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All night I hear the noise of water sobbing. All night I make night in me, I make the day that begins on my account, that sobs because day falls like water through night. All night I hear the voice of someone seeking me out. All night you abandon me slowly like the water that sobs slowly falling. All night I write luminous messages, messages of rain, all night someone checks for me and I check for someone. The noise of steps in the circle near this choleric light birthed from my insomnia. Steps of someone who no longer writhes, who no longer writes. All night someone holds back, then crosses the circle of bitter light. All night I drown in your eyes become my eyes. All night I prod myself on toward that squatter in the circle of my silence. All night I see something lurch toward my looking, something humid, contrived of silence launching the sound of someone sobbing. Absence blows grayly and night goes dense. Night, the shade of the eyelids of the dead, viscous night, exhaling some black oil that blows me forward and prompts me to search out an empty space without warmth, without cold. All night I flee from someone. I lead the chase, I lead the fugue. I sing a song of mourning. Black birds over black shrouds. My brain cries. Demented wind. I leave the tense and strained hand, I don’t want to know anything but this perpetual wailing, this clatter in the night, this delay, this infamy, this pursuit, this inexistence. All night I see that abandonment is me, that the sole sobbing voice is me. We can search with lanterns, cross the shadow’s lie. We can feel the heart thud in the thigh and water subside in the archaic site of the heart. All night I ask you why. All night you tell me no.

All overgrown by cunning moss, All interspersed with weed, The little cage of “Currer Bell” In quiet “Haworth” laid. This Bird – observing others When frosts too sharp became Retire to other latitudes – Quietly did the same – But differed in returning – Since Yorkshire hills are green – Yet not in all the nests I meet – Can Nightingale be seen –

The dogs eat hoof slivers and lie under the porch. A strand of human hair hangs strangely from a fruit tree like a cry in the throat. The sky is clay for the child who is past being tired, who wanders in waist-deep grasses. Gnats rise in a vapor, in a long mounting whine around her forehead and ears. The sun is an indistinct moon. Frail sticks of grass poke her ankles, and a wet froth of spiders touches her legs like wet fingers. The musk and smell of air are as hot as the savory terrible exhales from a tired horse. The parents are sleeping all afternoon, and no one explains the long uneasy afternoons. She hears their combined breathing and swallowing salivas, and sees their sides rising and falling like the sides of horses in the hot pasture. At evening a breeze dries and crumbles the sky and the clouds float like undershirts and cotton dresses on a clothesline. Horses rock to their feet and race or graze. Parents open their shutters and call the lonely, happy child home. The child who hates silences talks and talks of cicadas and the manes of horses.

How many books now have the word Last In their title? Or worry, or some dangling variation Of mistake? Or empire burning, or The fools have fucked it up? Who the hell listens? They roar and Wriggle, up and down the page, They screen-print what’s coming next — pinups Of blocked streets and stone faces. How many books sling the word doom, Or mimic spotlights or air raid sirens, Regurgitate the Romans, the Kick Down the Door Guys, our genius with the fiery furnace? The quivers, the shakes, the iambic dread, The anger, the insomnia, the slow tic Of the wait, the wail, the transcribed too late, In the manner of those who have gone before us, Geiger counters, clacking the rising damp.

blowfish arranged on a saucer. Russian roulette. angelic slivers. ginseng. cut antlers allotted in bags dogs on a spit, a Dutch girl winking holds a bowl of shellfish. white cloth, drunkenness. a different language leaks out— the idea of throat, an orifice, a cord— you say it turns you on when I speak Korean. The gold paste of afterbirth, no red— Household phrases —pae-go-p’a(I am hungry)

Last time I saw myself die is when police killed Jessie Hernandez A 17 year old brown queer // who was sleeping in their car Yesterday I saw myself die again // Fifty times I died in Orlando // & I remember reading // Dr. José Esteban Muñoz before he passed I was studying at NYU // where he was teaching // where he wrote shit That made me feel like a queer brown survival was possible // But he didn’t Survive & now // on the dancefloor // in the restroom // on the news // in my chest There are another fifty bodies that look like mine // & are Dead // & I’ve been marching for Black Lives & talking about police brutality Against Native communities too // for years now // but this morning I feel it // I really feel it again // How can we imagine ourselves // We being black native Today // Brown people // How can we imagine ourselves When All the Dead Boys Look Like Us? // Once I asked my nephew where he wanted To go to College // What career he would like // as if The whole world was his for the choosing // Once he answered me without fearing Tombstones or cages or the hands from a father // The hands of my lover Yesterday praised my whole body // Made angels from my lips // Ave Maria Full of Grace // He propped me up like the roof of a cathedral // in NYC Before we opened the news & read // & read about people who think two brown queers Can’t build cathedrals // only cemeteries // & each time we kiss A funeral plot opens // In the bedroom I accept his kiss // & I lose my reflection I’m tired of writing this poem // but I want to say one last word about Yesterday // my father called // I heard him cry for only the second time in my life He sounded like he loved me // it’s something I’m rarely able to hear & I hope // if anything // his sound is what my body remembers first.

In the chill rains of the early winter I hear something— A puling anger, a cold wind stiffened by flying bone— Out of the north ... and remember, then, what’s up there: That ghost-bank: home: Amchitka: boot hill .... They must be very tired, those ghosts; no flesh sustains them And the bones rust in the rain. Reluctant to go into the earth The skulls gleam: wet; the dog-tag forgets the name; The statistics (wherein they were young) like their crosses, are weathering out, They must be very tired. But I see them riding home, Nightly: crying weak lust and rage: to stand in the dark, Forlorn in known rooms, unheard near familiar beds: Where lie the aging women: who were so lovely: once.

All the difficult hours and minutes are like salted plums in a jar. Wrinkled, turn steeply into themselves, they mutter something the color of  sharkfins to the glass. Just so, calamity turns toward calmness. First the jar holds the umeboshi, then the rice does.

fluid melodic getting more and more drastic the moment she gives in to him she regrets it a throat   a chest trying to press themselves a current of air air through the mask all the flourishes in the world the fingers, the foot trilling, the breath keen responding to recitative closing and opening out from the head with the hands carry it through the aria carry it through the chorus when finally does, waltzes a solo but not alone “let's waltz a rumba" never gives in to the waltz never embellished motifs, mimetic, sign language as clear gesture displacing singers he likes this sound muted and pronounced effort of error she likes this sound weight, irrepressible effort of eros they talk about their differences w/out trying to change or be changed regretting herself where do we meet each other w/out trying to hang or be caged

All the hills and vales along Earth is bursting into song, And the singers are the chaps Who are going to die perhaps. O sing, marching men, Till the valleys ring again. Give your gladness to earth’s keeping, So be glad, when you are sleeping. Cast away regret and rue, Think what you are marching to. Little live, great pass. Jesus Christ and Barabbas Were found the same day. This died, that went his way. So sing with joyful breath, For why, you are going to death. Teeming earth will surely store All the gladness that you pour. Earth that never doubts nor fears, Earth that knows of death, not tears, Earth that bore with joyful ease Hemlock for Socrates, Earth that blossomed and was glad ‘Neath the cross that Christ had, Shall rejoice and blossom too When the bullet reaches you. Wherefore, men marching On the road to death, sing! Pour your gladness on earth’s head, So be merry, so be dead. From the hills and valleys earth Shouts back the sound of mirth, Tramp of feet and lilt of song Ringing all the road along. All the music of their going, Ringing swinging glad song-throwing, Earth will echo still, when foot Lies numb and voice mute. On, marching men, on To the gates of death with song. Sow your gladness for earth’s reaping, So you may be glad, though sleeping. Strew your gladness on earth’s bed, So be merry, so be dead.