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1 When Clumsy harks the gladsome ting-a-lings Of dinner chimes that Mrs. Clumsy rings, His two hands winglike at his most bald head, Then Clumsy readies Clumsy to be fed. He pulls from satchel huge a tiny chair, And waggling his pillowed derriere He hitches up his pants to gently sit. Like two ecstatic doves his white hands flit Tucking his bib in quickly, then, all thumbs, They brush away imaginary crumbs From knee-high table with dismissive air. With fists wrapped round his giant silverware He shuts his eyes and puckers up for kisses. In such a pose Clumsy awaits his Mrs., Rubbing his hungry ribs. But oh, alack, Quite unbeknownst to Clumsy, at his back The circle of a second spotlight shows That No-No has delivered fatal blows To Mrs. Clumsy since that happy time She summoned Clumsy with her dinner chime. And there is Clumsy’s darling lying dead. How like a rubber ball bounces her head As No-No drags her feet-first from this life. Then No-No dresses up as Clumsy’s wife, Her scarf now silhouettes his long hooked nose, His long bones rattle in her frilly clothes As No-No brings a tray of cups and plates Into the light where puckered Clumsy waits. Hearing her footstep soft makes Clumsy take The pucker from his lips and sweetly break Into falsetto greetings, then resume His lips into a kiss. But this is doom, And hideously silent No-No stands. When Clumsy parts his eyelids both his hands Fly up as if on strings and Clumsy screams, The tears squirt from his ducts a dozen streams, His mouth blubbers, inelegantly smeared, “Where is she, No-No? Oh, I am afeared!” Then No-No lifts up Clumsy’s trembly chin, And leans to hiss with loud stage whisper in The big pink ear of Clumsy, “My dear friend,” No-No enunciates. “This is The End.” 2 Disguised as Doctor of Philosophy In academic haberdashery By dint of hood and black capacious gown, No-No wipes off the blackboard up and down, His black sleeve floating outward with each lunge, The black streaks glisten from his dampened sponge, While Clumsy sharpens pencils two feet long To little stubs and wets them with his tongue, Then smooths his pad of paper with gloved fists. He lifts his sleeves a fraction at the wrists And twirls his hands around like windmill sails To soothe his nerves, then drums his muffled nails Until the Doctor claps his hands rat-tat And picks his pointer up and points it at His eager pupil with the jumbo ears: “Compose a paragraph.” And Clumsy clears His throat a dozen times to soft aver, “I don’t know how to write with letters sir.” At which the Doctor hides with sleeve a smile Most uncontrollable and fraught with guile, Until, authority regained, he says, “In that case you may dictate sentences Which you most wish to write, and I’ll record Your words for you to copy from the board.” Now Clumsy tries to think of what to write. He cranes his neck around stage-left and -right, He gazes toward the rafters thinking hard And sometimes shakes his head as to discard Ideas he finds less than adequate, Then caroling a joyous “I know what!” He pulls a giant lightbulb from a sack And holds it overhead and puts it back, And in his vast excitement both his hands Pull up his earlobe-anchored rubber bands To lift from scalp his tiny frizzy wig: “I’d like to start with ‘God is very big.’ ” Erupting laughter nearly knocks quite down The Doctor in his nearly empty gown, He whirls on heel and cuts his hooting off: “My theologian! Fellow philosophe! Your disquisition has the resonance Of truth’s unique, unutterable sense But yet, being pedantic and antique, This mind of mine must tinker, weigh, and seek, And wonder if together you and I For sake of scholarship should specify How big God is?” Thus groping for the truth About the size of God makes pink smoke poof From Clumsy’s ears in jets, and fire alarms Go off backstage as, lowered head on arms, Full sixty seconds Clumsy cogitates. The Doctor snaps his chalk in two and waits. Clumsy looks up and No-No utters “Yes?” “Bigger than the biggest clouds, I guess.” “Bigger than clouds! Dear fellow! I should say I never would have thought of God that way! Then let’s begin.” And No-No sets the chalk Tick-ticking on the board like time-bomb clock While Clumsy wraps his pencil finger-wise And sets it on the page and squints his eyes At No-No’s blackboard words so white and clean And neat and straight with spaces in between, And then, his page two inches from his nose, He copies out in crooked uphill rows: “I, Clumsy, hereby give and wittingly My soul to No-No for Eternity.”

It was your idea to park and watch the elephants swaying among the trees like royalty at that make-believe safari near Laguna. I didn’t know anything that big could be so quiet. And once, you stopped on a dark desert road to show me the stars climbing over each other riotously like insects like an orchestra thrashing its way through time itself I never saw light that way again.

I came to encounter a coyote I left all sorts of things behind You couldn’t get on a plane unless you traveled light Back then there were weight restrictions for planes, they don’t have them any longer, American bodies have no restrictions, they’ve become so big that there aren’t restrictions on the weight of bodies or luggage any more, but back then, I can’t even count how many times I picked up my bags and stepped on the scale, no matter how many times I weighed myself, I still wasn’t the least bit lighter Not knowing what else to do, I took out my books Then I took out my clothes Then I went to the bathroom and defecated Then I took out more clothes Then I threw up Then I took out more books Then I stripped off all my clothes, held my bag, and stood on the scale, but I wasn’t the least bit lighter Know what I mean? That’s what it means to go on a trip That’s what it means to leave the place where you live Trips and then more trips There are things you need to carry with you to survive Not knowing what else to do, I called my husband, filed for divorce, talked to my children and told them Mommy wouldn’t be home for a while, in other words, it was only after I abandoned my relationships, my attachments, and even my language that I was light enough to get on the plane, when I arrived, all I had was a few changes of clothes, some cash, my passport, my visa waiver, my credit cards, and an 
international driver’s license In California, the sky was blue, there was nothing but seashore, wild land, and housing developments, it was hazy and hard to see in the evenings, it was as if everything was immersed in mother’s milk, my toes got cold, I bought some socks, but after wearing them three days, the cheap things were ready to fall apart, I looked long and hard at them, feeling like a coyote (Yeah, I tell people I came alone But that is not entirely true I was always thinking about the coyote The two of us traveling together) I saw dead raccoons I saw dead skunks I smelled them too Someone I met the first day said to me The whole place smells like skunk, must be a dead one somewhere It was an unfamiliar scent, but now I know it well The whole place smells like skunk, must be a dead one somewhere I know to say that to people now In any case, I didn’t see Any coyotes (Two traveling together) Someone in the street Told me to get the hell out of here Why had I come? I couldn’t find what I wanted, I had come so far but,get the hell out, this isn’t the place where the coyotes are, they’re farther away, in deeper places, where there is nothing, where there is much more emptiness So I headed east From the western edge of the continent to the east The interstates With odd numbers run north and south While even numbers run east and west Those in the 500s are the bypasses for I-5 (north-south) Those in the 800s are the bypasses for I-8 (east-west) I took I-5 south to I-580 I went further south to I-8 then went east East, east, east And even further east In Arizona, I took I-17 At Flagstaff, I took US Route 89 I dashed into a roadside motel, slept, and woke And started driving again The morning light shone brilliantly Each time I stopped to fill up with gas, I bought some brownies, each individually wrapped, I tore off the wrappers with one hand and ate them as I drove, the ridiculously sweet lumps stuck to the roof  of my mouth, when I stopped in front of a motel that night, my fingers didn’t want to leave the steering wheel, at the registration desk, the words I needed to say in English didn’t rise to my lips, even though 
I knew them all too well (Two traveling together) There was a woman standing at the side of the road, I called out to her in broken English, asking her what was the matter, she answered in what was also broken English Would you mind taking me to the nearest gas station? She sat in the passenger’s seat I’m Navajo Where are you from? From California, I answered No, that’s not what I meant What tribe are you from? she asked (Two traveling together) From Kayenta I took US Route 163 toward Monument Valley I had heard that coyotes lived there long ago That it’s an amazing place, the moon rises, the sun sets I imagined it would be like seeing the ocean But when I got there, it wasn’t like the ocean at all Rocks soared into the air Rocks, rocks, even more rocks Red rocks In the dust I watched the sun set over them By the time I got back to Route 163, the sun had sunk deep beyond the horizon, the only thing I could see was the road in front of me, 
I drove on looking for a place to sleep, but I didn’t see a thing, there wasn’t anything to see, air rushed through my cracked window, 
letting out a long, thin, high-pitched whistle Hii-iuu-uuuuu Hii-iuu-uuuuu Like a reed flute My thin, hard window was slightly open, the wind rushed in but couldn’t escape Hii-iuuu Uuu-uuuuu Uuu-hiiuuuuu (Two of us heard it) I drove a long way before spying a large motel, I saw the vacancy sign as I approached, I thought I’d have to drive for hours and hours before finding a place to sleep, I thought I wouldn’t stop, that I’d drive all night without stopping, but the place I found was part of a chain you see in every city, the bed was big and deep, and there was lots of hot water in the tub (Two of us were there) The next morning The car was completely filthy The whole thing was covered with bright red dirt and sand The windshield was covered with the splattered bodies of countless insects No one knew I had slept there, nor that I was leaving, nor which direction I was headed, no one knew It was a day that invited Death along the roadside I hadn’t even driven for five minutes before I saw it — A single, dead coyote Lying on its back, legs in the air (It was both me and My travel companion, too) Translated from the  Japanese

1 A French scholar says he affected the Chinese manner. When he took his friends into the countryside To look at blossoms, they all saw Chinese blossoms. He dressed accordingly and wept for the wild geese of Shosho. 2 One year after making love through the short midsummer night He walked home at dawn and noticed that the river Oi Had sunk two feet. The following year was better. He saw bubbles of crab-froth among the river reeds.

One was fire red, Hand carved and new— The local maker pried the wood From a torn-down church's pew, The Devil's instrument Wrenched from the house of God. It answered merrily and clear Though my fingering was flawed; Bright and sharp as a young wine, They said, but it would mellow, And that I would grow into it. The other one was yellow And nicked down at the chin, A varnish of Baltic amber, A one-piece back of tiger maple And a low, dark timbre. A century old, they said, Its sound will never change. Rich and deep on G and D, Thin on the upper range, And how it came from the Old World Was anybody's guess— Light as an exile's suitcase, A belly of emptiness: That was the one I chose (Not the one of flame) And teachers would turn in their practiced hands To see whence the sad notes came.

Two went to pray? O rather say One went to brag, th’ other to pray: One stands up close and treads on high, Where th’ other dares not send his eye. One nearer to God’s altar trod, The other to the altar’s God.

Tyger Tyger, burning bright, In the forests of the night; What immortal hand or eye, Could frame thy fearful symmetry? In what distant deeps or skies. Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand, dare seize the fire? And what shoulder, & what art, Could twist the sinews of thy heart? And when thy heart began to beat, What dread hand? & what dread feet? What the hammer? what the chain, In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? what dread grasp, Dare its deadly terrors clasp! When the stars threw down their spears And water'd heaven with their tears: Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb make thee? Tyger Tyger burning bright, In the forests of the night: What immortal hand or eye, Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

When I wake, this is what I tell myself: I belong to this, to all the ghosts present in the DNA. Diabetes, an ancient Greek consort, sweeps through the halls of my body. It seems the proper gift from my father, memory locked down in the cells of my bladder. Frequent urination is a hard nag to beat. My body is my father's complaint. He rings at two in the morning. A piss in the pot, a shot in the dark. He's never too far away.

This is the deepest part of the world. Bird don’t fly here, but there is the sound of wings. The smell, just a struggle in the earth underneath the musty floorboards. Monsters hatch fully-grown from their eggs. Snaky legs indicate chaos. I carry sad omens, slobber down the psychic’s legs to her feet pointed backwards. I roll off the back of a skull strapped on top of a fox who shape-shifts into the irresistible. A Christian, Oklahoma-shaped and melancholic, caught at the entrance of a ditch as the best breath of me tornadoes into the next county.

feathery moths flutter on the screen unbearable sounds of summer oblivious tonight that my reading light is not my day stout bodies cut and bounce near a crack in the screen and beat inside a paper shade sacraments of a monumental natural presence we are drawn forever by the moths to other lights neighbors down the road