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Baby is unique untainted, original We know she is special Every baby is She arrives without baggage to hamper her way through tunnels or time but she demands attention AND HOW Baby means to survive aims to be fed, changed, bathed resorting to no more than a cry a squirm I observe Baby now that she breathes on her own I swear I’ll keep copious notes I’ll invite her for dinner or lunch for a glug of lukewarm milk I vow to take good care          I WILL Why, then, does she bathe in the sink No one, not a single one, close by to lift her out Why, then, does she not grow Neglected Baby Pauvre Enfant I have asked Baby to forgive me Baby, Baby stay          Baby, Baby stay Do not become a stab in my brain a chronic ache a shrouded shout a question mark laid out in the morgue daily vivisection vapor-spiral woe going mad beyond control though the venue is small and it doesn’t matter where one sleeps There is evil in the world It awaits Baby Sins                              even Sloth fiesta through hills and vales each time she is born Morals and meanings stumble but Sins know how to tango and tap They make nimble partners on the ballroom floor Like tigers they stalk their prey Lead, follow, tight embrace Baby in a frame, a pose in a box Tricky moves l a n g u i d               obambulations warm morning          sunny day One, two, three, four         one, two, three, four We touch, we part We yearn for tender mores Baby beware Baby be quick Jump for the sky Match to your flame Watch the flares fly Baby, there’s scorch here

here’s the remedy for your chronic whiplash — coming to you via triple ones on a mission — pop a wheelie for originators of the flash. check ya dial, emboss the rock b4 a fella dip dash.                                                      grand to slam a party — peep two needles in collision: here’s the remedy for your chronic whiplash. flare your dome w/ a pinch of cheeba succotash— got my avenue peaking rapid circumcision — pop a wheelie for originators of the flash. ululate the call; gods never caught tongue-lash — tweak an EQ. my hash sparks double vision: here’s the remedy for your chronic whiplash. got my tambourine for ya partner. pass the calabash. smile for the DJ when the cut spits — peep the precision.                            pop a wheelie for originators of the flash — never fret what the beat can establish in the trash. master meter on Orion, starship blast w/ supervision: here’s the remedy for your chronic whiplash — pop a wheelie for originators of the flash.

— for the members of Oshugó Àgàn At first a child rolled off a reed mat a height of no consequence Later the bald ageless vulture circles the hill the man climbs When the owners of the land arrived they brought beaded bag in their search Bag beaded big enough to house the echoes that gave birth to sketches of words on dust Bag deep enough to circle obstacles that would sprout upon birth They reached a clean house chalked walls of peace a person of peace They planted a pair of brass scepters illumined male / female short legs kneeling long torso crisscrossed by arms hands clenching some secret or just its thumbs They saw three to be balanced— Earth & us Impermanence & love water & its gourd as gorge fish & whirling water How they all seemed dependent on each other There is balance where there are three . . .

There is a hole. In the hole is everything people will do to each other. The hole goes down and down. It has many rooms like graves and like graves they are all connected. Roots hang from the dirt in craggy chandeliers. It's not clear where the hole stops beginning and where it starts to end. It's warm and dark down there. The passages multiply. There are ballrooms. There are dead ends. The air smells of iron and crushed flowers. People will do anything. They will cut the hands off children. Children will do anything— In the hole is everything.

Lame again, I limp home along Lawn Terrace with a flowering sun star in a paper wrap then back to the village with a lame cat twisting and woeful in her cage. Bread these days isn't baked to last: how sad those posh loaves thudding off in pine breadbins all around the Heath: soulless latterday pets, frisky for a day or two, then binned or thrown to foxes, loaves just an inch of gloom below the caged birds you notice in corners of those same mansions when you seek the past, dinking their mirrors, dipping once in a while for a sip of milk.

Gone to seed, ailanthus, the poverty tree. Take a phrase, then fracture it, the pods’ gaudy nectarine shades ripening to parrots taking flight, all crest and tail feathers. A musical idea. Macaws scarlet and violet, tangerine as a song the hue of sunset where my street becomes water and down shore this phantom city skyline’s mere hazy silhouette. The alto’s liquid geometry weaves a way of thinking, a way of breaking synchronistic through time so the girl on the comer has the bones of my face, the old photos, beneath the Kansas City hat, black fedora lifting hair off my neck cooling the sweat of a night-long tidal pull from bar to bar the night we went to find Bird’s grave. Eric’s chartreuse perfume. That poured-on dress I lived days and nights inside, made love and slept in, a mesh and slur of zipper down the back. Women smoked the boulevards with gardenias after-hours, asphalt shower- slick, ozone charging air with sixteenth notes, that endless convertible ride to find the grave whose sleep and melody wept neglect enough to torch us for a while through snare-sweep of broom on pavement, the rumpled musk of lover’s sheets, charred cornices topping crosstown gutted buildings. Torches us still—cat screech, matte blue steel of pistol stroked across the victim’s cheek where fleet shoes jazz this dark and peeling block, that one. Vine Street, Olive. We had the music, but not the pyrotechnics— rhinestone straps lashing my shoes, heels sinking through earth and Eric in casual drag, mocha cheekbones rouged, that flawless plummy mouth. A style for moving, heel tap and lighter flick, lion moan of buses pulling away through the static brilliant fizz of taffeta on nyloned thighs. Light mist, etherous, rinsed our faces and what happens when you touch a finger to the cold stone that jazz and death played down to? Phrases. Take it all and break forever— a man with gleaming sax, an open sill in summertime, and the fire-escape’s iron zigzag tumbles crazy notes to a girl cooling her knees, wearing one of those dresses no one wears anymore, darts and spaghetti straps, glitzy fabrics foaming an iron bedstead. The horn’s alarm, then fluid brass chromatics. Extravagant ailanthus, the courtyard’s poverty tree is spike and wing, slate-blue mourning dove, sudden cardinal flame. If you don’t live it, it won’t come out your horn.

Nocturnal (Horizon Line), 2010, by Teresita Fernández I’d come to help settle your mother’s affairs. On the last night, we ate where she worked all her life.Now that she’s gone, you said,I’ll never come back. Looking out over the dark, you saw a light in the distance, a boat crossing the bay, and told the story of the fisherman cursed to float adrift forever. You hadn’t thought of it since you were a child, and held your hand across the table to show me how it trembled. I didn’t understand until, alone, years later, wandering the city where I was born, I stood before a black wall, polished to shimmer, and it looked to me like the sea at night, hard and endless.

He glanced around to check if the treacherous gods had really given him the reward promised for his accomplished song and there she was, Eurydice restored, perfectly naked and fleshed in her rhyming body again, the upper and lower smiles and eyes, the line of mouth-sternum-navel-cleft, the chime of breasts and hips and of the two knees, the feet, the toes, and that expression of an unimaginable intelligence that yoked all these with a skill she herself had forgotten the learning of: there she was, with him once more just for an instant as she vanished. And then he heard her from behind the invisible veil, absence: a shrill and batlike but lexical indictment. Why had he violated the divine command, why, when he had seized all song to himself and robbed her of power to open her own oblivion? It grew in volume and now seemed to spew from an insane old mother with one breast hanging like a huge withered testicle from a rent in her weathered gown, who was being watched by a tall woman, copper-helmet-coiffed, richly suited in salmon colour, a mythical allusion, since salmon were long extinct in the bays and rivers here: songs never brought them anymore. The young restrained breasts and the old free one oppressed him equally and he went to live among men, waiting for the crazy and the competent to join forces and come for him with their scissors. Orpheus listened patiently to my poem and when it quieted he said to me: That wasn't it at all. I sang outward from my face to blue spaces between clouds, to fern fronds, and men and women sipped my song as you drink from a stream going by. What I sang is lost in time, you don't kmow what it was, all you have is your own old stories about me. And if women tore me into pieces, maybe that only signifies each one keeps part of my body, which is melody among visible things.

It was an adventure much could be made of: a walk On the shores of the darkest known river, Among the hooded, shoving crowds, by steaming rocks And rows of ruined huts half buried in the muck; Then to the great court with its marble yard Whose emptiness gave him the creeps, and to sit there In the sunken silence of the place and speak Of what he had lost, what he still possessed of his loss, And, then, pulling out all the stops, describing her eyes, Her forehead where the golden light of evening spread, The curve of her neck, the slope of her shoulders, everything Down to her thighs and calves, letting the words come, As if lifted from sleep, to drift upstream, Against the water's will, where all the condemned And pointless labor, stunned by his voice's cadence, Would come to a halt, and even the crazed, disheveled Furies, for the first time, would weep, and the soot-filled Air would clear just enough for her, the lost bride, To step through the image of herself and be seen in the light. As everyone knows, this was the first great poem, Which was followed by days of sitting around In the houses of friends, with his head back, his eyes Closed, trying to will her return, but finding Only himself, again and again, trapped In the chill of his loss, and, finally, Without a word, taking off to wander the hills Outside of town, where he stayed until he had shaken The image of love and put in its place the world As he wished it would be, urging its shape and measure Into speech of such newness that the world was swayed, And trees suddenly appeared in the bare place Where he spoke and lifted their limbs and swept The tender grass with the gowns of their shade, And stones, weightless for once, came and set themselves there, And small animals lay in the miraculous fields of grain And aisles of corn, and slept. The voice of light Had come forth from the body of fire, and each thing Rose from its depths and shone as it never had. And that was the second great poem, Which no one recalls anymore. The third and greatest Came into the world as the world, out of the unsayable, Invisible source of all longing to be; it came As things come that will perish, to be seen or heard Awhile, like the coating of frost or the movement Of wind, and then no more; it came in the middle of sleep Like a door to the infinite, and, circled by flame, Came again at the moment of waking, and, sometimes, Remote and small, it came as a vision with trees By a weaving stream, brushing the bank With their violet shade, with somebody’s limbs Scattered among the matted, mildewed leaves nearby, With his severed head rolling under the waves, Breaking the shifting columns of light into a swirl Of slivers and flecks; it came in a language Untouched by pity, in lines, lavish and dark, Where death is reborn and sent into the world as a gift, So the future, with no voice of its own, nor hope Of ever becoming more than it will be, might mourn.

A pair of Orpingtons, one blue, the other black, with iridescent necks and fine, ashen fluff cackle through the dark, their damp calls close enough to chafe, a friction with no spark. They settle down to roost, two rests along a stave. Each curls into itself, comb tucked beneath a wing, as the days grow long enough to kindle in each a yolk, the smallest flame of spring.