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There is no fear in taking the first step or the second or the third having a position between several Popes In fact the top can be reached without disaster precocious The code consists in noticing the particular shade of the staircase occasionally giving way to the emotions It has been chosen discriminately To graduate the dimensions ease them into sight republic of space Radiant deepness a thumb passed over it disarming as one who executes robbers Waving the gnats and the small giants aside balancing How to surprise a community by excellence somehow it occurred living a public life The original design was completed no one complained In a few years it was forgotten floating It was framed like any other work of art not too ignobly kicking the ladder away Now I shall tell you why it is beautiful Design: extraordinary color:    cobalt blue secret platforms Heels twist it into shape It has a fantastic area made for a tread that will ascend Being humble i.e. productive Its purpose is to take you upward On an elevator of human fingerprints of the most delicate fixity Being practical and knowing its denominator To push one foot ahead of the other Being a composite which sneers at marble all orthodox movements It has discovered in the creak of a footstep the humility of sound Spatially selective using this counterfeit of height To substantiate a method of progress Reading stairs as interpolation in the problem of gradualness with heavy and pure logic The master builder acknowledges this As do the artists in their dormer rooms eternal banishment Who are usually grateful to anyone who prevents them from taking a false step And having reached the summit would like to stay there even if the stairs are withdrawn

If you subtract the minor losses, you can return to your childhood too: the blackboard chalked with crosses, the math teacher’s toe ring. You can be the black boy not even the buck- toothed girls took a liking to: this match box, these bones in their funk machine, this thumb worn smooth as the belly of a shovel. Thump. Thump. Thump. Everything I hold takes root. I remember what the world was like before I heard the tide humping the shore smooth, and the lyrics asking:How long has your door been closed? I remember a garter belt wrung like a snake around a thigh in the shadows of a wedding gown before it was flung out into the bluest part of the night. Suppose you were nothing but a song in a busted speaker? Suppose you had to wipe sweat from the brow of a righteous woman, but all you owned was a dirty rag? That’s why the blues will never go out of fashion: their half rotten aroma, their bloodshot octaves of consequence; that’s why when they call, Boy, you’re in trouble. Especially if you love as I love falling to the earth. Especially if you’re a little bit high strung and a little bit gutted balloon. I love watching the sky regret nothing but its self, though only my lover knows it to be so, and only after watching me sit and stare off past Heaven. I love the word No for its prudence, but I love the romantic who submits finally to sex in a burning row- house more. That’s why nothing’s more romantic than working your teeth through the muscle. Nothing’s more romantic than the way good love can take leave of you. That’s why I’m so doggone lonesome, Baby, yes, I’m lonesome and I’m blue.

Blue light ringing through the green grass. The bent heads of petals are not praying to anything or to anyone. Only we are standing in a field of them, my son and me and me holding him. In my arms he stretches out to the very far ends of the earth like a radio signal made of skin and organs, of everything. I was singing a song to him I made up about me dying. Since yesterday he has not been crying as much as screaming like it is terrifying to wake up. It is terrifying to wake up and terrifying to sleep and his feet going blue in the cold spring air in which he is growing. His mother is growing him with the milk she makes all day, spilling out in blue. The song I am singing to him puts him to sleep, will put me to sleep. Will one day burst the drum in my ear like a bell, very much like a voice screaming from far off, though you don’t know if it’s hurting or hungry or nothing at all.

I. sound knots pinned to a fabric-less body form of oak bone a barreled chest the presence of acoustic music over the instrument resting on your lap a limited vehicle               but you knew that having learned tablature the guitar posed in sculpture clear its throat by reaching the oval gap flushed against stomach into its curious sound gather fingers around an inexhaustible voice and play the strings II. bread shaped to song as we ate and fidgeted the pitch of river frozen to stillness           a film reeled and taut swelling water oily in its cold steps before it hardens an utterance before song is shaped a compression of freezing water eating away at its own babbling face III. where are the boxes of clothes the newspaper to scoop inside of cups feel free to comment miss nothing as of chewing a new food these are features of comfort a lower altitude, moved further but           no egg crate to snug the ends of the hutch a chimera of tempered sand speak of her house absolved by the wiping ocean speak of her name by way of mountains the mirrors          silver flaking for the edges of the mirrors leaving only glass             unreflective patches the promised half the unanswerable ruin of aperture                       begging from where you haven’t seen yourself in years

Upon the plain as I rode all alone, Assaulted by two sturdy lads I was; I am a poor man Sires, let me be gone. Nay, but ye shall be poor before ye pass. And so I was: yet lost nothing thereby. Would they had robbed me of my poverty.

The Shannon when it washes the shoreline in the wake of a cruiser susurruses exactly like the Polish language you hear in lidl on Friday evenings, 7 pm payday. That’s what Gerry says. • The river surface offers space to the song: hammer taps of Latvians and Poles nailing planks of a deck.        The place between water and sky holding sound. It is under- loved and an amphitheater. • Latvians and Lithuanians are nailing planks of grooved decking. It will be a nice feature of that riverside property. Their tap-tapping underscores the distance between this side and that. • Winter gales have made swift work of the billboard proclaiming 42 luxury bungalows only two remaining

I go to the corner liquor store for a bottle of water, middle of a hectic day, must get out of the office, stop making decisions, quit obsessing does my blue skirt clash with my hot pink flats; should I get my mother a caregiver or just put her in a home, and I pull open the glass refrigerator door, am confronted by brands—Arrowhead, Glitter Geyser, Deer Park, spring, summer, winter water, and clearly the bosses of bottled water: Real Water and Smart Water—how different will they taste? If I drink Smart Water will I raise my IQ but be less authentic? If I choose Real Water will I no longer deny the truth, but will I attract confused, needy people who’ll take advantage of my realness by dumping their problems on me, and will I be too stupid to help them sort through their murky dilemmas? I take no chances, buy them both, sparkling smart, purified real, drain both bottles, look around to see is anyone watching? I’m now brilliantly hydrated. Both real and smart my insides bubble with compassion and intelligence as I walk the streets with a new swagger, knowing the world is mine.

To Marc Crawford from whom the commission Whose broken window is a cry of art (success, that winks aware as elegance, as a treasonable faith) is raw: is sonic: is old-eyed première. Our beautiful flaw and terrible ornament. Our barbarous and metal little man. “I shall create! If not a note, a hole. If not an overture, a desecration.” Full of pepper and light and Salt and night and cargoes. “Don’t go down the plank if you see there’s no extension. Each to his grief, each to his loneliness and fidgety revenge. Nobody knew where I was and now I am no longer there.” The only sanity is a cup of tea. The music is in minors. Each one other is having different weather. “It was you, it was you who threw away my name! And this is everything I have for me.” Who has not Congress, lobster, love, luau, the Regency Room, the Statue of Liberty, runs. A sloppy amalgamation. A mistake. A cliff. A hymn, a snare, and an exceeding sun.

I go down to the edge of the sea. How everything shines in the morning light! The cusp of the whelk, the broken cupboard of the clam, the opened, blue mussels, moon snails, pale pink and barnacle scarred— and nothing at all whole or shut, but tattered, split, dropped by the gulls onto the gray rocks and all the moisture gone. It's like a schoolhouse of little words, thousands of words. First you figure out what each one means by itself, the jingle, the periwinkle, the scallop full of moonlight. Then you begin, slowly, to read the whole story.

At IHOP, after the skinny brunette with a band-aid covering her hickey comes to whisk away burnt toast, Mom mentions Theresa, face brightening. She had a dream about her—80s flip hair, smooth complexion. I’ve been living in Tulsa for eighteen years, Theresa said. I understand. Even as I watched men lower her casket, I fantasized the witness protection program had resettled her. How funny we look, mother and daughter laughing over scrambled eggs, tears dripping onto bacon, hands hugging coffee mugs. For a moment Mom felt Theresa there. Such faith. Freshen your cup? the waitress asks me, poised to pour. Cloudy in the cold coffee, my reflection. I offer the mug.