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Three people drinking out of the bottle in the living room. A cold rain. Quiet as a mirror. One of the men stuffs his handkerchief in his coat, climbs the stairs with the girl. The other man is left sitting at the desk with the wine and the headache, turning an old Ellington side over in his mind. And over. He held her like a saxophone when she was his girl. Her tongue trembling at the reed. The man lying next to her now thinks of another woman. Her white breath idling before he drove off. He said something about a spell, watching the snow fall on her shoulders. The musician crawls back into his horn, ancient terrapin at the approach of the wheel.

In a seaside desert port that wasn’t yet a city our grandfather built a wide house and called it gulistan There were no roses there just the new government four children that would be seven and a porch where he stitched shoes and mixed paste for paper maché book bindings He counted buds and tended love birds built their cage and bedecked it in blue and green and red foil this and gota that a cage the cat got into in front of the open water tankard the children got into during this or that fatal game Loose with life while their father cycled home in starched and ironed whites polished porch stitched black leather shoes a narrow mustache we now associate with genocide What is reverence anyway who writes the reverence rules After our grandmother died he developed a taste for Western sweets Flintstones pushpops and cokes and nerds Of all the things he typed and the typing was profuse none changed the course of history Like the verses of the Qur’an rendered in @ signs which he used as a coiled pixel taxing the Smith-Corona Coronamatic with his gridded plan Let’s hate the names of things like this Before they changed the world with typewriters the Smith brothers manufactured firearms Cartridge and ribbon bullet and thermal transfer Syracuse and gulistan Verses laid out in rows of @ seven @s in a vertical row to make an alif @s like a fallen E to make a tashdeed He did the whole Qur’an this way At some point in paleography they discovered this sign filling in for the A of Amen or Ameen in a Bulgarian version of a fourteenth century Greek chronicle Why and for whom or does The Book short circuit this question A smaller selection I have is a better plot for dirt ministrations just sura 8 ayah 46 inna Allaha maaAa al sabireen Allah is with the patient ones laid out in vertical reflection its geometry a formal garden hemmed by squares of @ looking in four directions paths and hedges of invocation borders of apostrophe trees of hail and leaves of call I wonder did he think his helical pixels looked like roses I wonder did he count the buds in every verse

In the nighttime house I don’t know where you are My allegiances could change How can I stop my allegiances from changing? Morning is a gown put on at midnight, but no one’s coming I don’t know what your secrets are You say you have no secrets but I can feel them, they’re bumps under the blanket You do not let me in This mood kept me up all night, like stars in my face, like the burning fuel of dead stars burning right through my face So now I have my own secrets This voyage at nighttime, these burning holes I can’t take you with me — I don’t know who you are You say it’s me, but I’m dreaming, I can’t recognize anything except someone else’s song, which sounds like a kind of siren, it’s calling me, it puts a light on Give me three reasons Oh, you think I test you? You think I work you too hard? You think it’s too much to make you master the task on your blue-black knees at 3 am ?

1 In the Forest of    Wearisome Sadness, Where one day I found myself wandering alone, I met my heart, who called to me, asking me where I was going. The path was long and straight, row after row of conifers receding To a horizon that because of   the geometry Seemed farther than it really was, Like the door at the top of a staircase in Versailles. But as if   the forest’s maker had been offended by elegance, A pile of rocks disrupted the rows: the forest once Had been a field. I remember that field. I was carried there by my father, beside him My grandfather, who planted the trees. Until they were tall enough to survive, He mowed the field, piling up rocks, taking down brush with a scythe. How, since I’ve known the forest almost since birth, could I have been lost? Why, since the forest is beautiful, is it not a place of delight? Repeatedly I asked these questions of my heart, But like a good physician, he elected To keep silent, leaving me to answer for myself. 2 Late at night, when I’m lying in bed and cannot sleep, My heart reads to me from the Romance of   Pleasant Thought. Always I’ve heard the story before, and typically, Since the stories are true, I am their hero. I’m riding my tricycle on the sidewalk near the house where I was born. Because I am unsupervised, I indulge in what seems at the moment A daring wish: I ride the tricycle beneath a sprinkler. Immediately I am overcome with remorse. The evidence of my trespass is everywhere to be seen, And for the first time in my life I contemplate a lie. Would my shirt dry faster if I stood in the sun, where it’s hot, Or in the shade, where cool breezes rustle the leaves? In the version of this story that appears now In the Romance of Pleasant Thought, I admire not so much my ingenuity As the evidence of my early devotion to empiricism, The way I manage terror by examining how things work. 3 It’s done, there’s nothing more to say. My heart is gone from me. Because he has fallen in love He has abandoned me. It’s pointless making myself uncomfortable over this By being mournful or sad. It’s done, there’s nothing more to say. My heart is gone from me. He does nothing but mock me. When I tell him pitifully That I cannot live on my own, He does not listen. It’s done, there’s nothing more to say. After Charles d’Orleans

The Visconti put you on their flag: a snake devouring a child, or are you throwing up a man feet first? Some snakes hunt frogs, some freedom of will. There’s good in you: a man can count years on your skin. Generously, you mother and father a stolen boy, to the chosen you offer your cake of figs. A goiter on my neck, you lick my ear with lies, yet I must listen, smile and kiss your cheek or you may swallow the child completely. In Milan there is a triptych, the throned Virgin in glory, placed on the marble below, a dead naked man and a giant dead frog of human scale on its back. There’s hope! My eyes look into the top of my head at the wreath of snakes that sometimes crowns me.

If I must worry about how I will live in my old age without wealth I would be without health now and how can I live to be old? If I must worry about how I will live in my old age without love I would be without dreams now and how can I go on living another day? Allow me to sit in the sun and listen to the sky. I will love you gently. Allow me to stay in my room and weave my rainbows. I will love you truly. Like a colt in the meadow with no boundary allow me to wander around till I hear the autumn stealthily strolling by my door. I will be waiting to be with you then.

I am ten. My mother sits in a black rocking chair in the parlor and tells stories of a country school surrounded by ricefields and no roads. I stand in the kerosene light behind her, earning my allowance. A penny for each white hair I pull.

Even iron can put forth, Even iron. This is the iron age, But let us take heart Seeing iron break and bud, Seeing rusty iron puff with clouds of blossom. The almond-tree, December's bare iron hooks sticking out of earth. The almond-tree, That knows the deadliest poison, like a snake In supreme bitterness. Upon the iron, and upon the steel, Odd flakes as if of snow, odd bits of snow, Odd crumbs of melting snow. But you mistake, it is not from the sky; From out the iron, and from out the steel, Flying not down from heaven, but storming up, Strange storming up from the dense under-earth Along the iron, to the living steel In rose-hot tips, and flakes of rose-pale snow Setting supreme annunciation to the world. Nay, what a heart of delicate super-faith, Iron-breaking, The rusty swords of almond-trees. Trees suffer, like races, down the long ages. They wander and are exiled, they live in exile through long ages Like drawn blades never sheathed, hacked and gone black, The alien trees in alien lands: and yet The heart of blossom, The unquenchable heart of blossom! Look at the many-cicatrised frail vine, none more scarred and frail, Yet see him fling himself abroad in fresh abandon From the small wound-stump. Even the wilful, obstinate, gummy fig-tree Can be kept down, but he'll burst like a polyp into prolixity. And the almond-tree, in exile, in the iron age! This is the ancient southern earth whence the vases were baked, amphoras, craters, cantharus, oenochoe, and open-hearted cylix, Bristling now with the iron of almond-trees Iron, but unforgotten, Iron, dawn-hearted, Ever-beating dawn-heart, enveloped in iron against the exile, against the ages. See it come forth in blossom From the snow-remembering heart In long-nighted January, In the long dark nights of the evening star, and Sirius, and the Etna snow-wind through the long night. Sweating his drops of blood through the long-nighted Gethsemane Into blossom, into pride, into honey-triumph, into most exquisite splendour. Oh, give me the tree of life in blossom And the Cross sprouting its superb and fearless flowers! Something must be reassuring to the almond, in the evening star, and the snow-wind, and the long, long, nights, Some memory of far, sun-gentler lands, So that the faith in his heart smiles again And his blood ripples with that untenable delight of once-more-vindicated faith, And the Gethsemane blood at the iron pores unfolds, unfolds, Pearls itself into tenderness of bud And in a great and sacred forthcoming steps forth, steps out in one stride A naked tree of blossom, like a bridegroom bathing in dew, divested of cover, Frail-naked, utterly uncovered To the green night-baying of the dog-star, Etna's snow-edged wind And January's loud-seeming sun. Think of it, from the iron fastness Suddenly to dare to come out naked, in perfection of blossom, beyond the sword-rust. Think, to stand there in full-unfolded nudity, smiling, With all the snow-wind, and the sun-glare, and the dog-star baying epithalamion. Oh, honey-bodied beautiful one, Come forth from iron, Red your heart is. Fragile-tender, fragile-tender life-body, More fearless than iron all the time, And so much prouder, so disdainful of reluctances. In the distance like hoar-frost, like silvery ghosts communing on a green hill, Hoar-frost-like and mysterious. In the garden raying out With a body like spray, dawn-tender, and looking about With such insuperable, subtly-smiling assurance, Sword-blade-born. Unpromised, No bounds being set. Flaked out and come unpromised, The tree being life-divine, Fearing nothing, life-blissful at the core Within iron and earth. Knots of pink, fish-silvery In heaven, in blue, blue heaven, Soundless, bliss-full, wide-rayed, honey-bodied, Red at the core, Red at the core, Knotted in heaven upon the fine light. Open, Open, Five times wide open, Six times wide open, And given, and perfect; And red at the core with the last sore-heartedness, Sore-hearted-looking.

Because she'd heard him laugh through new moon darkness and she knew he'd fallen and she knew, before she turned, he'd be crawling, like a crawdad, rock to loam— because she tried to love the straight back and neck he'd erected to recollect the man he'd been before—because she found herself adding up his usefulness like some kind of auctioneer—she showed him the dark coils areoling both her breasts and all the ways she bent and lifted, bent and lifted, steady, strong. She let him believe he was past due for a harvest and her hands were the right ones, now, to hold onto the scythe. • She made quick work of pleasure. The boysmile bunked down in his eyes, she claimed. Her tongue found the place in his mouth where the teeth were gone—where he'd hold his corncakes until they grew soft enough to chew. History had bedded him in all of this—his own history and failures not his own. Before he'd tramped in she'd watched another man—a man she'd thought she'd hated—watched his body opened, opened, opened until blood had married brine. She'd watch that man be whipped into something good for nothing more than fertilizing clay and she'd thought buckshot would have been a brand of kindness if sprayed into him just then. But even after his hard going, she did not miss him very much. • Anyone she chose could be shucked like surplus property tomorrow, but that hadn't been enough to warn her off of picking him that night. Because she knew if she set her sight on nothing she'd get nothing in return, she'd walked with him. But because the night progressed so —because there were some clouds—no stars—no moon—he'd tripped over the branch of a dead and down tree. In all that darkness, there, without a moon, even then, she had not fallen. She thought to say so, but she did not say so. She did nothing but say she was sorry for him. She did not use her mouth to say this. Could he not listen to her hands? They spoke softly, articulating her condolences, to his torn and bleeding skin.

for all the dead & hear my streets with ragged beats & the beats are too beat to live so the graves push out with hands that cannot touch the makers of light & the sun flames down through the roofs & the roots that slide to one side & the whistlin' fires of the cops & the cops in the shops do what they gotta do & your body's on the fence & your ID's in the air & the shots get fired & the gas in the face & the tanks on your blood & the innocence all around & the spillin' & the grillin' & the grinnin' & the game of Race no one wanted & the same every day so U fire & eat the smoke thru your long bones & the short mace & the day? This last sweet Swisher day that turns to love & no one knows how it came or what it is or what it says or what it was or what for or from what gate is it open is it locked can U pull it back to your life filled with bitter juice & demon angel eyes even though you pray & pray mama says you gotta sing she says you got wings but from what skies from where could they rise what are the things the no-things called love how can its power be fixed or grasped so the beats keep on blowin' keep on flyin' & the moon tracks your bed where you are alone or maybe dead & the truth carves you carves you & calls you back still alive cry cry the candles by the last four trees still soaked in Michael Brown red and Officer Liu red and Officer Ramos red and Eric Garner whose last words were not words they were just breath askin' for breath they were just burnin’ like me like we are all still burnin' can you hear me can you can you feel me swaggin' tall & driving low & talkin' fine & hollerin' from my corner crime & fryin’ against the wall almost livin' almost dyin' almost livin' almost dyin'