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I. We hang clothes on the line. His wide trousers and shirt, wind-beat, roar small thunder from one prairie cloud. The same rapple of flag on its pole. Half in fear, half in jest, we laugh. He calls us crow women. Our black hair shines in the sun and in the light from school windows. He drives his car to town, upsets the dust on buckboard hills. We sit on the fence when he is gone. Does he know we speak of thunder in his shirts? We cannot do well in his school. He reads from west to east, The sun we follow moves the other way. Crowbar. Our eyes come loose from words on the page in narrow rooms of the reservation school. He perceives and deciphers at once. For us written letters will not stay on the page, but fall like crows from the sky and hit against the glass windows of the school. Our day is night when we sit in rows of the classroom. Leaves in a whirlwind from sumac groves. Flock of crows are black starts on a white night. II. On the porch of the reservation school the blackbirds walk around our feet, fly into our head. They call our secret name. Dark corridors linger in our mind We whisper the plains to one another. We do not talk of what we cannot understand. Black and white fleckered dresses. Our face like our fathers. The sun is no enemy to the eye looking west. The brush thin as hair of old ones. It blinds the eye, makes fire on fields, flashes against windows like silver ribbons on burial robes. Hot late into the fall, windy, ready for cold to sweep in. The heat seems solid, but totters on the brink of winter. We laugh to ourselves when he returns to the reservation school for girls. Take his clothes from the line. Set the table with salt and pepper, spoon, knives. Cattails and milk-pods in a jar. We get lard from the basement, rub a place in the dusty window like a moon in the ancient sky. III. One hill larger than the others: an old buffalo with heavy head and whiskers nods at the ground, grazes in my dreams, one blade at a time. We stay in our stiff white-sheeted beds in the dormitory room. Buffalo wander in our dreams. White night-dresses. Black pods suspended in sumac groves like crows. In the sweat lodge of sleep we make our vision quest, black as pitch in crevice between crow feathers. We hang his thunder clothes in sleep, arms reach above our beds like willows blowing slowly by the creek. Quietly we choke, hold our wounded arms like papooses. Clothes beat on lines. Sumac groves and whirl of leaves: a shadow of our fathers at council fires. Red leaves, waxy as hay on fields. We dream of schoolrooms. Written letters on the wind. He reads crow-marks on the page but does not know crow.

1 The reservoir is trying to freeze over with an expanding map shaped like an angel Separated lovers on a coast keep walking toward each other. Low sun reddens their faces without heat They are weary of always moving so seldom touching, but never think to move inland, massive and stable Imagoes hatched on thin ice, it’s their illusion membranes are brighter than occluded flesh of interiors Membranes have the density of an edge, and edges violent as lava 2 All day she walked across the tundra He began to drive away obliquely at exactly her speed, so she altered her angle, aiming above him, as in a current He departed in a zone that solidified at his whim, so she reached for his hand Land cracked with their weight. He seemed to reach toward her, a hand like paper twisted and folded over, only a surface with wan modulations, like a map 3 Then she delicately stepped out toward the edge, tenuous as a leaf as if waiting for a letter but it froze too swiftly before her At dusk his voice broke her concentration She turned, vexed, and saw he had not spoken.

A lot of it lives in the trachea, you know. But not so much that you won’t need more muscle: the diaphragm, a fist clenching at the bottom. Inhale. So many of us are breathless, you know, like me kneeling to collect the pottery shards of a house plant my elbow has nudged into oblivion. What if I sigh, and the black earth beneath me scatters like insects running from my breath? Am I a god then? Am I insane because I worry about the disassembling of earth regularly? I walk more softly now into gardens or up the steps of old houses with impatiens stuffed in their window boxes. When it’s you standing there with a letter or voice or face full of solemn news, will you hold your breath before you knock?

I This is a place without a terrain a government that always changes an unstable language. Even buildings disappear from day to day. [gendered pronoun] wanders in this place [searching [waiting the condition of unbearableness is the constant state of mind for all occupants we read all day in the village square during the rule of [name of major historical figure] a book that is so subtle [its political content goes unnoticed what is political content? [the question or the statement [gender pronoun] creates [a reader culture [generic plural pronoun] prefer both II realism's authenticities are not the question the question [role of art in the State we know art is fundamental to the [New State] as is evidenced in village scenes, majestic ancient views, masses and masses of [generic human figures] marching in columns, swords coded as plowshares, image as spectacle we kn0w [name of city], [adjective], [name of major composer] to recode [reduce] it: Linz, ambiguous, Wagner we know [name of major historical figure] calls, authentically, for a more total, more radical war than we can even dream in the language of the avant-garde we know a commercial promises to reduce plaque more effectively in this same tone but sometimes we exceed even our own expectations to surprise even ourselves something encloses the impossible in a fable an unreal world called real because it is so heavily metaphoric we can't keep our fingers of connection out of it it is a ride in the country, the car crowded with children [each child represents a different ethnicity of [name of nation] it is a moment of standing with light resonating around [major historical figure it is a guiding of the child towards the right path it is a picnic in a field, the spread is bountiful [the spread of [name of nation] is represented through the arrangement of food on the checkered tablecloth it is [name of major historical figure]'s Art Collection: figure after figure each carries spears, lunges, draws the arm back to pull tight the bow a ruined plaza has a [gendered human form] at its en trance a [generic child] draws a sword under the guidance of [generic possessive pronoun] [honorific denoting repro- ductive role] a [generic human form] raises [generic pronoun] arms and four horses turn away another plays a lute an eagle holds a symbol fake [name of nation used as an adjective] heads while the end of lunacy in art was explicit in [name of major historical figure]'s rhetoric while when nation turns to art, art loses its divergence while the [generic human figures] come back from war, their legs in fog while a [generic human figure] sculpts, small against the expanse of marble, giving into the monumental human form that symbolizes eugenic possibilities while another [generic human figure] pedantically draws postcards of village centers, operas, mountain vistas while overwhelmed by an opera [name of major historical figure] plans genocide III we know we respond resistantly as faked children's books of realist adventure tales have turned into military instruc- tion manuals or [name of major historical figure] hails a cab, [generic possessive human pronoun] hand raised here, beckoning as the red flag with [name of fast food chain] waves behind [generic human pronoun] and the red star on top of the [name of cultural landmark in major city] twinkles. many people raise their hands for different purposes all day long we are always waiting for our cab to come the question here is the same as that of a relationship where does art define our vocabulary? the margin declares [it is impossible to speak about something it is only possible to speak beside it [a film with a voice-over of nonsense to act in the unsecular forbidden margins [claims a certain privilege] [generic human pronoun] cast a colonizing eye a scripture of space / a place where a [generic human form] twists in space [follow this body] getting you to recognize yourself in [generic possessive pronoun] work [is kidnapping] in the space of this question some emigrate or lapse into total silence some co-opt this language and paint a series of meticulous and beautifully colored monumental images of people impris- oned and alone at the edge of a tedious despair some [refigure [refuse] respond] call out for an end rewritten, the goal of the artist is to prevent reality in a true and concrete manner IV [generic human figure] claims I can get more information at home than by going to the war scene what [generic pronoun] sees is [gendered naked bodies] in news photos—dead bodies, discarded bodies, junk i  saw  this written on the bottom [a way of testimony the poverty of image among the people of [name of nation] the continual increase in the amount of image a viewer can tolerate [who went to [name of nation? returning again and again to images of torture covert activities depicted              [blown up [to show power details of photographs or Xerox degradations of photos on Duraclear hang loose are vulnerable and fragmentary and images are seen through images and/or viewers [call this] the fate of Madame Bovery, the fate of Anna Karenina A dog with a [generic human face] has slogans coming out of its mouth as angels hold its head back suckle at its tits taped to a [gendered hand, adorned with ring] is a photo- graph of [gendered naked torso], gagged [generic human figure] infects computerized images with digitized viruses and then transfers them to canvas with a robotic device [possible responses to what is seen in [name of nation] at another time another set of reponses: a [sexual category withheld] cuts hair and cameras circle around and [generic human pronoun] is dragged out of the room another [generic human figure] says passionately we express ourselves in a language of regulations. Symbols and numbers best convey our ideas another [generic human figure] makes an enormous painting of a massacre victim, mutilated and bloody, and hangs it by night on a pedestrian bridge what a nation gives us is the image in [name of major weekly news source] of the [generic human figure] standing before the tanks with white flag [generic pronoun] painted on houses, streets, stones, trees [generic pronoun] covered [name of island] with strange marks in chalk, oil paint, and dye [generic pronoun] wished to reduce writing to the zero level where it is without meaning. When culture invades private life on a large scale [generic pronoun] said the individual cannot escape being raped another [generic noun] made a font that was scratched into paper by a knife this font made each letter into a single scratch [generic pronoun] scratched the other [generic pronoun]'s statement on rape into a banner and hung it outside [my zero-level writing [generic pronoun] said protest rape [generic pronoun] said my zero-level writing [generic pronoun]  said dangerous cultural rape [generic pronoun]  said my zero-level writing my zero-level writing V a voice stutters in the background of our waking mind [generic possessive pronoun] stutter is our stutter or it is the way we define our difference? stutter is nation beneath an image of human figures the words [you have nothing to lose but your chains at times two voices talk to one another [generic human] faces [tired] we know we are all constructed when it comes down to it we don't believe it the social always holds us back while the ways that we encounter relation are various we remain searching [searching we question, respond [deny we [move forward

The strident high civic trumpeting of misrule. It is what we stand for. Wild insolence, aggregates without distinction. Courage of common men: spent in the ruck their remnant witness after centuries is granted them like a pardon. And other fealties other fortitudes broken as named— Respublica brokenly recalled, its archaic laws and hymnody; and destroyed hope that so many times is brought with triumph back from the dead.

Requiem after Fauré, for my father Rest before you sleep         You’ll be walking for hours then         as usual         away from home         your shoes in your hand         your feet not yet used to the road Perhaps they need to feel the gravel to know where they’re headed A woman I knew         who lived mostly in the woods mentioned the danger in presuming to know what an animal thinks         The fox         for example stopping by her open tent and looking in I suppose she would’ve felt this way about your feet She would’ve said how could anyone know what a pair of tired feet need along the way I would’ve asked her how she knew the feet were tired         Such discourse produces nothing but anything less would be silence and that would be intolerable I wish I knew why I was telling you this It’s easier to read the mind of a fox than to guess what a man’s about to say when he returns from the woods         head full of roots         veins more like branches         shoes in one hand         feet blistered         and none of this necessarily an indication of how the feet feel         what miles uphill and back have done to the soles and to the small bones that propel a man It’s safe now         I think         to speak for the fox who is only as cunning as we say it is We’re the only creatures that claim to be anything then build a house of facts around the claim I’ve come for vindication         No point in trying to disguise it as a lesser wish         Wake up         stop while you still know where you are         Put away your elusive country         Give your sleep a rest

She pronounces Chama the name of the milky green river with a richness in the ch I cannot muster, puts a hard d on the end of her and s. anD. anD. anD. Like the river she is asking to be endless anD shifting. To stream. I’d scouted the knoll of oaks for rattlers, being beyond the bounds of Coverage having no means to learn their habits. So I lay down with her on the ground. Their ground. AnD I willed to forget the cares of my later-in-life job search. Job. Which is also Job, a man in the Bible. Which is a book. The oaks of the knoll were leaning into the Chama like girls washing their hair in basins. I thought of EB shampooing Lota, of Frost’s birches, of Plath’s Wych elms which I’d like to have googled. Did snakes favor oak knolls? Did Georgia O’Keeffe worry about health insurance costs in Abiquiú? AnD beside me my love streaming, her poodles distantly nosing the chamisa. Standards. I thought I had them. Put art at the front of the queue wych is different from quiú. AnD now this. Biblical the proportions of this breaking-back-into-a-country-I’d- locked-myself-out-of phase. Was it scenic? I liked the pachysandra, branches of oak taking all that space from the sky. But then everybody disappeared to their offices. Three times I wrote work work work when woke was what I wanted to write. Miniature is the acorn I fingered in the soft flour-sack pocket of my jeans. Acorn smaller than East Coast or indeed Irish Oak varieties wych she handed me anD how hungrily I pocketed its little body.

Nothing to do but scuff down the graveyard road behind the playground, past the name-stones lined up in rows beneath their guardian pines, on out into the long, low waves of plains that dissolved time. We'd angle off from fence and telephone line, through ribbon-grass that closed behind as though we'd never been, and drift toward the bluff above the river-bend where the junked pickup moored with its load of locust-skeletons. Stretched across the blistered hood, we let our dresses catch the wind while clouds above dimmed their pink to purple, then shadow-blue— So slow, we listened to our own bones grow.

Razors pain you; Rivers are damp; Acids stain you; And drugs cause cramp. Guns aren’t lawful; Nooses give; Gas smells awful; You might as well live.

Retired ballerinas on winter afternoons walking their dogs in Central Park West (or their cats on leashes— the cats themselves old highwire artists) The ballerinas leap and pirouette through Columbus Circle while winos on park benches (laid back like drunken Goudonovs) hear the taxis trumpet together like horsemen of the apocalypse in the dusk of the gods It is the final witching hour when swains are full of swan songs And all return through the dark dusk to their bright cells in glass highrises or sit down to oval cigarettes and cakes in the Russian Tea Room or climb four flights to back rooms in Westside brownstones where faded playbill photos fall peeling from their frames like last year’s autumn leaves