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Highlight Actions Enable or disable annotations This youth too long has heard the break Of waters in a land of change. He goes to see what suns can make From soil more indurate indurate hardened and strange. He cuts what holds his days together And shuts him in, as lock on lock: The arrowed vane announcing weather, The tripping racket tripping racket either a paradox: light and easy din, or, light and easy motion (as of a dance) of a clock; Seeking, I think, a light that waits Still as a lamp upon a shelf, — A land with hills like rocky gates Where no sea leaps upon itself. But he will find that nothing dares To be enduring, save where, south Of hidden deserts, torn fire glares On beauty with a rusted mouth, — Where something dreadful and another Look quietly upon each other.

Listen, nephew. When I opened the cantina At noon A triangle of sunlight Was stretched out On the floor Like a rug Like a tired cat. It flared in From the window Through a small hole Shaped like a yawn. Strange I thought And placed my hand Before the opening, But the sunlight Did not vanish. I pulled back The shutters And the room glowed, But this pyramid Of whiteness Was simply brighter. The sunlight around it Appeared soiled Like the bed sheet Of a borracho. Amazed, I locked the door, Closed the windows. Workers, in from The fields, knocked To be let in, Children peeked Through the shutters, But I remained silent. I poured a beer, At a table Shuffled a pack Of old cards, And watched it Cross the floor, Hang on the wall Like a portrait Like a calendar Without numbers. When a fly settled In the sunlight And disappeared In a wreath of smoke, I tapped it with the broom, Spat on it. The broom vanished. The spit sizzled. It is the truth, little one. I stood eye to blank eye And by misfortune This finger This pink stump Entered the sunlight, Snapped off With a dry sneeze, And fell to the floor As a gift To the ants Who know me For what I gave.

Two sisters of ancient Greece both laid claim To the finest, fairest rear of their time. Which tail forged ahead? Which bottom’s true fame Topped? Which back was in front, which terce most prime? A judge chose the elder girl’s back matter; Her finish was more fine and far matter. She got the prize, and his heart; soon they wed. “But the younger’s sitter’s not a smatter Less meet; I’ll marry her,” his brother said. It went so well, their joys were so perfected, That after them a temple was erected In honor of  Venus Callipygus. No other church — though I don’t know its rite — Could so, from head to epididymis, Move me with deep devotion to its site. Translated from the French of  Jean de La Fontaine, Contes , Part I, 6.

Little tin key lost somewhere in my memory, returned to me in a dream. Like the blue-burning match blowing over the surface of some drunk girl’s sweet, flaming party drink.Happy birthday.

Pretty soon we’ll have the talk. She’ll ask me where babies come from And I will lie to her: “Babies come from the chance meeting of sperm and egg See the man deposits his sssperm which is like a pudding into the woman’s vvagina and it travels up this tube-y thing and only one of them gets the prize and bing! A cell becomes a fetus becomes baby becomes you. Go do your homework.” She will wait for me to calm down, her eyes patient requiring the truth and I will tell her: “Babies come from Friday nights melted into Saturday mornings; the Isley Brothers and 3 or 4 glasses of white zin; miniskirts and aching zippers; sofa cushions sweaty and ogodthecondombroke ; Babies come from blue lights and e.p.t. tests and the wet spot on clean sheets; Lonely knees that bump beneath the table; love letters sealed with a miss and $758 phone bills; eyeliner and lips to match; muscled Thighs and a sweet, milky quarter of yes in the center of pink panties. You came from this: a separated daddy and a desperate mama; A ripped sonogram and hours spent on hardwood floors asking 
girlfriends: Should I go through with this? Grandma’s washboard and the dust tracks Grandaddy made when he left her with five girls to maim You came from this: Maryland rain, nights of shag carpet lovin’ and days Just $2 short of the rent; And one afternoon you came I wanted your father so badly it hurt Even took his last name and flung it behind yours like a spare tire Whatever he gave me was never enough It was like his love was a sieve And my desire for him Water I was insane Packed my dreams in a U-Haul and moved them to MD Nothing better to do 30 and scared You came from this: Collision of longing Tongue kissing and shame The emptiness at the corner of GA Avenue And the fullness of swollen ankles and readjusted dreams You came from: A poet and a singer Fists and car keys Peach cobbler and gumbo Love And that last dirty fight on the Beltway You came baby You came, here” And she’ll say: “Mama, babies come from peach cobbler?” and I’ll say yes.

let’s say you want flowers you should have flowers let’s say you want forever you should have flowers let’s say he should have you in and out by tuesday and if you want flowers you should have flowers and the flowers will stay fresh until tuesday you say yes that’s the way it’s done should you want flowers

Each night after reading three books to my two children— we each picked one—to unwind them into dreamland, I'd turn off the light and sit between their beds in the wide junk-shop rocker I'd reupholstered blue, still feeling the close-reading warmth of their bodies beside me, and ask them to talk about the day—we did this, we did that, sometimes leading somewhere, sometimes not, but always ending up at the happy ending of now. Now, in still darkness, listening to their breath slow and ease into sleep's regular rhythm. Grown now, you might've guessed. The past tense solid, unyielding, against the acidic drip of recent years. But how it calmed us then, rewinding the gentle loop, and in the trusting darkness, pressing play.

In the rental cottage it comes to me, how the four lives of myself and my brothers crisscross like tracer bullets, and how, from a distance maybe, if you had the right kind of glasses, there might appear to be a target we all were aiming at beyond that black escutcheon of cloud above Santa Rosa Bay as we lie on the deck drinking tequila and beer, our voices growing vague and weary as time passes, until one of us tells a story, more cordial than precise, about climbing to the top of a magnolia tree when he was ten, and falling. The rest of us draw closer around the story as we watch the great flattened cloud raise its triangular wing over the state of Florida. It is night in Florida and, in a moment, one of us will recall the time our father, in a gray suit, climbed the steps of an airliner bound for Paris and never came back. And one, or another, will tell how our mother, more blond and beautiful than ever that spring, said, You must now be soldiers, and screamed and screamed. We will each raise his head and stare for a moment through the lighted gate of the living room window at our wives, who are putting away the last of the supper dishes, speaking among themselves with the easy familiarity of women whose husbands are brothers. And one of us will begin so sing an old song that our father sang before he went away, a song about losing a fair woman in the foggy, foggy dew, and as the late chill rises off the bay we will all remember what we thought as children when we heard him sing of the woman who was not, and never could have been, our mother and of how an emptiness, bigger than an ocean, opened inside us, and one of us will say, I think it is going to rain, and we will get up and go back inside.

I will not tend. Or water, pull, or yank, I will not till, uproot, fill up or spray. The rain comes. Or not. Plants: sun-fed, moon-hopped, dirt-stuck. Watch as flocks of wild phlox appear, disappear. My lazy, garbagey magic makes this nothing happen. I love the tattered camisole of nothing. The world runs its underbrush course fed by the nothing I give it. Wars are fought. Blood turns. Dirt is a wide unruly room.

Raccoon you better be cool Thought I saw you on Broadway Eating King Fish’s barbecue Some people claim raccoon you pretty Swear raccoon tame like a kitty But raccoon bites you if you get too close I saw raccoon on Lenox Avenue Stealing milk from a baby Thought I saw a black cat on the corner But it was nothing but old raccoon Raccoon let me school you Raccoon you know you too country You better leave the city Raccoon they got rats in New York City Big as you and just as ornery Nobody in Harlem studying you raccoon So you better go about your business Raccoon you better get wise Look what playing possum got the possum