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there is a plasticity to the soul that can fit inside sweaters but not inside drawers. how many times can one watch the same porn video before one feels that they have become that porn video. how many times can you attempt to untangle a cross. i bought a black dress today — long, and covered with sequins in the timorous shapes of stars. when i paid for it i imagined myself sitting in it on a curb drinking beer with you, so tell me what came first, the beer or the dress. you put my broken buddha lamp in the hall today because it “just didn’t fit.” i put you on the right side of my neck during a sex dream for the same reason. pisces is the blue cheese of the zodiac signs. are you a gemini? rose-covered curtains give me anxiety and black gauze has the polar-opposite effect. does styrofoam turn you on? it is narcissistic to assume that anything likes to be liked by you. it is narcissistic to assume that anything matters if you don’t. i would like to be a man ray photograph more than i would like to be a person. i would like to be the glass carnival wallpaper at your lips more than i would like to be a person. would you fuck me against your window, even though it is phobic to be naked in public? i have a feeling that although you are a poet, you think that poets are phony. i have a feeling that it’s all a joke to you and i like it, but i am not similar. your lips came to me in a dream, red and shiny like cartoon wool. your lips came to me in a honda and i loved them away, and i pushed them anyway. i wanted to be a porn star, your father wanted you to make boxes. we both felt upset about the wanting. we both learned that it is important to feel guiltless about smashing guitars. i am a 5 p.m. person who buys cardigans to look like trash. you are a 9 p.m. person who likes both kinds of nylon against your fingers. i couldn’t concentrate in yoga because i was fixated on how much you’d like the ass of the girl in front of me. i’m starting to believe that purple hair is cliché and i don’t like it. i let myself get wet in the rain today because i wanted you to be proud of me. when are my poems going to stop you. this is just the long string of molecules. this is just the long.

Oh, for corniced palace of Baghdad! not the palatial cornices of Sindád al-Híra— It crowns the gardens cascading below, a virgin unveiled in a perfumed chamber. Wind plays in the branches. They bend. Lovers at last coming together. Her neck necklaced by the river Tigris, her lord our master our Imám al-Hádi, Násir, Mansúr, best of caliphs, who never set out on horseback to war. God bless him long as a dove on a swaying bough's cooing, Long as smiles flash lightning (and eyes stream like clouds in answer) From a bride like the sun when the mist parts, revealing herself luminous in splendor.

Whose woods these are I think I know ... The landings had gone wrong; white silk, like shrouds, covered the woods. The trees had trapped the flimsy fabric in their web—everywhere the harnessed bodies hung—helpless, treading air like water. We thought to float down easily—a simple thing like coming home: feet first, a welcome from the waiting fields, a gentle fall in clover. We hadn’t counted on this wilderness, the gusts of wind that took us over; we were surprised by the tenacity of branching wood, its reach, and how impenetrable the place we left, and thought we knew, could be. Sometimes now, as we sway, unwilling pendulums that mark the time, we still can dream someone will come and cut us down. There is nothing here but words, the calls we try the dark with—hoping for a human ear, response, a rescue party. But all we hear is other voices like our own, other bodies tangled in the lines, the repetition of a cry from every tree: I can’t help you, help me.

There is a distance where magnets pull, we feel, having held them back. Likewise there is a distance where words attract. Set one out like a bait goat and wait and seven others will approach. But watch out: roving packs can pull your word away. You find your stake yanked and some rough bunch to thank.

Come live with me, and be my love, And we will some new pleasures prove Of golden sands, and crystal brooks, With silken lines, and silver hooks. There will the river whispering run Warm'd by thy eyes, more than the sun; And there the 'enamour'd fish will stay, Begging themselves they may betray. When thou wilt swim in that live bath, Each fish, which every channel hath, Will amorously to thee swim, Gladder to catch thee, than thou him. If thou, to be so seen, be'st loth, By sun or moon, thou dark'nest both, And if myself have leave to see, I need not their light having thee. Let others freeze with angling reeds, And cut their legs with shells and weeds, Or treacherously poor fish beset, With strangling snare, or windowy net. Let coarse bold hands from slimy nest The bedded fish in banks out-wrest; Or curious traitors, sleeve-silk flies, Bewitch poor fishes' wand'ring eyes. For thee, thou need'st no such deceit, For thou thyself art thine own bait: That fish, that is not catch'd thereby, Alas, is wiser far than I.

Saturday mornings, before my weekly chores, I used to sneak out of the house and across the street, grabbing the first grasshopper walking in the damp California grass along the stream. Carefully hiding a silver hook beneath its green wings, I'd float it out across the gentle ripples towards the end of its life. Just like that. I'd give it the hook and let it ride. All I ever expected for it was that big-mouth bass awaiting its arrival. I didn't think that I was giving up one life to get another, that even childhood was full of sacrifice. I'd just take the bright green thing, pluck it off its only stalk, and give it away as if it were mine to give. I knew someone out there would be fooled, that someone would accept the precious gift. So I just sent it along with a plea of a prayer, hoping it would spread its wings this time and fly across that wet glass sky, no concern for what inspired its life, or mine, only instinct guiding pain towards the other side.

Flour on the floor makes my sandals slip and I tumble into your arms. Too hot to bake this morning but blueberries begged me to fold them into moist muffins. Sticks of rhubarb plotted a whole pie. The windows are blown open and a thickfruit tang sneaks through the wire screen and into the home of the scowly lady who lives next door. Yesterday, a man in the city was rescued from his apartment which was filled with a thousand rats. Something about being angry because his pet python refused to eat. He let the bloom of fur rise, rise over the little gnarly blue rug, over the coffee table, the kitchen countertops and pip through each cabinet, snip at the stumpy bags of sugar, the cylinders of salt. Our kitchen is a riot of pots, wooden spoons, melted butter. So be it. Maybe all this baking will quiet the angry voices next door, if only for a brief whiff. I want our summers to always be like this—a kitchen wrecked with love, a table overflowing with baked goods warming the already warm air. After all the pots are stacked, the goodies cooled, and all the counters wiped clean—let us never be rescued from this mess.

Milij Balakirev 1837-1910, Russian Composer The black grand piano, the gleaming spider stood trembling in the midst of its music-net. In the concert hall a land was emerging where the stones were no heavier than dew. But Balakirev fell asleep during the music and dreamed a dream about the tsar's carriage. It rolled along over the cobblestones straight into the crow-cawing dark. He sat alone in the cab and looked out but at the same time ran alongside in the road. He knew that the trip had been long and his watch showed years, not hours. There was a field where the plow lay and the plow was a bird taking flight. There was a bay where the ship lay ice-bound, lights out, with people on deck. The carriage glided across that ice and the wheels spun and spun with a sound of silk. A lesser battleship:Sevastopol. He was aboard. The crew came forward. "You won't have to die if you can play." They showed him a peculiar instrument. It looked like a tuba, or a phonograph, or a part to some obscure machine. Scared-stiff and helpless he understood: this is the instrument that drives the warship. He turned to the sailor nearest him, desperately signaled with his hands and begged: "Make the sign of the cross like me, cross yourself!" The sailor stared somberly like a blind man, stretched his arms out, sunk his head down— he hung as if nailed to the air. The drums beat. The drums beat. Applause! Balakirev woke up from his dream. The applause-wings pattered around the hall. He watched the man at the grand piano rise. Outside the streets lay blacked-out by the strike. The carriages rolled swiftly through the darkness.

I'm remembering again, the day we stood on the porch and you smoked while the old man told you about his basement full of wine, his bad heart and the doctor's warning, how he held the dusty bottle out to you, glad, he said, to give it away to someone who appreciated its value and spirit, the years it took to settle into its richness and worth. I'm watching again, each cell alive, as you reach for the wine, your forearm exposed below the rolled sleeve, the fine hairs that sweep along the muscle, glowing, lifting a little in the afternoon breeze. I'm memorizing the shape of the moment: your hand and the small bones lengthening beneath the skin as it tightens in the gripping, in the receiving of the gift, the exact texture and color of your skin, and the old man's face, reduced to its essence. That, and the brief second when both of you had a hand on the bottle— the thing not yet given, not yet taken, but held between you, stoppered, full. And my body is flooded again with an elemental joy, holding onto it against another day in the unknowable future when I'm given terrible news, some dark burden I'll be forced to carry. I know this is useless, and can't possibly work, but I'm saving that moment, for balance.

Up — or out? — here: a problem of preposition, my uneasy relation with the world. Whether I’m above it or apart. On the other side of the latched glass door, a man loves me. Worries. Calls my name. • Where — for art — thou- sands of windows go dark in slow succession. On Essex and Ludlow and Orchard. A thousand times goodnight. • A boy throwing stones at a window. Right window, wrong boy. • Love goes toward love — And the place death, down there waving its white kerchief —