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Lord sho been good to me My loved hoe handle, and my sweat, heart pounding and the towhee singing. Jill, jerking the hospital sheets, “Damn careless nurses    ... “But golly    ...    a good life. “That student who kept writing me. “That rainy picnic by a road in Burgundy. “Heart thumping, thumping on    ...    more, more....” A squirrel on a post. The nutgrooved skull drops; he claws the dirt. Next winter! Frost thrown down, a stiffened morning, a harsh corrective herb to gnaw, take in. Sho been, Lord, Sho been Whether born of  kiss sublime, victim’s terror, rapist crime, and however ending, nut-gnawers nulled inscrutably, or Caesars, soldiers, friends lammed open-eyed — Lord, good...sho been

At a desk made of glass, In a glass walled-room With red airport carpet, An officer asked My father for fingerprints, And my father refused, So another offered him tea And he sipped it. The teacup Template for fingerprints. My father says, it was just Hot water with a bag. My father says, in his country, Because the earth knows The scent of history, It gave the people sage. I like my tea with sage From my mother’s garden, Next to the snapdragons She calls fishmouths Coming out for air. A remedy For stomach pains she keeps In the kitchen where She always sings. First, she is Hagar Boiling water Where tea is loosened. Then she drops In it a pinch of sage And lets it sit a while. She tells a story: The groom arrives late To his wedding Wearing only one shoe. The bride asks him About the shoe. He tells her He lost it while jumping Over a house-wall. Breaking away from soldiers. She asks: Tea with sage Or tea with mint? With sage, he says, Sweet scent, bitter tongue. She makes it, he drinks.

Ray Way, Thunderbird Homeagain, Hugh and Mia Galore: they enjoyed such conversational topics as Mozart, tobacco , and four . “Today’s peach boasts rare fuzz,” said Ray. Bird added, “My mind is whale.” Mia forgot her songbooks, but Hugh said, “Let me embrace you all.” Ray Way snagged Homeagain by the lapel and fastened on Home’s left blue eye, Mia saw Home’s green right eye unanchor and wander away for the sky. Then Ray, he let go of Home’s lapel, and Ray let go of his ire, and Ray let go the floor with his feet to hover a bit on the air. Hours ticked while oars pulled over Lake Eekoutaheart. The pelicans kept to their quiet perusals of fishes, where the ripples teased apart. “Please heal my ruptured soul,” said Mia. Ray cheered, “The half-life got lived.” Thunder again, he just picked at his sweater where the yarn and his arms unweaved. “The sky, it must be adhesive,” said Mia, “elsewise the pelicans would fall—” Way, still floating, looked her cool in her eye: “Feel my faulty heart: it’s full.” “So tell me, do you wonder about the crackers once you lock the pantry?” “I know God when I wash my hands.” “Nothing makes sense like entropy.” “And the pelican, does it unloose its eggs like snow, an unbreakable good?” “And does love shape the snow to hope’s ellipses? “Who warms the nest—who could?” “What’s next when your own eyes won’t let you go?” “But the clouds won’t let me fall.” Hugh stood up and repeated, softly: “Let me embrace you all.”

Leaf-keep, un-sibyl; if the soul Has the weight of a swallow, what less Has the weight of a sip? You equal This riddle, unposed in your dish As a hand at rest in a lap. Held to, You hold back what can't be Prevented, what's no more palatable For that: the unfine; formerly, our future.

Teach me, old World, your passion of slow change, Your calm of stars, watching the turn of earth, Patient of man, and never thinking strange The mad red crash of each new system’s birth. Teach me, for I would know your beauty’s way That waits and changes with each changing sun, No dawn so fair but promises a day Of other perfectness than men have won. Teach me, old World, not as vain men have taught, —Unpatient song, nor words of hollow brass, Nor men’s dismay whose powerfullest thought Is woe that they and worlds alike must pass. Nothing I learn by any mortal rule; Teach me, old World, I would not be man’s fool.

In the old neighborhood, each funeral parlor is more elaborate than the last. The alleys smell of cops, pistols bumping their thighs, each chamber steeled with a slim blue bullet. Low-rent balconies stacked to the sky. A boy plays tic-tac-toe on a moon crossed by TV antennae, dreams he has swallowed a blue bean. It takes root in his gut, sprouts and twines upward, the vines curling around the sockets and locking them shut. And this sky, knotting like a dark tie? The patroller, disinterested, holds all the beans. August. The mums nod past, each a prickly heart on a sleeve.

Don’t tell me the cat ate your math sheet, And your spelling words went down the drain, And you couldn’t decipher your homework, Because it was soaked in the rain. Don’t tell me you slaved for hours On the project that’s due today, And you would have had it finished If your snake hadn’t run away. Don’t tell me you lost your eraser, And your worksheets and pencils, too, And your papers are stuck together With a great big glob of glue. I’m tired of all your excuses; They are really a terrible bore. Besides, I forgot my own work, At home in my study drawer.

My chalk is no longer than a chip of fingernail, Chip by which I must explain this Monday Night the verbs “to get;” “to wear,” “to cut.” I’m not given much, these tired students, Knuckle-wrapped from work as roofers, Sour from scrubbing toilets and pedestal sinks. I’m given this room with five windows, A coffee machine, a piano with busted strings, The music of how we feel as the sun falls, Exhausted from keeping up. I stand at The blackboard. The chalk is worn to a hangnail, Nearly gone, the dust of some educational bone. By and by I’m Cantiflas, the comic Busybody in front. I say, “I get the coffee.” I pick up a coffee cup and sip. I click my heels and say, “I wear my shoes.” I bring an invisible fork to my mouth And say, “I eat the chicken.” Suddenly the class is alive— Each one putting on hats and shoes, Drinking sodas and beers, cutting flowers And steaks—a pantomime of sumptuous living. At break I pass out cookies. Augustine, the Guatemalan, asks in Spanish, “Teacher, what is ‘tally-ho’?” I look at the word in the composition book. I raise my face to the bare bulb for a blind answer. I stutter, then say, “Es como adelante.” Augustine smiles, then nudges a friend In the next desk, now smarter by one word. After the cookies are eaten, We move ahead to prepositions— “Under,” “over,” and “between,” Useful words when la migra opens the doors Of their idling vans. At ten to nine, I’m tired of acting, And they’re tired of their roles. When class ends, I clap my hands of chalk dust, And two students applaud, thinking it’s a new verb. I tell them adelante, And they pick up their old books. They smile and, in return, cry, “Tally-ho.” As they head for the door.

It was the time before I was born. I was thin. I was hungry. I was only a restlessness inside a woman’s body. Above us, lightning split open the sky. Below us, wagon wheels cut land in two. Around us were the soldiers, young and afraid, who did not trust us with scissors or knives but with needles. Tear dresses they were called because settler cotton was torn in straight lines like the roads we had to follow to Oklahoma. But when the cloth was torn, it was like tears, impossible to hold back, and so they were called by this other name, for our weeping. I remember the women. Tonight they walk out from the shadows with black dogs, children, the dark heavy horses, and worn-out men. They walk inside me. This blood is a map of the road between us. I am why they survived. The world behind them did not close. The world before them is still open. All around me are my ancestors, my unborn children. I am the tear between them and both sides live.

Crying is a habit with me. You mustn’t mind: onions make me smog headlines in the