, every street, every silo, he was white & black & brown & migrant kids working farms. He was the prince of stutter-step & pause. He was the new King. We knew he was coming back the day after he left his house in Bath Township. He never sold it. Someone fed his fish for years. Perhaps our hope? Fuck Miami. Leave Wade to wade through the Hurricane rain. LeBron is remembering that woman washing the linoleum floor, that man punching his punch card. He drives a Camaro, the cool kid Ohio car driving through any Main Street. He is the toll-taker, & he is the ticket out. He keeps index cards documenting his opponents’ moves. One leans forward before he drives. One always swipes with his left hand. The details like a preacher studying the gospel. He studies the game like a mathematician conjugating equations, but when he moves he is a choreography, a conductor passing the ball like a baton. He is a burst of cinders at the mill. He is a chorus of children calling his name. The blistered hands of man stacking boxes in Sandusky, the long wait for work in Lorain. A sapling bends & reaches in all directions before it becomes a tree. A ball is a key to a lock. A ball is the opposite of Glock. America who sings your praises, while tying the rope, everyone waiting for Caesar to fall, back-stabbing media hype city betrayed by white people with racist signs. I watch the kids play ball in the Heights, witness this they say. We will rise. I watched LeBron arrive & leave, I walked, I gave up drinking as he went off & won a ring. The children’s chorus calls out sing brother, sing. Everything is black. Storm clouds gather out on Lake Erie. But the old flower-hatted women at the Baptist church are heading out praise cards, registering teenagers to vote. To turn a few words into a sentence. He is a glossary of jam, & yes he is corporate chugging down green bubbly Sprite, running in Beats head phones, he is Dunkin his donut, he is Nike, witness, ripped. On a spring day in Akron a chorus of children is chanting his name on the court by the chain-link fence. He is forged steel, turning his skinny body into muscle, years of nights lifting, chiseling, cutting, studying. Watching the tape. To make a new kind of sentence. He is passing out T-shirts, this long hot bloody summer he was returned to the rusted rim along the big lake. He is stutter-step. He is spinning wheel. He has a cool new hat. He is speaking of dead black children. He is giving his time. To make the crowd sway like wind through a field of corn. Does LeBron think of dying? Does the grape think of dying as it withers on the vine by the lake? Or does it dream of the wine it will become? He is wearing a shirt that says I Can’t Breathe. They said he was arrogant. I said he was just Ohio. He married his high school sweetheart. Bravado laid out on the court. No back down, he is Biggie with a basketball inside of a mic, no ballistics, just ballet. He is Miles Davis cool, quietly cerebral, turning his back, tossing up chalk like blue smoke, blue notes, blues. He is Akron, Columbus, he is heart & Heat turned to lake effect blizzards, freighters frozen in ice, looking for work & no money to eat. He is Ashtabula & Toledo. He is carrying so many across the river, up through Marietta. The grapevines are ripe in Geneva. He returns, Man-child, Man-strong, Man-smart, Man- mountain, Mansfield to East Akron, minus into Man, or should we say Mamma raised? Single mother fed, shy child, quiet child who grew, who suffered & taught his body to sing, his mother worked how many shifts, doing this, doing that, never gave up for her son. He is third shift at the rubber plant in winter, he is farm hands & auto parts piecework & long nights the men at the bar, eyes on the television. The lake tonight is black as newly laid asphalt. There are no ellipses. He is turning paragraphs into chapters. Long ago the hoop Gods made this deal at the crossroads, Old Scratch is flipping the pages of his program & waiting high in the stands—to belong to a place most people would call nowhere, to show the world how tough we truly are, twelve-hour shifts at the Rubber plant in Akron. How he is, how he is a part of this asphalt court we call Ohio, & how we suffer, & how we shine.

It is terrible to be trapped at def con with not even Ray Kurzweil’s daughter to gaze upon I know some of you wish I would go wherever my people go, the factory, physical therapy, a telethon No! says my mentor Not this. This is too angry This is too much about Not that. Not that I like to hack, sometimes, the Hebrew Bible I don’t think my mentor hacks the Bible b/c it has too much lame deaf blind circumcised in it Not that. Not that in poetry Didn’t we already have Judd Woe? He was so good to us so good and sad and sorry The great thing about Judd Woe is that now we don’t have to keep looking for a disabled poet We got him Everybody together now: We got him Thank yhwh he’s a man I am so relieved, aren’t you? I am so cock blocked, aren’t you? Here I am at the cobbler Please, please can you make all my high heels into wedges Here I am at Wal-Mart Please, please, can you make your children stop following me Here I am at Advanced Prosthetics Please, please, can you change my settings this is not poetry , they said Be happy with what we give you We got you Insurance: You are allowed ten socks/year Insurance: You are not allowed to walk in oceans Insurance: If you had fought for us, if you had lost your leg for us, for freedom, then we would cover the leg that walks in oceans and why is it always a poem is a walk? A poem is like a walk A poem is like going on a walk A walk is like a poem I was walking the other day and a poem tripped me Don’t leave Don’t I have any other ideas Be a man, mortality, zip it Call in the aubades I wish I would read an aubade Is it morning yet? This manifesto is so so long. Too angry Who you bangin’ on my door? judy grahn Thank yhwh . It was getting hot in here Ray Kurzweil’s daughter is in Hawaii I was about to give up Yes Yes I know I am trying to walk the treadmill My leg beeps at 3 mph This is the conference for hackers Can somebody hack me Can somebody change my settings Yes Yes I know jenny holzer So glad you could make it Come in, judy is here What do y’all do with all the men in our heads Yes Yes It is terrible My people are just trying to get born like please don’t test us we are going to fail and the test comes back and says your baby is fucked judy, jenny , I have been your student faithfully I have kissed some ass, tho, hoping if they like me enough — what if they like me enough — why judy , do you need a coaster? Thy cup runneth over The glass slipper, amenities The manifesto must go on biohack it cut all of it my mentor says This is not poetry My mentor says: A poem is a walk Get well soon, I pray for you Must go          Poem about coed virility          aging       dahlias Recurrent word to describe beauty hacked from the Hebrew Bible: Ruddy Don’t leave     In the morning I will vacuum this up      Scansion, feet I am sorry if you offended me Role of disabled artist: Always be sorry

Is this happiness or oyster-life? This flexing of muscular torso-foot joy’s wonder? This sifting of silt from food in the shifting chill-dark? If, in my mind, there is a life of flight in the light beyond the over-swirl, must I unfix my lips from this rock to be right? Or is my apex to worry quartz against my shell?