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An inland sea – blue as a sapphire – set Within a sparkling, emerald mountain chain Where day and night fir-needles sift like rain Thro’ the voluptuous air. The soft winds fret The waves, and beat them wantonly to foam. The golden distances across the sea Are shot with rose and purple. Languorously The silver seabirds in wide circles roam. The sun drops slowly down the flaming West And flings its rays across to set aglow The islands rocking on the cool waves’ crest And the great glistening domes of snow on snow. And thro’ the mist the Olympics flash and float Like opals linked around a beating throat.

Nailing up chicken wire on the frame house, or using a chalk line, or checking a level at a glance gets to be easy. We install double-pane windows pressurized with argon between the panes for elevations over 4500´. And use pick and shovel to dig for the footing for the annex. Lay cinder blocks, and check levels. Pour the cement floor, and use wood float and steel trowel to finish the surface as it sets. Nailing into rough, dense, knotted two-by-twelves, or using a chalk line to mark the locations of the fire blocks, or checking the level of a stained eight-by-ten window header gets to be easier. In nailing up chicken wire, we know how to cut for the canal, pull the wire up over the fire wall, make cuts for the corners, tuck it around back, and nail two-head nails into the stud. And when the footing is slightly uneven and we are laying a first row of cinder blocks, know that a small pebble under a corner often levels the top to the row. And, starting on rock lath, the various stages of a house - cutting vigas, cleaning aspens for latillas, installing oak doors, or plastering the adobe wall - are facets of a cut opal.

—for Tamar Craig I knew the hard winter of sapphires set within gold claws, amber and pipestone strung on gut, fringed pouches stuffed with hash. Separate, separate, I urged her that summer of Woodstock, when I lied to get the car and draped my love beads around the neck of someone else’s sister. In a hayloft in Ohio my friend lifted three bales to show me a litter of week-old kittens, each pair of eyes infected with a slimy mucus. Their pupils swam in opaque opal membranes and they would have gone blind if she had not pulled an eyedropper of antibiotics from her jacket, doing what the mother cat could not do, what the owners would not trouble themselves to do, doing what a sister or friend might do if she took the time to attend the wayward, opalescent unhappiness in this world.

I lay down under language it left me and I slept —You, the Comforter, came into the room my blood, my mouth all buttoned away— Makers of houses, books, clothes- makers, goodbye—

Bless Tuesday, blessed Monday. Bless the word week, its seven small days trail with y. Bless the men whose words I was too young to hear. A whisper loves a canal. Bless my laugh, lent by grief, I have so little left to borrow. But my hair, it grows— if hair be gold, cut mine so I might rid my beloved of his student loans. Bless thieves, universities, those hands caress what’s not theirs. Bless thinking it was yours. Here are hands, blessed one. Bless them holding the door. Bless each crier on the F train before and after me as they blush, as they transfer into tunnels for the red line. Oh bless, bless wildly, what remains to be done. Bless the one who told me so, the ones who didn’t. Even weak breaths bless. Bless weakness, fragile fortress, my friend’s body absent of soundness. Bless the sound of someone reliable answering your call, saying If you’re going through hell, Hello.

Open the gates—the gates of the Temple, Swift to Thy sons, who Thy truths have displayed. Open the gates—the gates that are hidden, Swift to Thy sons, who Thy Law have obeyed. Open the gates—of the coveted Temple, Swift to Thy sons who confess and seek grace. Open the gates—of the armies celestial, Swift to Thy sons, Judah’s tearful-eyed race. Open the gates—the radiant portals, Swift to Thy sons who are lovely and pure. Open the gates—of the crown of fidelity, Swift to Thy sons who in God rest secure.

Open, Time, and let him pass Shortly where his feet would be! Like a leaf at Michaelmas Swooning from the tree, Ere its hour the manly mind Trembles in a sure decrease, Nor the body now can find Any hold on peace. Take him, weak and overworn; Fold about his dying dream Boyhood, and the April morn, And the rolling stream: Weather on a sunny ridge, Showery weather, far from here; Under some deep-ivied bridge, Water rushing clear: Water quick to cross and part, (Golden light on silver sound), Weather that was next his heart All the world around! Soon upon his vision break These, in their remembered blue; He shall toil no more, but wake Young, in air he knew. He has done with roods and men. Open, Time, and let him pass, Vague and innocent again, Into country grass.

She had the jitters She had the flu She showed up late She missed her cue She kicked the director She screamed at the crew And tripped on a prop And fell in some goo And ripped her costume A place or two Then she forgot A line she knew And went “Meow” Instead of “Moo” She heard ‘em giggle She heard ‘em boo The programs sailed The popcorn flew As she stomped offstage With a boo-hoo-hoo The fringe of the curtain Got caught in her shoe The set crashed down The lights did too Maybe that’s why she didn’t want to do An interview.

pulse light starts there starts           getting smaller     All that you can’t remember, Claire says.  ,   With two glass eyes           I’m wobbling down a walkway          inflecting aloha                                        no thumbtacks, attached     no pins,           To feel.          Good by. among crimson and silver turnstiles,     all the folks          In orange, Silvery hats and thermal     The madmen mad getting madder     daisies all done          Again          me strolling, me fuming, slipping,   the stream frozen. the matter of face. the quasars huffing on.           In December   no summery mask,     No, just the shimmering scene, the firmament.     a blackbird indicating, nods Maybe a change    dust of a brick  maybe I remember,      I recall.      a cyclotron.          An ingenuous ramrod The flay of her hair               fall sinking          Rowboat turning to winter,     rowboat, rowboat      Chatter of the breakage iii.                              verb forms of a neutron bomb starts sloe gin     over time                    Fermenting in the firmament red shifting with Claire     waking with Claire, betweening and vaguing Claire          the embassies exchanging airs.          lily white, glittery photons          , spark                         at the bottom working iamb          iamb iamb                    iamb                                        iamb Claire    don’t care                    reminiscing          Tuscaloosa in.           A corner of the soiree.                              , standing so bluntly you resemble no one,          Precisely, as if receding          over a hill, you resembles everyone. corralling       , the bulky idea of the hill into. an encampment,                                                  a tiny cranium. And it’s                    as if,          Spying you                              through a whiskey on rocks.                    a mass hysteria I struttle along,      Making          commonplace.          Ubnutterances, and guts                                        your house is blue with two glass eyes iii.                              quantum entanglement starts with a single shot.          fired                not the year of my     fathers. slow, death starts.     year my mother goes     terminal, The vacuous scene          chattering,                         Like an elephant collapsing     the animals fuming,                              weird winged bugs The serious business of.    squishing them, they simply regroup. And reappear.    , Claire.          I’m stumbling down the thoroughfare. in a dark,  Pinching what few glittering photons,          I’m trolling. murky and building up.     start at the bottom,                    working a way Upwards     Evening,       like a tumbler.                    folding.  itself over Feeling contented all around.  squinting,          started clawing with two glass eyes          feeling for thumbtacks.                    Among the broad vagaries.                         among the wild visions,          Claire. . I say I know you better,                            , than.   You could imagine, or some other,          but you sock me.          Hard. In the gut instead. i.                              aimed by magnets starts redundant          Futile with a screwdriver, among the wrecks. ,  I am having a ball comma       Describe the house        comma paint the doorjamb end-stop               these months     spent   a-chatter. the sidewalk spinal column                              of a mule that carries me. Through the broad making-world.            one universe over, We are inseparable.      And own many cats     the city.                             Large. like  viewing an egg,                        From the egg’s interior. I go about the serious business   strolling,                                    The firmament Claire.   your pocket watch,          A frayed yellow.                                    T-shirt. on the narrative fringe.  of the narrative,                  the weightless photons say       Holding hands                              One universe over. You do not forgive me.            ,  all that I can’t                              but Maybe a small change maybe something less     than the sky, maybe something.                              More than the sky could conjure. ii.                                    if this were a sonnet, I start with all that you can’t remember.                  The gutters Overloaded.      the funky trinkets,           Weird winged bugs on the sill.                  In the air,      When I go about the     business , strolling home    Claire.                        riding the slipstream sloe gin.            All drink and whiskey.      the old ferry, a rowboat ,            in my gut.                        smooth as a mirror          Every mad Artifact     everyone I’ve ever met,                       resembling Claire dissembling          My wintered axe.            start at the bottom Work your way upwards.            like a signature saying I’ve been here, strolling past,            these fumes,                             on the air smell like a letter.            All thermal               , all water     Quasars bleating,      blackbird saying,      The search light pauses     Pluck The wings out one at a time.      Chicago and     blackbird, blackbird, I unaware.    of ours, the               recombinant bodies of the gods. i.                              focused by a lens starts with the scene     starts.               December,          Smooth as a mirror     Hard in the gut                         feels like a tumbler. Claire, inflecting               good, by.     walking. Claire.          the scene of sparks.     among the while, the fission The house is blue.     with two glass eyes     among the firmament no pins to pin you   No, thumbtacks to hold you          But photons and all the things that you can’t       .        Among the sloe gin, your frayed yellow T-shirt. I returned          to you, but you wanting In a corner of the soiree.  a corner of the prairie,     more than the sky This is where the elephant toppled.     when what you remember is Collided, with               Often     under the webbed foot Of my imagining, you     are the entire throng.          Wearing your face,     Dust of a brick,     what’s left is               What when the particle accelerator               paints its          disastered portrait iv.                        scatter many phrases starts with shatter.                                    , crossing the parking lot, my skin     pixilated in the sodium light, harsh corundum               skin a vapor trail                    edging the slipstream.            Tidy up the floorboards.            the wiggling infrastructure of a signature.                        says, I’ve been here before                    All airs as if a unified field.                  of night.      of     Claire.                  Collapse, arrangement of bones   where the elephant toppled.                  spells are cast, Luster in clusters,                        stone I toss          Chicago, the old ferry   through the house’s eye,  through the firmament     Light bulbs wilting,            carnations flickering,      Like a cyst the crick dribbles outward                         toward   a shore     my lady trickles, my lady pours          Give up give up,            my sweet canteen Been taken to the forest.      Honey.                  Among the wild fission.

The television in The Deer Hunter is in Clairton, Pennsylvania. Everything is still at Welsh’s Lounge: the clouds, the sky, the unlit neon sign outside the window. All is calm, all is bright. I sing in English while my father is in Vietnam. American wives are in immeasurable pain and so is my mother. American soldiers are pushing a hel- icopter to the right side of the TV screen. Behind the soldiers is number 19. It stands for USS Hancock: its nickname, Fighting Hannah. Helicopter whirring. It sounds like Godzilla crying. My father is nowhere to be seen because he’s behind the camera, behind the lens. His eye’s filled with the green ocean. It zooms in on the soldiers, some in uniform, some shirtless, on the decks with number 19 behind them. They’re calm and bright, looking down at the flight platform below. Nobody is crying. Num- ber 19 goes beyond Yi Sang’s number 13. History is hysterical. The-13th-child-also- says-it’s-terrifying. 13+3+3. 19=13. A modest, shared hallucination. I’m still the 13th child. And Godzilla is still crying. Hannah ditches the helicopter in the sea. Now everything is happening on the left side of the screen. Nobody’s in the cockpit of the helicopter. The chopper blades tilt, making a diagonal line across the entire screen. That strange cry. It wants to go home—O like me, like my father. Now the helicopter and its blades are perfectly vertical to the South China Sea. The chopper is now engulfed by the sea, white with foam. Sayonara, Saigon! THIS SEEMS TO BE THE LAST CHAPTER IN THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN INVOLVEMENT IN VIET- NAM. Now everything appears in the center of the screen. Helicopter is everything. Hannah is everything. My father’s framing never sways even when flowers call to him. He edits as he films, he often told me. He’s still nowhere to be seen. Missing in action somewhere in Cambodia, filming carpet bombing, my mother said. O the chopper’s belly convulses. O it’s in immeasurable pain. The chopper’s door open and the pilot and men in white shirts and dark pants spill out. IT’S ALSO BEEN THE LARGEST SINGLE MOVEMENT OF PEOPLE IN THE HISTORY OF AMERICA IT- SELF. The chopper’s blades are swirling in every frenzied direction. O suicidal lines. Sayonara, Saigon! HILARY BROWN, ABC NEWS ABOARD THE ATTACK AIRCRAFT CARRIER USS HANCOCK IN THE SOUTH CHINA SEA. White with foam. Now I see buttons on History's blouse.