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Tell you I chyll, If that ye wyll A whyle be styll, Of a comely gyll That dwelt on a hyll: But she is not gryll, For she is somwhat sage And well worne in age; For her vysage It would aswage A mannes courage. Her lothely lere Is nothynge clere, But ugly of chere, Droupy and drowsy, Scurvy and lowsy; Her face all bowsy, Comely crynkled, Woundersly wrynkled, Lyke a rost pygges eare, Brystled wyth here. Her lewde lyppes twayne, They slaver, men sayne, Lyke a ropy rayne, A gummy glayre: She is ugly fayre; Her nose somdele hoked, And camously croked, Never stoppynge, But ever droppynge; Her skynne lose and slacke, Grained lyke a sacke; With a croked backe. Her eyen gowndy Are full unsowndy, For they are blered; And she gray hered; Jawed lyke a jetty; A man would have pytty To se how she is gumbed, Fyngered and thumbed, Gently joynted, Gresed and annoynted Up to the knockles; The bones of her huckels Lyke as they were with buckels Togyther made fast: Her youth is farre past: Foted lyke a plane, Legged lyke a crane; And yet she wyll jet, Lyke a jollyvet, In her furred flocket, And gray russet rocket, With symper the cocket. Her huke of Lyncole grene, It had ben hers, I wene, More then fourty yere; And so doth it apere, For the grene bare thredes Loke lyke sere wedes, Wyddered lyke hay, The woll worne away; And yet I dare saye She thynketh herselfe gaye Upon the holy daye, Whan she doth her aray, And gyrdeth in her gytes Stytched and pranked with pletes; Her kyrtel Brystow red, With clothes upon her hed That wey a sowe of led, Wrythen in wonder wyse, After the Sarasyns gyse With a whym wham, Knyt with a trym tram, Upon her brayne pan, Lyke an Egyptian, Capped about: When she goeth out Herselfe for to shewe, She dryveth downe the dewe Wyth a payre of heles As brode as two wheles; She hobles as a gose With her blanket hose Over the falowe; Her shone smered wyth talowe, Gresed upon dyrt That baudeth her skyrt. And this comely dame, I understande, her name Is Elynour Rummynge, At home in her wonnynge; And as men say She dwelt in Sothray, In a certayne stede Bysyde Lederhede. She is a tonnysh gyb; The devyll and she be syb. But to make up my tale, She breweth noppy ale, And maketh therof port sale To travellars, to tynkers, To sweters, to swynkers, And all good ale drynkers, That wyll nothynge spare, But drynke tyll they stare And brynge themselfe bare, With, "Now away the mare, And let us sley care, As wyse as an hare!" Come who so wyll To Elynour on the hyll, Wyth, "Fyll the cup, fyll," And syt there by styll, Erly and late: Thyther cometh Kate, Cysly, and Sare, With theyr legges bare, And also theyr fete, Hardely, full unswete; Wyth theyr heles dagged, Theyr kyrtelles all to-jagged, Theyr smockes all to-ragged, Wyth titters and tatters, Brynge dysshes and platters, Wyth all theyr myght runnynge To Elynour Rummynge, To have of her tunnynge: She leneth them on the same. And thus begynneth the game. Instede of coyne and monny, Some brynge her a conny, And some a pot with honny, Some a salt, and some a spone, Some theyr hose, some theyr shone; Some ran a good trot With a skellet or a pot; Some fyll theyr pot full Of good Lemster woll: An huswyfe of trust, Whan she is athrust, Suche a webbe can spyn, Her thryft is full thyn. Some go streyght thyder, Be it slaty or slyder; They holde the hye waye, They care not what men say, Be that as be maye; Some, lothe to be espyde, Start in at the backe syde, Over the hedge and pale, And all for the good ale. Some renne tyll they swete, Brynge wyth them malte or whete, And dame Elynour entrete To byrle them of the best. Than cometh an other gest; She swered by the rode of rest, Her lyppes are so drye, Without drynke she must dye; Therefore fyll it by and by, And have here a pecke of ry. Anone cometh another, As drye as the other, And wyth her doth brynge Mele, salte, or other thynge, Her harvest gyrdle, her weddyng rynge, To pay for her scot As cometh to her lot. Som bryngeth her husbandes hood, Because the ale is good; Another brought her his cap To offer to the ale-tap, Wyth flaxe and wyth towe; And some brought sowre dowe; Wyth, "Hey, and wyth, Howe, Syt we downe a-rowe, And drynke tyll we blowe, And pype tyrly tyrlowe!" Some layde to pledge Theyr hatchet and theyr wedge, Theyr hekell and theyr rele, Theyr rocke, theyr spynnyng whele; And some went so narrowe, They layde to pledge theyr wharrowe, Theyr rybskyn and theyr spyndell, Theyr nedell and theyr thymbell: Here was scant thryft Whan they made suche shyft Theyr thrust was so great, They asked never for mete, But drynke, styll drynke, "And let the cat wynke, Let us washe our gommes From the drye crommes!" But some than sat ryght sad That nothynge had There of theyre awne, Neyther gelt nor pawne; Suche were there menny That had not a penny, But, whan they should walke, Were fayne wyth a chalke To score on the balke, Or score on the tayle: God gyve it yll hayle! For my fyngers ytche; I have wrytten to mytche Of this mad mummynge Of Elynour Rummynge: Thus endeth the gest Of this worthy fest! Quod Skelton, Laureat.

Sometimes it feels like it is over and it's not. Sometimes it feels like it has just begun and it's over. It's dark often at these times. Urban though, so a certain version of light too. It's hard to predict if it will start on time or how late. I'm often a little late and it has started. Last night, I could tell from the copters overhead that I was late. As I walked up, the blocks around it were emptying out. Parents pulled their children home. The night herons settled into trees. That's the outer ring. As I got closer, all that was left were the blinking lights of the motor- cycles blocking the intersections and the men and few women in uniforms that mill about the corner, helmets in their hands. They talked among themselves. Ignored me mainly. One told me how to get around. I did not clarify that I was walking towards. You can hear it sometimes. It often has a soundtrack. Sometimes it has drums and brass. Sometimes just joy. When I am late I am trying to guess its path. Last night, several times I got close to it only to be turned back by a line of cops. They let the media through but turned me back. Then it turned the corner and there it was. At that moment, I melted my body into it and it embraced me. Rosy fingered dusk and all that. Come here, it sang, listen. And then I was borne along by the waves all night and the whirlpool, the fig tree, and I was the bat, hanging on patiently. Aarav came up and hugged me. Someone grabbed me from behind and I thought it is Artem but later realized it was Berat. So much mask. I grabbed Charlotte's hand and held it for a while when things felt dicey. It felt dicey as they cornered us from two sides and we went down the tight side street, up the hill. Charlotte's hand. It's like that. Moving from isolation to the depths of friends. At first we didn't mask up. We were poets. Then slowly one by one we did. As we got turnt. As I got turnt I mean. Sometimes I still don't mask up. It often feels hubristic. I keep a bandana in my pocket. It isn't super effective. It falls down a lot. Last night, I tied it around my neck as we walked up the side street hill. I pulled it over my face as I walked past the line of cops. I noticed Emma there, throwing eggs. I ducked. Two balloons filled with paint flew by. Visors suddenly yellow. She said to me, how is your heart? And I at first worried her question. Then I realized she meant my heart and how it was turnt. It is good, I said, I am opening it; I am expanding it. And I meant it. I love you I texted Felix. Lub u!!!!!! I texted Haruto. Texting Isabella and Jackson, I love you guys. I miss you. I texted love you some forty-three times in the last few years. I texted <3 some thirty-three times. Lub u, eighteen times. Miss you, thirty-eight. She said your feed is all riots, plants, picnics, and poets. It was an accusation. She was noticing that I had got turnt. And I said, my son, my son is in my feed too. I didn't bother to argue the riot with her. Still, oh that moment. Turnt moment: I was at the poetry reading and Mia didn't go. She was supposed to read too but she didn't. She said she wanted to see what happens. Then she texts I love you and I know then that Trader Joe's has been looted. All the wines out in the street. Such sweet elixir, FOMO. Then the rest of that night. We quickly say good-byes after the reading, refuse the offer of going to drinks, careen from the reading to our home. One of us on twit- ter the entire time. Texting too. While we are driving, one of us at home runs out into the streets, towards the gas. I drive up and two of us get out of the car and I stay in the car and drive the few blocks home. My son has fallen asleep in the back. I am coughing in the car from the gas. He sleeps through it. I take him out and carry him up to bed. More texts. I love you, I text. Come by and get me when you are done. Later that night, I go out again. Miguel stays home with Minjoon. I go to a fight party; Marxist v. Nihilist. No one knows which is which. Mohamed, my fighting teacher, fights. I miss it. I love you I text. She texts back I'm high on being slugged; my eyes are swollen; I lost; I'm turnt. Standing outside, a woman gets kicked out of the club. The bouncer tosses her out and into us. She is fucked up. And this feels awful to her. Her arms wildly swinging indicate this awful feeling. It feels awful to us. Another woman tries to help her and she slugs her. She misses and the woman who she has tried to slug takes her, calms her down. I hear her saying I love you, I love you over and over. Later I will learn that she spent the entire night talking the woman down. It's like that. When turnt, sometimes one needs to be held. Still later, I stand on the street, outside my house and watch the t-mobile get looted. A man tries to stop another man who has his hammer at the ready in front of the window. The man who is attempting to stop the hammer gets hit in the face with the butt of the hammer. I decide to go to bed. It is 3 am. I text Nathan and say I love you and I'll leave the key in the box for you. The march continues on, Nathan continues on, turns left a block away and then when Nathan texts me back I know the Whole Foods is looted and they are all drinking champagne, dancing. All of them will get a cold later. Riot champagne becomes a term among us that winter. I wasn't there but I was there too. My germs were there. I too had that cold. Is this poem too heroic? I am sorry. I worry it is. Or I know it is. We are turnt to mere vandals at moments. I'll admit it. Every computer in that shop. Every phone in that one. Every car in that car lot. I don't want it to be heroic but last night I turned the corner and Nor was there with her bike and when I saw her I said I love you and we walked down the street as each window was cracked. They got turnt. Eventually we disperse. I jog for a few minutes away and out of the kettle. We joke, circle back to watch a car burn. Oliver walks by. He is hurrying towards the dispersal. I love you we say to him as he heads off. The car burns. The fire truck arrives. As I stand there watching it, it is as if everyone I ever texted I love you to walks by. I love you we call out to each other. A group of women walk by the car and stop to take photographs. So much joy they have. They are laughing with such triumph. Selfies and all. Turnt. This poem is true. I have texted I love you and its variations over and over. Sometimes I barely knew you. But the names are not true. This is not a coterie poem. Is it a milieu poem? Can it be a movement poem? I took all the names of this poem and never wrote them in. There is no electronic record of them. I found a list of the most popular baby names for various countries in 2015, the year in which I am writing this poem. I made a list, one male and one female from each list. Then I alphabetized it. And I put those names in this poem one by one. I got to O. But Olivia, Saanvi, Santiago, Seoyeon, Sofia, Yui, and Zeynep, I love you too.

For Pat Gourneau, my grandfather The heron makes a cross flying low over the marsh. Its heart is an old compass pointing off in four directions. It drags the world along, the world it becomes. My face surfaces in the green beveled glass above the washstand. My handprint in thick black powder on the bedroom shade. Home I could drink like thin fire that gathers like lead in my veins, heart’s armor, the coffee stains. In the dust of the double hollyhock, Theresa, one frail flame eating wind. One slim candle that snaps in the dry grass. Ascending tall ladders that walk to the edge of dusk. Riding a blue cricket through the tumult of the falling dawn. At dusk the gray owl walks the length of the roof, sharpening its talons on the shingles. Grandpa leans back between spoonfuls of canned soup and repeats to himself a word that belongs to a world no one else can remember. The day has not come when from sloughs, the great salamander lumbers through snow, salt, and fire to be with him, throws the hatchet of its head through the door of the three-room house and eats the blue roses that are peeling off the walls. Uncle Ray, drunk for three days behind the jagged window of a new government box, drapes himself in fallen curtains, and dreams that the odd beast seen near Cannonball, North Dakota, crouches moaning at the door to his body. The latch is the small hook and eye. of religion. Twenty nuns fall through clouds to park their butts on the metal hasp. Surely that would be considered miraculous almost anyplace, but here in the Turtle Mountains it is no more than common fact. Raymond wakes, but he can’t shrug them off. He is looking up dark tunnels of their sleeves, and into their frozen armpits, or is it heaven? He counts the points of their hairs like stars. One by one they blink out, and Theresa comes forth clothed in the lovely hair she has been washing all day. She smells like a hayfield, drifting pollen of birch trees. Her hair steals across her shoulders like a postcard sunset. All the boys tonight, goaded from below, will approach her in The Blazer, The Tomahawk, The White Roach Bar where everyone gets up to cut the rug, wagging everything they got, as the one bass drum of The Holy Greaseballs lights a depth charge through the smoke. Grandpa leans closer to the bingo. The small fortune his heart pumps for is hidden in the stained, dancing numbers. The Ping-Pong balls rise through colored lights, brief as sparrows God is in the sleight of the woman’s hand. He walks from Saint Ann’s, limp and crazy as the loon that calls its children across the lake in its broke, knowing laughter. Hitchhiking home from the Mission, if he sings, it is a loud, rasping wail that saws through the spine of Ira Comes Last, at the wheel. Drawn up through the neck ropes, drawn out of his stomach by the spirit of the stones that line the road and speak to him only in their old agreement. Ira knows the old man is nuts. Lets him out at the road that leads up over stars and the skulls of white cranes. And through the soft explosions of cattail and the scattering of seeds on still water, walks Grandpa, all the time that there is in his hands that have grown to be the twisted doubles of the burrows of mole and badger, that have come to be the absence of birds in a nest. Hands of earth, of this clay I’m also made from.

Shed a tear for Twickham Tweer who ate uncommon meals, who often peeled bananas and then only ate the peels, who emptied jars of marmalade and only ate the jars, and only ate the wrappers off of chocolate candy bars. When Twickham cooked a chicken he would only eat the bones, he discarded scoops of ice cream though he always ate the cones, he’d boil a small potato but he’d only eat the skin, and pass up canned asparagus to gobble down the tin. He sometimes dined on apple cores and bags of peanut shells, on cottage cheese containers, cellophane from caramels, but Twickham Tweer passed on last year, that odd and novel man, when he fried an egg one morning and then ate the frying pan.

I I wonder do you feel to-day As I have felt since, hand in hand, We sat down on the grass, to stray In spirit better through the land, This morn of Rome and May? II For me, I touched a thought, I know, Has tantalized me many times, (Like turns of thread the spiders throw Mocking across our path) for rhymes To catch at and let go. III Help me to hold it! First it left The yellowing fennel, run to seed There, branching from the brickwork's cleft, Some old tomb's ruin: yonder weed Took up the floating weft, IV Where one small orange cup amassed Five beetles,—blind and green they grope Among the honey-meal: and last, Everywhere on the grassy slope I traced it. Hold it fast! V The champaign with its endless fleece Of feathery grasses everywhere! Silence and passion, joy and peace, An everlasting wash of air— Rome's ghost since her decease. VI Such life here, through such lengths of hours, Such miracles performed in play, Such primal naked forms of flowers, Such letting nature have her way While heaven looks from its towers! VII How say you? Let us, O my dove, Let us be unashamed of soul, As earth lies bare to heaven above! How is it under our control To love or not to love? VIII I would that you were all to me, You that are just so much, no more. Nor yours nor mine, nor slave nor free! Where does the fault lie? What the core O' the wound, since wound must be? IX I would I could adopt your will, See with your eyes, and set my heart Beating by yours, and drink my fill At your soul's springs,—your part my part In life, for good and ill. X No. I yearn upward, touch you close, Then stand away. I kiss your cheek, Catch your soul's warmth,—I pluck the rose And love it more than tongue can speak— Then the good minute goes. XI Already how am I so far Out of that minute? Must I go Still like the thistle-ball, no bar, Onward, whenever light winds blow, Fixed by no friendly star? XII Just when I seemed about to learn! Where is the thread now? Off again! The old trick! Only I discern— Infinite passion, and the pain Of finite hearts that yearn.

Some girls        on the other side of this planet will never know        the loveliness of   walking      in a crepe silk sari.      Instead, they will spend        their days                          on their backs for a parade               of   men           who could be       their uncles in another life.         These girls memorize each slight wobble                  of   fan blade as it cuts through the stale       tea air and auto-rickshaw exhaust,        thick as egg curry. Men         shove greasy rupees        at the door for one hour         in a room with a twelve-year-old.                One hour —               One hour — One hour.            And if   she cries afterward, her older sister       will cover it up.         Will rim the waterline             of   her eyes                 with kohl pencil until it looks like                        two silk moths have stopped      to rest       on her exquisite     face.

Not rain, but fine mist falls from my lemon tree, a balm of droplets in green shadow. Six years now my mother gone to earth. This dew, light as footsteps of the dead. She often walked out here, craned her neck, considered the fruit, hundreds of globes in their leathery hides, figuring on custard and pudding, meringue and hollandaise. But her plans didn't work out. The tree goes on unceasingly—lemons fall and fold into earth and begin again— me, I come here as a salve against heat, come to languish, to let the soft bursts— essence of citrus, summer's distillate— drift into my face and settle. Water and gold brew in the quiet deeps at the far end of the season. Leaves swallow the body of light and the breath of water brims over. My hands cup each other the way hers did.

National Pigeon Association, England, 1940 Notch. Web. And then, down the shaft, lesser wing coverts and marginal coverts, and soft, greater underwing coverts — although never as great as greater under-primary coverts, gray-coated and down-plumped, trailing what might reveal a pattern just over the down that might support a secrecy. Launched from double-decker buses, or attic windows, or the dark roofs at Bletchley Park, the lesser pigeons, always first to find the fray, sport black metallic canisters strapped to matted lapel feathers. And tucked inside, like Russian dolls, a cipher’s hollow chambers — down and down, a Fibonacci spiral, a paper nautilus of words and codes and keys that shift with each decipherment. The bard is in the wand— read space as shape, read a as i— the key takes subterfuge, that doubling, double agency when tomfoolery is crossed with rage. But these are simply carriers, word-burdened, instinct- tossed, searching for the perch within a blasted atmosphere. Find forms, the message says, and everything will fall in line. The bird is in the wind

A star screen shimmers under the moon over the urban center flashing on it red and green I’ll have a suspension, mustard, topicality, glue Kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty Whipped gouache just about covers the situation In the Musée Unless there’s a fallen nest on display empty of an egg once belonging to a song bird, species unknown, which had sung See style, see working late, see mismatched socks, see polyphony It is the fate of logic infinitely to undo closure but that’s just to say that it’s the fate of logic infinitely to be logical So like a man goes into a shop and there’s like this other man in there whom he thinks he recognizes and he says like do I know you The fallen grass in winter sprawls its spring Regulations state that the pier can accommodate no more than one troupe of acrobats, thirty fishermen, or fifty tourists Yo The child never gives up her secret, which—don’t tell—is that she has a secret, and her secret has a penis We will lose another day from the inner picture—days are not ineradicable there What is it that one is autobiographical about

To begin with, I am faced with mountains to circumambulate, since I can't cut through them I enter the folds of a human adventure On every door there hangs a figurehead and this one comes to face me as the door swings shut I will proceed with good will—the best of wills—anxiously Bird of daughters, bird flying from the forks, the blurbs, the serials, the time I saw a golden tadpole, eating apple jam; I saw a sudden whirlpool, sucking down a ham The boughs groan with fruit, an apple falls—false alarm It’s a non-sequitur—that Sense data sinks The muscles give out mid-word and a thief stutters while accusing me (his uncle) of theft Lune comes along mounted on a beast called That who is neither more nor less than a horse as obedient to Lune as the tides are to the moon Shot of men hurrying toward each other at an intersection with open umbrellas none willing to give way to the others, shot of placid camels kneeling near a chained dog, shot of sugar maples temporarily obscured by falling snow Tomorrow morning, unless things vastly improve, I’ll go in person to the front of the caravan and take it over the mountain I thought I saw an earthworm, stirring in the dirt, then I saw it was a sadist, wielding a quirt