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1 Father trellis of my voice (or noose) abruptly vanished — 2 I wear this razory fishhook of crucifix. Look. How it helps me keep my head down, down with shame, the glory and shame see this frail weightless chain: there is another like it. Sometimes my neck feels like it’s breaking — It hangs right here near the heart’s hidden room where a table is set for me not a dark bar. No more that pointless horror. Weightless frail chain massive iron seaweed and barnacle-bearded anchor — You may peek from your door toward dawn and see me attempting to make it to the end of the hallway to the restroom bent double, gasping for air in small sips but I will be there, table set for three, the unseen host, then me there to meet my own glorified body who does resemble me in a vague way, but is not particularly radiant or splendid: he is ugly, as though he had been crying all his life that can’t be my soul people scream when they first see it

1.   Ye shall be free to write a poem on any subject, as long as it’s the White Whale. 2.   A gold doubloon shall be granted to the first among ye who in a poem sights the White Whale. 3.   The Call Me Ishmael Award shall be given to the best poem about the White Whale, with publication in The White Whale Review. 4.   The Herman Melville Memorial Picnic and Softball Game shall be open to whosoever of ye writes a poem about following thy Captain into the maw of hell to kill the White Whale. 5.   There shall be a free floating coffin for any workshop participant who falls overboard whilst writing a poem about the White Whale. 6.   There shall be a free leg, carved from the jawbone of a whale, for any workshop participant who is dismasted whilst writing a poem about the White Whale. 7.   There shall be a free funeral at sea, complete with a chorus of stout hearties singing sea chanteys about the White Whale, for any workshop participant who is decapitated whilst writing a poem about the White Whale. 8.   Ye who seek not the White Whale in thy poems shall be harpooned.

Forgive me, Aunt Phyllis, for rejecting the cut glass dishes—the odd set you gathered piece by piece from thirteen boxes of Lux laundry soap. Pardon me, eggbeater, for preferring the whisk; and you, small ship in a bottle, for the diminutive size of your ocean. Please don’t tell my mother, hideous lamp, that the light you provided was never enough. Domestic deities, do not be angry that my counters are not white with flour; no one is sorrier than I, iron skillet, for the heavy longing for lightness directing my mortal hand. And my apologies, to you, above all, forsaken dresses, that sway from a rod between ladders behind me, clicking your plastic tongues at the girl you once made beautiful, and the woman, with a hard heart and softening body, who stands in the driveway making change.

I. Runs falls rises stumbles on from darkness into darkness and the darkness thicketed with shapes of terror and the hunters pursuing and the hounds pursuing and the night cold and the night long and the river to cross and the jack-muh-lanterns beckoning beckoning and blackness ahead and when shall I reach that somewhere morning and keep on going and never turn back and keep on going Runagate Runagate Runagate Many thousands rise and go many thousands crossing over O mythic North O star-shaped yonder Bible city Some go weeping and some rejoicing some in coffins and some in carriages some in silks and some in shackles Rise and go or fare you well No more auction block for me no more driver’s lash for me If you see my Pompey, 30 yrs of age, new breeches, plain stockings, negro shoes; if you see my Anna, likely young mulatto branded E on the right cheek, R on the left, catch them if you can and notify subscriber. Catch them if you can, but it won’t be easy. They’ll dart underground when you try to catch them, plunge into quicksand, whirlpools, mazes, turn into scorpions when you try to catch them. And before I’ll be a slave I’ll be buried in my grave North star and bonanza gold I’m bound for the freedom, freedom-bound and oh Susyanna don’t you cry for me Runagate Runagate II. Rises from their anguish and their power, Harriet Tubman, woman of earth, whipscarred, a summoning, a shining Mean to be free And this was the way of it, brethren brethren, way we journeyed from Can’t to Can. Moon so bright and no place to hide, the cry up and the patterollers riding, hound dogs belling in bladed air. And fear starts a-murbling, Never make it, we’ll never make it.Hush that now, and she’s turned upon us, levelled pistol glinting in the moonlight: Dead folks can’t jaybird-talk, she says; you keep on going now or die, she says. Wanted     Harriet Tubman     alias The General alias Moses     Stealer of Slaves In league with Garrison     Alcott     Emerson Garrett     Douglas     Thoreau     John Brown Armed and known to be Dangerous Wanted     Reward     Dead or Alive Tell me, Ezekiel, oh tell me do you see mailed Jehovah coming to deliver me? Hoot-owl calling in the ghosted air, five times calling to the hants in the air. Shadow of a face in the scary leaves, shadow of a voice in the talking leaves: Come ride-a my train Oh that train, ghost-story train through swamp and savanna movering movering, over trestles of dew, through caves of the wish, Midnight Special on a sabre track movering movering, first stop Mercy and the last Hallelujah.

You who please      your keenness with poems, read closely here:      can you discover this verse’s framer? finishes. Nobles enjoy it on earth,      but not without end, worldly ones. must fail in our strongholds      once our bodies scatter their loaned treasure,      like trickling through fingers. Then and ear      require skill in night’s narrow cell; drives your craft, a kingly servitude.      Now can you see who shrewd words have      shown to men? Remember my name,      O you who admire the sound of this song;      help succor me and pray for my comfort.      Soon I must pass alone, away      to look for a dwelling, must travel so far      (no telling where!) beyond this world      to a yet-unknown place in the earth.      So must each person, unless he is granted      God-sent grace. Let us call to God      again, more eager, begging his blessing      in this bright creation: may we be welcomed      to his warm halls, his home on high.      There is holiest happiness, there the king of angels      crowns the pure with a perishless prize.      Now his praise endures masterful and marvelous,      and his might extends endless and ageless      over all creation. finit .

Here or there hundreds of them, phantom-like, bobbing in place at street corners, then lifting their knees suddenly and leaping into the densest, loudest traffic (of briefest trajectories, of shortest views), in transit yet at ease, breathing, loping, like bearers of distance and pure direction, darting half naked out of nowhere and where, where in the world are they running to? swift and solitary, silent beings who, should you now step into the path, have dodged away, or, if you raise a hand to stay them to speak, immediately are gone: who are these runners who create in their gliding such fine, singular spaces among the street’s vociferous jargons? —as if each one were a still, wordless message or question one would answer if one could grasp it, this one, that one, sliding past, going away, while you stand there, your hand raised to no purpose, your hidden heart rejoicing that the quick heel won’t soon, won’t ever, be overtaken, although you, as you have longed to, suddenly disburden yourself and follow follow.

In the green rags of the Bible I tore up The straight silk of childhood on my head I left the house, I fled My mother’s brow where I had no ambition But to stroke the writing I raked in. She who dressed in wintersilk my head That month when there is baize on the high wall Where the dew cloud presses its lustration, And the thrush is but a brooch of rain As the world flies softly in the wool of heaven. I was a guest at my own youth; under The lamp tossed by a moth for thirteen winters Sentenced to cabbage and kisses By She who crammed an Earth against my feet and Pulled over me the bright rain Storm of fleece. Not for me – citizenship of the backdoor Where even the poor wear wings; while on Sunday Gamy ventilations raise their dilettante In the bonnet of the satin-green dung fly, And fungus sweats a livery of epaulettes. I was a hunter whose animal Is that dark hour when the hemisphere moves In deep blue blaze of dews And you, brunette of the birdmusic tree, Stagger in spat diamonds Drunkenly. Like some Saint whose only blasphemy is a Magnificent juice vein that plucks his groin With April’s coarse magicianship as green As the jade squirt of fruit, I was the child whose breast Rocks to a muscle savage as Africa. Thundercloud, your wool was rough with mud As the coat of a wild beast on which flowers grow, Your brogue of grunts so low They left soil in the mouth. After you, I Walked as through a Djinn’s brain Gleaming lane. I was incriminated by your hammer In my chest. And forfeit to the crepe hoods Of my mother’s eyes; the iron door of her oven And her church. Skies, cut to blind, had but laid on Her priest’s mouth the green scabs of winter. But I had the marvellous infection! Leaning upon my fairy and my dog In the ultramarine Latitudes of dew shook like a tear that’s carried Through darkness on the knuckles of A woman’s glove. I saw each winter where my hen-thrush Left her fork in famine’s white banqueting cloth; Could I not read as well the tradesman’s hand With its magenta creases – whose soul turns blandly On a sirloin mattress to smile at the next meal? O She who would paper her lamp with my wings! That hour when all the Earth is drinking the Blue drop of thunder; and in Dark debris as of a magician’s room, my beast A scented breathing To the East.

It will be an island on strings well out to sea and austere bobbing as if at anchor green with enormous fir trees formal as telephone poles. We will arrive there slowly hand over hand without oars. Last out, you will snip the fragile umbilicus white as a beansprout that sewed us into our diaries. We will be two bleached hermits at home in our patches and tears. We will butter the sun with our wisdom. Our days will be grapes on a trellis perfectly oval and furred. At night we will set our poems adrift in ginger ale bottles each with a clamshell rudder each with a piggyback spider waving them off by dogstar and nothing will come from the mainland to tell us who cares, who cares and nothing will come of our lovelock except as our two hearts go soft and black as avocado pears.

Basho said to refuse a prayer until its warmth hunches inside like a bird in its hutch. First the fledgling is born, then the worm, then they meet somewhere in the grass. I choose my paper for its cereal color, fuss over shaving a pencil. The prayer means to cleanse both triumph and lust. O derivative, sunlight reaping the trees, this whole morning cries through a single reed. Pencil, razor blade, spit—I'll try not to hurry.

They call us now, before they drop the bombs. The phone rings and someone who knows my first name calls and says in perfect Arabic “This is David.” And in my stupor of sonic booms and glass-shattering symphonies still smashing around in my head I think,Do I know any Davids in Gaza? They call us now to say Run. You have 58 seconds from the end of this message. Your house is next. They think of it as some kind of war-time courtesy. It doesn’t matter that there is nowhere to run to. It means nothing that the borders are closed and your papers are worthless and mark you only for a life sentence in this prison by the sea and the alleyways are narrow and there are more human lives packed one against the other more than any other place on earth Just run. We aren’t trying to kill you. It doesn’t matter that you can’t call us back to tell us the people we claim to want aren’t in your house that there’s no one here except you and your children who were cheering for Argentina sharing the last loaf of bread for this week counting candles left in case the power goes out. It doesn’t matter that you have children. You live in the wrong place and now is your chance to run to nowhere. It doesn’t matter that 58 seconds isn’t long enough to find your wedding album or your son’s favorite blanket or your daughter’s almost completed college application or your shoes or to gather everyone in the house. It doesn’t matter what you had planned. It doesn’t matter who you are. Prove you’re human. Prove you stand on two legs. Run.