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There is a theory of crying that tears are the body’s way of releasing excess elements from the brain. There is a theory of dreaming that each one serves to mend something torn, like cells of new skin lining up to cover a hole. I’m not one to have dreams about flying, but last week we were thirty feet above the bay—this was where we went to discuss things, so that no matter what we decided it was only we two out there, and we’d have to fly back together. I’m not one to have dreams where animals can speak, but last night a weeping mare I’d been told to bridle wanted me to save her. We discussed what was left of her ability to take children for rides—how much trot, how much canter— but I wasn't sure I could do it, having already bridled her and all. I was once very brave. Once I was very brave. I was very brave once. I boarded a plane before dawn. I carried all those heavy bags. I stayed up the whole night before folding the house into duffel bags. I took a curl from the base of your skull and opened the door to the rusty orange wagon and weighed those heavy duffel bags and smiles at the airport official. I boarded a tiny propeller plane and from a tiny window I watched you walk back to the rusty orange station wagon. They say the whole world is warming by imperceptible degrees. I watched the rusty orange wagon go whizzing by.

Cloud-puffball, torn tufts, tossed pillows | flaunt forth, then chevy on an air- Built thoroughfare: heaven-roysterers, in gay-gangs | they throng; they glitter in marches. Down roughcast, down dazzling whitewash, | wherever an elm arches, Shivelights and shadowtackle ín long | lashes lace, lance, and pair. Delightfully the bright wind boisterous | ropes, wrestles, beats earth bare Of yestertempest's creases; | in pool and rut peel parches Squandering ooze to squeezed | dough, crust, dust; stanches, starches Squadroned masks and manmarks | treadmire toil there Footfretted in it. Million-fuelèd, | nature's bonfire burns on. But quench her bonniest, dearest | to her, her clearest-selvèd spark Man, how fast his firedint, | his mark on mind, is gone! Both are in an unfathomable, all is in an enormous dark Drowned. O pity and indig | nation! Manshape, that shone Sheer off, disseveral, a star, | death blots black out; nor mark Is any of him at all so stark But vastness blurs and time | beats level. Enough! the Resurrection, A heart's-clarion! Away grief's gasping, | joyless days, dejection. Across my foundering deck shone A beacon, an eternal beam. | Flesh fade, and mortal trash Fall to the residuary worm; | world's wildfire, leave but ash: In a flash, at a trumpet crash, I am all at once what Christ is, | since he was what I am, and This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, | patch, matchwood, immortal diamond, Is immortal diamond.

At the market today, I look for Piñata apples, their soft-blush-yellow. My husband brought them home last week, made me guess at the name of this new strain, held one in his hand like a gift and laughed as I tried all the names I knew: Gala, Fuji, Honey Crisp—watched his face for clues—what to call something new? It's winter, only tawny hues and frozen ground, but that apple bride was sweet, and I want to bring it back to him, that new. When he cut it, the star inside held seeds of other stars, the way within a life are all the lives you might live, each unnamed, until you name it.

Maybe it was my old friend Fascination who first let me know that Danger was right across the hall, or maybe it was the unrealized absence of pollen, or, was it the nearness, Danger, of your hair’s blatant softness, just toweled. Or, I wanted to stop thinking — and, I wanted to ask, Do you think God understands attraction? Surely, right? Or, I wanted you to notice my anger, which you might not characterize as dangerous, per se, but rather, fickle, a synonym for “mercurial.” Maybe that’s typical. Yup, there is a liquid sharpness in me I wouldn’t unlid except    ...    damn, Danger, there’s this certain way you draw out epiphany    ... You’re messy, Danger, baby, meaning untidy, confusing, monumental, great in size, and also, of or serving as a monument, which leads me to reconsider the dimensions of sandwiches, as well as apartheid, the aphid, and the scarab beetle. Danger, can you feel me tremble? But I am saying nothing, dear Danger, you don’t already know — you’re used to being pursued with rage, unwanted advice, riddles. That’s not me, respectfully — Joy is always waiting to cyclone you with nothing more than a matchbook, a long gaze, a warm bowl.

Butch once remarked to me how sinister it was alone, after hours, in the dark of the shop to find me there hunched over two weeks’ accounts probably smoked like a bacon from all those Pall-Malls. Odd comfort when the light goes, the case lights left on and the rings of baloney, the herring, the parsley, arranged in the strict, familiar ways. Whatever intactness holds animals up has been carefully taken, what’s left are the parts. Just look in the cases, all counted and stacked. Step-and-a-Half Waleski used to come to the shop and ask for the cheap cut, she would thump, sniff, and finger. This one too old. This one here for my supper. Two days and you do notice change in the texture. I have seen them the day before slaughter. Knowing the outcome from the moment they enter the chute, the eye rolls, blood is smeared on the lintel. Mallet or bullet they lunge toward their darkness. But something queer happens when the heart is delivered. When a child is born, sometimes the left hand is stronger. You can train it to fail, still the knowledge is there. That is the knowledge in the hand of a butcher that adds to its weight. Otto Kröger could fell a dray horse with one well-placed punch to the jaw, and yet it is well known how thorough he was. He never sat down without washing his hands, and he was a maker, his sausage was echt so that even Waleski had little complaint. Butch once remarked there was no one so deft as my Otto. So true, there is great tact involved in parting the flesh from the bones that it loves. How we cling to the bones. Each joint is a web of small tendons and fibers. He knew what I meant when I told him I felt something pull from the left, and how often it clouded the day before slaughter. Something queer happens when the heart is delivered.

I’m proud that I fed my avocado to the mice this week To see that scattered dust around the hole I felt dis- appointed the apple had been spared the throbbing soup, home he said it’s a storm it’s a storm I thought am I allowed to ask entire questions to take this space alone you bobbing you painted in my dog’s face so care- fully some kind of violence stretches the thought so long and allows the horns of words to touch each other. I think of him taking this much space. you don’t know about this dish towel for that matter who was I in another time giving the tails so much puzzled that these spices went someplace else they did today in a sandwich the empty hall into which I am reading the empty country an entire country I wanted all of them how I would like just one to pick things up in its cities and its rain its coast the outer coat 78 rpm silly news- papers turning cat on a porch and other countries nearby & home ready for me when I have something to say or show if ever my empty mistakes my empty vase my empty powers of horror my empty sex o bring the snow that rat’s death killed me because i would see it for days over and over and it hardly could be the same rat whose insides whisked the street we don’t think that war is such an incredible mess but it was just yesterday and in ancient poems years ago in the past dying the balloon just bursts it cannot bring u back again the huge cool breath the lake doesn’t want you anymore or her arms her sweet muff or breast the storm the past. but no I won’t leave my cheese out for them anymore and I must be the last person in the world in new york to read him who told us about mice that sing & fill empty auditoriums like us and our singing hearts our formula for bringing it out. Pulling the receptacle apart watch the tiny ship floating on it smithereens I ducked the tail edging over taking a little bit more. The price of wider concepts is not choosing your drops oh flicking me off reminding me of you everyone yell at once Two Rabbit legs jutting out I keep my childhood around almost more than every- one and a mouse can share my house wet toot tootsie it’s kind of great the whole thing is relative. Since I ad- mired his mountains I imagin- ed I was in his landscapes but opening packages is occurring all over the place. That’s a strong image and I feel like the smallness is directly rooted forgetting to use the new cal- endar I planned. These marks (I imagined) are the sources all the milk flooding wildly over the rolling hills and out of the sun’s comical eyes. Not tears but creamy drops of mammalian weather. I’m given real information and the most difficult part is blindly creating the space where the parts I can’t see or even hear spread out (like the night in Paris when I walked to the movies ) onto my desk and the surrounding hills into the bleachers where everyone is pounding themselves bloody in salute of the hunt all I ever wanted was dinner or at least his love the delight I see in him is equally empty for anyone & probably that’s his stealth. Inner lake. There’s a car a maroon a colourless oval I can imagine the seats and the feeling of hearing a song as we’re weaving over hills. There’s no break. Ev- erybody I ever saw in my seacoast community is already facing the problems huge and gloomy I grant you and the night spills on my keys which are splayed over the counter and outside it’s light. & they are flip- ping their cards every one of them.

I will pull an airplane with my teeth and I will pull an airplane with my hair. I write about cats. Cats, when you read this, write about me. Be the change you want to see. I’ve legally changed my name to Whites Only. Changed it back, I should say. DO NOT  TRY THIS AT HOME made me the man I am today. That, and the University of  Phoenix. Old man, take a look at my life. Charles Simic, in the gloaming, with a roach, take a look at my life. I’m a lot like you. A man stands up and says I will catch a bullet in my teeth!That’s incredible! He eats a sword, hilt first, and spits up a million people persons. A dolphin pulls an airplane with its blowhole and keeps the black box for itself. Bottleneck dolphins don’t even have bones, yet here we are, giving them medals ... This is my ass. And that is a hole in ground zero. I know which is which. It’s the one with the smoke pouring out. This is my handle; this is my spout.

Plows have piled a whitened range— faux mountains at the end of our street, slopes shrinking, glazed, grayed. Fog rules the day. In woolly air, shapes stir—slow cars leave a trace of exhaust, careful walkers share loud intimacies. My mother's birth slides across a calendar. Like a stranger who jumps off a bus, crosses tracks and strides toward us, memory parts the sodden gloom of our winter, as though, today, only she can see where she goes and track where she's been.

You said I will pull you out of my body in 237 ways. What you wanted was beautifully to sever things. Here love: the same things. changed. Finally: a taxonomy of afterthoughts. As though you were the one who was sleeping. Breathing in the marrow of would. You, who are a valley of no, I hear the music leaking. (How she. How she. How I.) You say low key and I do not believe you. I forgive everything: the perseveration of skin. My hands that are a chopping block and I cannot touch him. I cannot touch him without not touching me. Because if you leave, and you are already leaving, there are three. But you say less than three. And the couch, in your absence, is crenellated. And who is going to watch us as we leave. To add to the list of changing things: life preservers are no longer about preservation. They have become less holy. P F D = personal flotation device. Endlessly possible. Unlike wood. Stacey May Fowles wants a lover who will hit her. (I do not believe in submission.) I want you to erase me. This is a kindness. A kindness you tell me. A kindness I do not deserve. On the floor. By the bed. Hotel Congress. March 19, 2005. Room #23. We are a long way from disintegrated. You said Now. Look at me. And I did. And you bloomed. (When my mother died, I will say. Many years after my mother has died. But I will not believe her. I'll be like my grandmother who despite my parade of girlfriends and her profession that nobody should be mean to them, still doesn't believe in being queer. I don't believe in being dead, I'll tell my dead mother. And just like you she'll repeat herself.Happy New Year. Happy New Year. Happy New.) I expect there will be a morning when you walk up to this very gate while I am sitting here. I know this. I know you less each time I see you. I know this like I know you are more lonely than glass. To your languishing. To your bubbly. To your recent. To your hologram. To your desperately. To your seeking. To your dictaphone. To your you. Neuromuscular facilitation is just another way of saying Vancouver. Always is yet a matter of roller derby. Just in love with you. You, more than sleep. In the top drawer is a photograph of them touching. It is not so much that it is a photograph. It is that it is a depiction of what. not could. I want to tell you about my body. About testosterone as unwitting art historian. About recovery. Me(n). What it feels like underneath there. The part you cannot know. but should. Either way. It's a house. It's a house like everyone else has. I take things away. I don't take them for good. How delirious must we sound when we are falling. I miss you, you can't even imagine. And how bad at math.Less than three. Less than three. Less than three. And what if. I completely remember it wrong. What if I remember there were two of us. And then what if. there was only one death. I do not believe in the existence of holes that lead to nowhere. Muscle memory remains an enigma. Still, you can touch her. You cannot touch her without not touching me. (And still) you are not not a part of me. The world is uncharacteristically unresponsive. I could thank you. You stay with me. like grass.

Nights we could not sleep— summer insects singing in dry heat, short-circuiting the nerves— Grandma would light a lamp, at the center of our narrow room, whose clean conspiracy of light whispered to the tall blank walls, illuminating them suddenly like the canvas of a dream. Between the lamp and wall her arthritic wrists grew pliant as she molded and cast improbable animal shapes moving on the wordless screen: A blackbird, like a mynah, not a crow. A dark horse’s head that could but would not talk. An ashen rabbit (her elusive self) triggered in snow that a quivering touch (like death’s) sent scampering into the wings of that little theater of shadows that eased us into dreams.