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My weight is four whippets, two Chinese gymnasts, half a shot-putter. It can be measured in bags of sugar, jam jars, enough feathers for sixty pillows, or a flock of dead birds but some days it’s more than the house, the span of Blair Athol Road. I’m the Crooked Spire warping itself, doubled up over town. I measure myself against the sky in its winter coat, peat traces in water, air locked in the radiators at night, against my own held breath, or your unfinished sentences, your hand on my back like a passenger touching the dashboard when a driver brakes, as if they could slow things down. I measure myself against love — heavier, lighter than both of us.

I wore a garland of the briar that put me now in awe I wore a garland of the brain that was whole It commanded me, done babbling And I no more blabbed, spare no lie Tell womanhood she shake off pity Tell the man to give up tumult for the while To wonder at the sight of baby's beauty Ne let the monsters fray us with things that not be From a high tower poem issuing Everything run along in creation till I end the song Ne none fit for so wild beasts Ne none so joyous, ne none no give no lie Tell old woes to leave off here: I sing this into a scallop shell with face of a pearl & leave all sorrow bye & bye.

An old man on Grace Street is going mad In a Canadian T-shirt he won’t change And red unwrinkling pants I thought had made Him stylish when I met him in the spring — Five or six times a day I see him walk Down Grace Street to St. Francis church, and knock And pull its wooden doors, always shocked That his entitled holy place is locked. Undreams Damascus from a baffled Paul, Rolls back the road where some unstricken Saul Rises up, as bubbles through a beer To a surface where we disappear And wake in some uncalendared forever, An unwelcome Elijah passing over.

The rice field birds are too clever for scarecrows, They know what they love, milk in the grain. When it happens, there will be no time to look for anyone. Husband, children, nine brothers and sisters. You will drop your sugarcane-stick-beating of plastic bucket, Stop shouting at birds and run. They will load you in trucks and herd you for a hundred miles. Old men will teach you trade with soldiers at checkpoints. You will give them your spoon, blanket and beans, They’ll let you keep your life. And if you jump off the truck, The army jeep trailing it will run you over. Later, they will accuse you of giving up your land. Later, you will stand in distribution lines and won’t receive enough to eat. Your mother will weave you new underwear from flour sacks. And they’ll give you plastic tents, cooking pots, Vaccine cards, white pills, and wool blankets. And you will keep your cool. Standing with eyes shut tight like you’ve got soap in them. Arms stretched wide like you’re catching rain.

We all think about suddenly disappearing. The train tracks lead there, into the woods. Even in the financial district: wooden doors in alleyways. First I want to put something small into your hand, a button or river stone or key I don’t know to what. I don’t have that house anymore across from the graveyard and its black angel. What counts as a proper goodbye? My last winter in Iowa there was always a ladybug or two in the kitchen for cheer even when it was ten below. We all feel suspended over a drop into nothingness. Once you get close enough, you see what one is stitching is a human heart. Another is vomiting wings. Hell, even now I love life. Whenever you put your feet on the floor in the morning, whatever the nightmare, it’s a miracle or fantastic illusion: the solidity of the boards, the steadiness coming into the legs. Where did we get the idea when we were kids to rub dirt into the wound or was that just in Pennsylvania? Maybe poems are made of breath, the way water, cajoled to boil, says, This is my soul, freed.

Once I said to a scarecrow, “You must be tired of standing in this lonely field.” And he said, “The joy of scaring is a deep and lasting one, and I never tire of it.” Said I, after a minute of thought, “It is true; for I too have known that joy.” Said he, “Only those who are stuffed with straw can know it.” Then I left him, not knowing whether he had complimented or belittled me. A year passed, during which the scarecrow turned philosopher. And when I passed by him again I saw two crows building a nest under his hat.

last night locked in the castle of pride and egotism goes on two legs Webern orchestrated a sky the clouds move to a bass on an instrument not an oboe, gray on light-gray in blue and green goes by on glass

my father’s body is a map a record of his journey he carries a bullet lodged in his left thigh there is a hollow where it entered a protruding bump where it sleeps the doctors say it will never awaken it is the one souvenir he insists on keeping mother has her own opinions bốcùa con điên—your father is crazy as a child i wanted a scar just like my father’s bold and appalling     a mushroom explosion that said i too was at war instead i settled for a grain of rice a scar so small look closely there here between the eyes a bit to the right there on the bridge of my nose father says i was too young to remember it happened while i was sleeping leaking roof the pounding rain drop after drop after drop

Today the cloud shapes are terrifying, and I keep expecting some enormous black-and-white B-movie Cyclops to appear at the edge of the horizon, to come striding over the ocean and drag me from my kitchen to the deep cave that flickered into my young brain one Saturday at the Baronet Theater where I sat helpless between my older brothers, pumped up on candy and horror—that cave, the litter of human bones gnawed on and flung toward the entrance, I can smell their stench as clearly as the bacon fat from breakfast. This is how it feels to lose it— not sanity, I mean, but whatever it is that helps you get up in the morning and actually leave the house on those days when it seems like death in his brown uniform is cruising his panel truck of packages through your neighborhood. I think of a friend’s voice on her answering machine— Hi, I’m not here— the morning of her funeral, the calls filling up the tape and the mail still arriving, and I feel as afraid as I was after all those vampire movies when I’d come home and lie awake all night, rigid in my bed, unable to get up even to pee because the undead were waiting underneath it; if I so much as stuck a bare foot out there in the unprotected air they’d grab me by the ankle and pull me under. And my parents said there was nothing there, when I was older I would know better, and now they’re dead, and I’m older, and I know better.

I was not beaten but the boy beside me was. He broke stride, stumbled, the sticks circled over him, corralling him into their world. I met his eyes and lip-read “run,” a whisper engulfed in sirens. I slowed down in an unknown neighborhood, a street of watch repairers, tinsmiths, tailors sitting cross-legged in dim windows staring at lacquered Singers like men whose eyes are lost in a fire, and I ducked past them glancing sideways in deep pity because I’d been a step away from freedom.