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When I was your age I went to a banquet. When I was your age I went to a barroom and bought cigarettes with quarters lifted from the laundry money. Last night I did all your laundry. I don’t know why I thought this love could be pure. It’s enough that it’s infinite. I kiss your cheek when you sleep and wonder if you feel it. It’s the same cheek I’ve kissed from the beginning. You don’t have to like me. You just have to let me keep your body yours. It’s mine. When I was your age I went to a banquet and a man in a tux pinched my cheeks. When I was your age I went to a barroom and a man in a band shirt pinched my ass. There is so much I don’t know about you. Last night I skipped a banquet so I could stay home and do your laundry and drink wine from my grandmother’s glass. When I was your age boys traded quarters for a claw at my carcass on a pleather bench while I missed the first few seconds of a song I’d hoped to record on my backseat boombox. When I was your age I enjoyed a hook. You think I know nothing of metamorphosis but when I was your age I invented a key change. You don’t have to know what I know.

The first day of Christmas, My true love sent to me A partridge in a pear tree. The second day of Christmas, My true love sent to me Two turtle doves, and A partridge in a pear tree. The third day of Christmas, My true love sent to me Three French hens, Two turtle doves, and A partridge in a pear tree. The fourth day of Christmas, My true love sent to me Four colly birds, Three French hens, Two turtle doves, and A partridge in a pear tree. The fifth day of Christmas, My true love sent to me Five gold rings, Four colly birds, Three French hens, Two turtle doves, and A partridge in a pear tree. The sixth day of Christmas, My true love sent to me Six geese a-laying, Five gold rings, Four colly birds, Three French hens, Two turtle doves, and A partridge in a pear tree. The seventh day of Christmas, My true love sent to me Seven swans a-swimming, Six geese a-laying, Five gold rings, Four colly birds, Three French hens, Two turtle doves, and A partridge in a pear tree. The eighth day of Christmas, My true love sent to me Eight maids a-milking, Seven swans a-swimming, Six geese a-laying, Five gold rings, Four colly birds, Three French hens, Two turtle doves, and A partridge in a pear tree. The ninth day of Christmas, My true love sent to me Nine drummers drumming, Eight maids a-milking, Seven swans a-swimming, Six geese a-laying, Five gold rings, Four colly birds, Three French hens, Two turtle doves, and A partridge in a pear tree. The tenth day of Christmas, My true love sent to me Ten pipers piping, Nine drummers drumming, Eight maids a-milking, Seven swans a-swimming, Six geese a-laying, Five gold rings, Four colly birds, Three French hens, Two turtle doves, and A partridge in a pear tree. The eleventh day of Christmas My true love sent to me Eleven ladies dancing, Ten pipers piping, Nine drummers drumming, Eight maids a-milking, Seven swans a-swimming, Six geese a-laying, Five gold rings, Four colly birds, Three French hens, Two turtle doves, and A partridge in a pear tree. The twelfth day of Christmas My true love sent to me Twelve fiddlers fiddling, Eleven ladies dancing, Ten pipers piping, Nine drummers drumming, Eight maids a-milking, Seven swans a-swimming, Six geese a-laying, Five gold rings, Four colly birds, Three French hens, Two turtle doves, and A partridge in a pear tree.

Then, the police arrive — they don’t find me. I’m disguised as a boy in a champagne wig And hid inside the gold rattle of a warm Appalachia wind. Beneath the trash of willow, I am. The sorrow Of  trailer parks and carnie uncles. The poor Girl’s underworld, a weedy thing. The night, With its kingdom of  lanterns and awful blue lark. How we waited, how we hid Like wolves, in the revolving question of a field.

First Architect of the jungle & Author of pastel slums, Patron Saint of rust, You have become too famous to be read. I let the book fall behind me until it becomes A book again. Cloth, thread, & the infinite wood. Don’t worry. Don’t worry. In the future, everyone, simply everyone, Will be hung in effigy. The crepe paper in the high school gym will be Black & pink & feathery, Rainbow trout & a dog’s tongue. In effigy. This, For example, was written in memory of ... But of whom? Brecht gasping for air in the street? Truman dancing alone with his daughter? Goodbye, little century. Goodbye, riderless black horse that trots From one side of  the street to the other, Trying to find its way Out of  the parade. Forgive me for saluting you With a hand still cold, sweating, And resembling, as I hold it up & a heavy sleep Fills it, the body of someone Curled in sleep as the procession passes. Excuse me, but at the end of our complete belief, Which is what you required of us, don’t we deserve A good belly laugh? Don’t we deserve A shout in the street? And this confetti on which our history is being written, Smaller & smaller, less clear every moment, And subject to endless revision? Under the circumstances, & because It can imagine no other life, doesn’t the hand, Held up there for hours, Deserve it? No?No hunh? No.

a.) When I was twelve, I lived on the grounds of a mental asylum. b). My Filipino mother was a psychiatrist, so that meant we lived in the doctor’s quarters— one of the three big brick houses that edged the institute. c). My younger sister and I practiced Herkies— our favorite cheerleading jumps— off the patients’ bleachers near the softball field. d). When I was twelve, I aced the experiments with celery and food coloring; they let me skip a whole grade and get right to The Dissections. e). I secretly wished my supply of grape Bubble Yum would never run out but I couldn’t figure out how to blow bubbles and snap the lavender gum like Sara could. f). We sold gift wrap and crystals for a junior high fund-raiser and my mom still asks Where are all the crystals I bought? and Why don’t you display them in your house? g). When I was twelve, I worried about the darkening hair on my legs. My mother bought me my first training bra— no cup, just little triangle pieces stitched together— and then a slice of New York-style cheesecake to bring home. h). Home. i). When I was twelve, our house always smelled of fried lumpia or ginger. j). We had zinnias as wide as my outstretched hand nodding at us in our garden. k). My school had to create a whole new bus stop just for my sister and me, and everyone stopped talking and stared when we stepped onto the bus each morning, smelling of grape gum and ginger roots. l.) Just who are these girls?

We had the new Chevrolet steel Idyll, sky-blue metal with the salmon interior,A Sunset On Wheels. We had silver moving clowns, the most famous of which resembled our worst villain, which confused us. Little toothbrush mustaches. We had an abundance, for once, of chocolate and tobacco, and nearly everyone drank a sweet bubbly beverage flavored by a South American plant. It somewhat burned our nose and throat. My mood was sweet and even, the rain was warm driving down the road with the radio on. It played some lovely exciting tune. Then, an unctuous voice with news of war. You drove to work with your coffee between your legs, the line ahead pink near the tree line, your dashboard with serene green lights. In the back seat was a Wild Bill Hickock coloring book and a small sneaker. It read Red Ball Jets. You stumbled into the cold green sea, enervated, with a dry mouth, afraid you might step in a hole and drown. You can’t swim. The beach is ahead, some palm fronds wave. It’s beautiful, like Bali Hai, but there are planes descending ack ack ack, making filmic little fountains of sand where they strafe the beach. Finally, reaching the woods, and separated from your company, you all asleep. Some of your son’s crayons melted in the back window. Remember to scrape those up, or melt it with wax paper and an iron, as the newspaper instructed. Bring home the Butternut Bread, Fred. We each had Rangoon Night Market Noodles. They were salty, with pieces of duck. Then we went to a movie. Someone sat on my homburg. When it was over, we walked out stunned and embarrassed. Even mediocre films communicate with one’s childhood. The line of people waiting to get in examined us carefully. And for an hour after this, every little sound was delicious: the keys in our pocket, the creak of our seats, the bedsprings when we crawled into bed, effects in a soundtrack. Our sex was a little melodramatic, with a loopy grandeur. And afterwards we were so thirsty. We watched the solar eclipse in Dad’s welding helmet, his crusader’s helm, wobbling and blind. Our tongue always smarted with the astringent mint of the toothpaste when we moved to the bed, and she was always burning holes in her nylons with those goddamn Pell Mells. Sunday night you were alone in the farmhouse, near sunset. It had been a hot day, with cicadas humming in the corn, the sound rising into the hot blue silver. You took a bath, and when you walked into the living room, still a little wet, the curtains planed horizontal, and you could hear distant thunder. The radio was low, playing classical music. The corn leaves were active, but discreet. That night you sat on the front porch steps drinking your son’s Hi-C citrus cooler. A special events floodlight examined the horizon. Under a sky thick and like pewter, lying there reading with the window open, you heard a Brooklyn catbird imitate a car alarm, the series of warbles and chirps identical, and in the same sequence. The famous Car Alarm Bird. You like the way the brushes sound over the car radio when the drummer plays with a small ensemble. As the station gets further away, the sound of the brushes mixes with static, as though some small bright particles were bunched there at the end of his hands. You worry about the car when you leave the tarmac because the bottom pings with small stones from the hardpan. The red radio towers blink far ahead, and off to the right. Soon you move up under them.

❖ A hundred red fire ants scouring, scouring the white peony ❖ Fallen plum blossoms return to the branch, you sleep, then harden again ❖ Cuttlefish in my palm stiffens with rigor mortis, boy toys can't love ❖ Neighbor's barn: grass mat, crickets, Blue Boy, trowel handle, dress soaked in mud ❖ Iron-headed mace; double-studded halberd slice into emptiness ❖ O fierce Oghuz, tie me to two wild elephants, tear me in half ❖ O my swarthy herder, two-humped bactrian, drive me the long distance ❖ Forceps, tongs,bushi, whip, flanks, scabbard, stirrup, goads, distaff, wither, awl ❖ Black-eyed Susans, Queen Anne's lace, bounty of cyclamen, mown paths erupt ❖ Gaze at the charred hills, the woebegone kiosks, we are all God's hussies ❖ I have not fondled the emperor's lapdog, whose name is Black Muzzle ❖ Urge your horses into the mist-swilled Galilee, O sweet Bedlamite ❖ Her Majesty's randying up the jewel stairs to find the pleasure dome ❖ Ancient pond; the frog jumps in and in and in: the deep slap of water ❖ The frog jumps into the ancient pond; she says, no, I am not ready ❖ Coyote cooked his dead wife's vagina and fed it to his new wife ❖ I plucked out three white pubic hairs and they turned into flying monkeys ❖ Let's do it on the antimacassar, on the antimacassar ❖ Little Red drew her teeny pistol from her basket and said "eat me" ❖ Chimera: Madame Pol Pot grafting a date tree onto a date tree ❖ His unworthy appendage, his mutinous henchman grazed my pink cheeks ❖ He on top now changes to bottom, Goddess welcomes her devotee ❖ Fish fish fowl fowl, mock me Mistress Bean Curd, I am both duck and essence ❖ Don't touch him, bitch, we're engaged; and besides, he's wearing my nipple ring ❖ Sing sing little yellow blight rage rage against the dying of the light

The bend in the river followed us for days and above us the sun doubled and redoubled its claims Now we are in a house with forty-four walls and nothing but doors Outside the trees, chokecherries, mulberries and oaks are cracking like limbs We can do nothing but listen or so someone claims, the Ice Man perhaps, all enclosed in ice though the light has been shortening our days and coloring nights the yellow of hay, scarlet of trillium, blue of block ice Words appear, the texture of ice, with messages etched on their shells: Minna 1892, Big Max and Little Sarah, This hour ago everyone watched as the statues fell Enough of such phrases and we’ll have a book Enough of such books and we’ll have mountains of ice enough to balance our days with nights enough at last to close our eyes

Night deepening, frost leans on the stables of thoroughbreds, west wind splitting their hooves. —LI HO, “Twenty-three Poems about Horses” Steed out of my dusk and a dusk, now, for the species, veins deltawise down your silky inner thigh, veins trickling from one eye down the roan cliffside of a nose vaulted and chanceled for winds of the Pleistocene, you have come, you paw patiently, that is the main thing, the fields between stretch wider and we, the restless, are everywhere save where your nostril quivers, arches, and you snort in the night. We who debouch into all places dream of you now nowhere. You come to a woman’s hand: that smile. You come to a child’s hand, giggling and shivers. Your hot breath pleasures soldiers. Harnessed to caisson with bannered coffin, to the barouche at a state wedding, you are ambassador from the eldest kingdom. The King of Brazil sent a forest of teak to pave the streets girdling the Pantheon, to muffle the clatter you hauled there. When we spurred you against Wellington’s infantry squares, you side-ran them or reared back. The god of catasrophes took note. Sad banner you were in the prophecies of Sweet Medicine, the whiskered whitneys bringing and spawning your manes and tails among the Arapaho, Cheyenne, Lakota, Kiowa, your speed between their loins a drumming into decline. Under Tutankhamun, the generalissimo who rode you hummed his tenth title: Overseer of Works in the Hill of Gritstone, while there in those Works among the pulling men pulled also your brother, sent down because of a freakish temperament. Muir knew you on both shores, and van der Post knew you, mufti lords recognizing a lord in service. Nuzzle them both. They say that Poseidon at Onchestos, breaking you as a colt, had your driver leap off where the road entered forest, and watched to see what you’d do, the rig rattling--smash it against the trunks on the run, or walk it through tall shadows. Where you linger for shade on the veldt, branches level, a tree is the only tree. Your water, the only water. Flickers of hair along your neck’s crest release the only signal. Which staggers from storm cloud to browse oats. Stubby melted candle, your recessed phallus makes no howitzer but glistens a coat whose sheen ripples off. For I imagine that Li Ho, seeing good men misused as you were, foresaw your withdrawal from our night grasses. For your standing here re-ordains neither Akhilleus nor Cuchulain. Dew braids your mane with fresh constellations. For what shall we make of you, made into goddess, mare sacrificed but receiving cult also among the footloose on the steppes: mother ridden by god-spear, great mam thus captured, cinched, spurred? though your flanks shudder unfettered. Through mists we flash bits of mirror, but from them you pound abreast, neither parent, eyes orbing the two sides. For that demigod’s eye, tiding, capsizes anyone who would turn trainer. And this one goes on into the bond. A trainer aims at one thing, but what tingles him is force hinting at the uncontainable, the opponent. And the top tamers, spook-soothers, the whisperers, will write their books but miss the appointment. It is not inscribed. The two grooms beside you in Hokusai’s whitewater cascade lave you with splashes of it, currying your bulk, hoisting your nosebag--and no one has set the timer, everywhere it is one sound, stampede steadied and rocking in it. Your great-grandparents, unicorn wild asses from Persia and Scythia, fostered childbirth but also pissed plagues, the unharnessable summum totium browsing in ocean, an eye-spangled three-legged mountain. Hell and cloud in your seed! It was your miniature stature at the beginning, Maria Tallchief at ten, that wedged you between giants into the straightaway. And the reindeer modeled from smudge in the Font de Gaume grotto at Les Eyzies, fading across your body, trails a third antler like a skater’s scarf through your head, broadening out, a dancer’s arm rippling after the total gather. Looking back from the pass at his mounted escorts, flashing them three turns back down the corkscrew, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama saw them slumped on your back, the red of Rahu in splashes and trickling stillness. And dripping you still awaited their nudges. In that patience, the kernel of the twister moan-lifting over Kansas, the shrapnel clatter of your take-off. Across that aftermath, bubbling through wind-sound or the mind’s rise from its cringe, the flubber-flutter of moody-moodlessness. So the unforeseen from you opposes the blindly seen in us-- your fuse as a spurter, jump-taker, yet a curb also to our unsnaffled berserkness. For the berserking Greek says that only that ass’s horn or hoof, cut off and cupped upward, can hold any of the cold torrent under the world, implacable Styx, All else, graces or muons, it crumbles. And every jot which that flow dissolves, the images with their assessors, has rolled in us. And you have stood calmly beside us, your shot breath a bloom in the cold, your hooves hammers yet also the last and only chalice. The unreached-for cup, beaker for world-toxin, breast englobing ground zero. And so we know you not. And I realize: though I have walked drenched in spring rains my bare thighs have not hugged your warm bellows in a downpour. For though your manic tribe is mine, the boreal chargers, mere rooms, a migrant’s mangy stations, have detained me. For while historians of cultures hot on the spoor of roots among their root clans have heard you drum past, they looked up only briefly. For though engravers assumed you would stay, given their way with your musculature, accoutrements, wavy harness, tip-toe grooms, gear draped over your cruppers like an evening gown, its ratios and metalwork continuous with Genghis Khan’s and a jockey’s, their inky mastery frames cosily misleading questions: which posthouse this evening, what pasture tomorrow? Whereas you inquire into rupture and the unfenced: what thunder between flesh and ground, what surge from the cells even past sundown?

Why did the moth fly into the flame? Was it for the same reason That Achilles died young? Who gets more fun out of sex, The man or the woman? (Be sure to explain how you can tell.) Which is more real to you, heaven or hell? Why do sinners’ ways prosper? What causes the death of love— The love of death? Did Adam and Eve have a choice? Did the Virgin Mary? What are we afraid of, anyway? Even agnostics have the right to say “thank god,” don’t they? Looking at these dancing atoms, shall I say I saw a ring Of pure and endless light? Or did I dream the whole thing? Whom shall I say is calling? Are you in if it’s your wife? Are you willing to relocate? Do you like your life? What makes this night different from all other nights? Would you say it’s your fate to be always, Without exception, five minutes late? If you arrived At 9:10, would the ceremony have started at 9:05 Though it had been scheduled for 9:15? As you walk down The aisle, and the others rivet their attention to you, Do you ask yourself what you’re going to do, As though it mattered, as if you knew?