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Whitman thought he could live with animals, they were so placid and self-contained, not one of them dissatisfied. I have lived with animals. They kept me up all night. Not only tom cats on the prowl, and neurotic rats behind my baseboards, scratching out a slim existence. There were cattle next door in the butcher’s pen, great longhorns lowing in the dark. Their numbers had come up and they knew it. I let their rough tongues lick my sorry palm. Nothing else I could do for them, or they for me. Walt can live with the animals. I’ll take these vegetables on parade: string-beans and cabbage heads and pea brains, who negotiate a busy crosswalk and feel brilliant, the smallest act accomplished no mean feat, each one guiding them to other small acts that will add up, in time, to something like steady purpose. They cling to this fate, clutch it along with their brownbag lunches: none of us would choose it, but this is their portion, this moment, then this one, then the next. Little as it is, pitiful as it seems, this is what they were given, and they don’t want to lose it. The gawky and the slow, the motley and the misshapen… What bliss to be walking in their midst as if I were one of them, just ride this gentle wave of idiocy, forget those who profess an interest in my welfare, look passing strangers in the eye for something we might have in common, and be unconcerned if nothing’s there. And now we peek into a dark café, and now we mug at the waitress whose feet are sore, whose smile makes up for the tacky carnations and white uniform makes it easy to mistake her for a nurse, even makes it necessary, given the state of the world. And when the giant with three teeth harangues us to hurry up, what comfort to know he’s a friend, what pleasure to be agreeable, small wonders of acquiescence, like obedient pets. Except animals don’t have our comic hope, witless as it is. They don’t get to wave madly at the waitress, as though conducting a symphony of ecstatic expectations. If I turned and lived with animals I’d only be a creature of habit, I’d go to where the food is and the warmth. But I wouldn’t get to say to my troubled friend, “Your eyes are so beautiful. I could live in them.”

That which installs itself in the mind embraces sound Rebounding, rounding the fecund earth Birth, as in what is not, as in one makes one, is a mighty absence to understand (and there are those who fail to get their lessons done) Dun is the color of submission Unfledged, she leafs through what has been nothing never Never to be what she is/ or could /or hope to be Bewitched by dictions (fictions) on the surface — Face naming that which she must save, polished like an apple — Apple of the eye,amour of town and street, apple of the cheek Eaten with a dab of honey for a sweet year Ear to who am I in the suddenly-arriving what-comes-next Next to being, next to delivery, next to undergone Gone parenthetical but now revived as her eye Spies the sudden trespass of his unexpected welcome — Succumbing, coming unto him in full sun this morning Mourning what she need not beguile or lie beside

State of Alabama v. Robert E. Chambliss, 1977 When they come filling the yard with their overheard, broke-glass catastrophes of voice, overcrowded party line, he lets the screen door clap to see them plume the settle back to the fence, aftershocks of crowd and wail. When they come he says again he was home at breakfast radio preacher doing love thy neighbor and then the bomb, just ask the wife. The silence in the TV's cathode glow slowly fills with questions as starlings shutter light then weigh the lines, voices tangled in their claws. • They had him buying dynamite, a case he says he passed along, then the other's car behind the church, four men dome-lit in early dark. Now all they have is years of brag and noise and alibi, a quiet in which the trail's confused. At times it seemed he wasn't real, that he was no one, a story everyone had heard, just not the end, that he was different men, one arm with a bomb, another making calls miles outside of town, a fog, an exhalation, scattering when seen.

Someone has left us now before we have even touched hands. Getting lost in the pity of it sweeps you into an unknown stretch of canyon where oars thud against rock and rip free, you clutch at help, and even though you save yourself, the river funnels through the gorge and roars, roars, roars. Regret, a backwash of pain, one lost life swirls down rapids, rushes away, out of reach. It’s not forgetting that you want — it would be easy to drop one shoulder and dive, to come up gasping in a car on the way to work or blue in the face over the dishpan staring for who knows how long at a cup scoured clean under the suds. And not remembering. But the absence that is born must live as long as a man or a woman. There: it comes invisible headfirst, a bloodstreaked nothing, and is flushed away. While in the white room the dry light is cold; and waiting to be taken home mute ghosts lie in a row of empty cribs.

A joyrider rips up Lockland. It takes barely five minutes for a precinct helicopter to dip and swivel over lawns and two opposing lines of cars parked innocently snug to the sidewalk. They haven't found him yet. Every couple of minutes or so, my blind soaks in outrageous light and the helicopter hauls its drone and feud all over my backyard. There's a fan over my bed that says similar things in summer: adages, reproach and rhetoric. I talk too much; give far too much away. In mumbling my company, I reckon on a twofold payoff: some echo; being found out, consequence. I lie low. Minutes swell. He must be out there somewhere, lights switched off, crouched and bundled, foot within an inch of the get-go. I pull the comforter up over my ears, count to forty-two, then start over. I'm trying, trying hard, to hold my breath.

In their doorways women sit sewing By the good light of afternoon And nothing is beyond knowing Though the sun shall go down soon A shepherdess near a bramble ditch And the Princess in the Alcazar Keep the same precise stitch And they both can see far And when the knell tolls All are wondering who— If it is a lady, many bells For a beggar, one will do

I walk into the bakery next door To my apartment. They are about To pull some sort of toast with cheese From the oven.   When I ask: What’s that smell? I am being A poet, I am asking What everyone else in the shop Wanted to ask, but somehow couldn’t; I am speaking on behalf of two other Customers who wanted to buy the Name of it.   I ask the woman Behind the counter for a percentage Of her sale. Am I flirting? Am I happy because the days Are longer?   Here’s what She does: She takes her time Choosing the slices.   “I am picking Out the good ones,” she tells me.   It’s April 14th. Spring, with five to ten Degrees to go.   Some days, I feel my duty; Some days, I love my work.

She's slicing ripe white peaches into the Tony the Tiger bowl and dropping slivers for the dog poised vibrating by her foot to stop their fall when she spots it, camouflaged, a glimmer and then full on— happiness, plashing blunt soft wings inside her as if it wants to escape again.

The easiest sadness is a boy Watching another boy Walk with a barefooted girl, clean Perfect feet, that kind of nose, Eyes like those he’s dreamed In the dream that comes back. A boy watching another boy lucky Gets an ache That is a small motor. In me there is an animal, And in that animal There is a hunger. I remember the boy Watching a boy. It was me. Watching, I was a little bit The boy walking. I was both of us. That’s how it felt. What I could not have, That’s what I was Inside, an ache Coming as I stood Too many places.

Twenty-four haiku, for each year he lived when you die, i’m told they only use given names christopher wallace no notorious neither b.i.g. nor smalls just voletta’s son brooklyn resident hustler for loose change, loosies and a lil loose kim let me tell you this the west coast didn’t get you illest flow or nah had our loyalties no need to discuss that now that your weight is dust that your tongue is air and your mother is coping as only she can i will also say that i have seen bed-stuy since b.k. misses you her walk has changed some the rest of the borough flails weak about itself middle school students not yet whispers in nine sev know the lyrics rote you: a manual a mural, pressed rock, icon, fightin word or curse course of history most often noted, quoted deconstructed sung hung by a bullet prepped to die:gunsmoke gunsmoke one hell of a hunch here you lie a boy twelve gauge to your brain you can’t have what you want be what you want you black and ugly heartthrob ever conflicted emcee respected lately premier king of the casket pauper of first life til puff blew you up gave you a champagne diet plus cheese eggs, welch’s you laid the blueprint gave us word for word for naught can’t fault the hustle knockoff messiah slanged cracked commandments, saw no honey, more problems a still black borough recoiled, mourned true genius slain the ease of your laugh the cut of your jib unique command of the room truthfully biggie what about you’s small no not legend not stature real talk just lifespan yo, who shot ya kid n.y.p.d. stopped searching shrugged off negro death well, we scour the sky we mourn tough, recite harder chant you live again of all the lyrics the realest premonition rings true: you’re dead. wrong