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The Glass Frogs you can't see us not like those golden frogs flashing their beauty because we're not here pretend we're not here you can't eat us we'd taste like clear air we're transparent invisible until night when stars pass through us moonlight flows into us we start to sing we need to sing we love to sing sing sing sing

Under warm New Mexico sun, we watched the pelican place himself down among the mallards as if he had been there all along, as if they were expecting the large, cumbersome body, the ungainliness. And he, sensing his own unsightly appearance, tucked his head close to his body and took on the smooth insouciance of a swan.

People getting divorced riding around with their clothes in the car and wondering what happened to everyone and everything including their other pair of shoes And if you spy one then who knows what happened to the other with tongue alack and years later not even knowing if the other ever found a mate without splitting the seams or remained intact unlaced and the sole ah the soul a curious conception hanging on somehow to walk again in the free air once the heel has been replaced

For David Freedman I read somewhere that if pedestrians didn’t break traffic laws to cross Times Square whenever and by whatever means possible, the whole city would stop, it would stop. Cars would back up to Rhode Island, an epic gridlock not even a cat could thread through. It’s not law but the sprawl of our separate wills that keeps us all flowing. Today I loved the unprecedented gall of the piano movers, shoving a roped-up baby grand up Ninth Avenue before a thunderstorm. They were a grim and hefty pair, cynical as any day laborers. They knew what was coming, the instrument white lacquered, the sky bulging black as a bad water balloon and in one pinprick instant it burst. A downpour like a fire hose. For a few heartbeats, the whole city stalled, paused, a heart thump, then it all went staccato. And it was my pleasure to witness a not insignificant miracle: in one instant every black umbrella in Hell’s Kitchen opened on cue, everyone still moving. It was a scene from an unwritten opera, the sails of some vast armada. And four old ladies interrupted their own slow progress to accompany the piano movers. each holding what might have once been lace parasols over the grunting men. I passed next the crowd of pastel ballerinas huddled under the corner awning, in line for an open call — stork-limbed, ankles zigzagged with ribbon, a few passing a lit cigarette around. The city feeds on beauty, starves for it, breeds it. Coming home after midnight, to my deserted block with its famously high subway-rat count, I heard a tenor exhale pure longing down the brick canyons, the steaming moon opened its mouth to drink from on high ...

The last time I saw Donald Armstrong He was staggering oddly off into the sun, Going down, off the Philippine Islands. I let my shovel fall, and put that hand Above my eyes, and moved some way to one side That his body might pass through the sun, And I saw how well he was not Standing there on his hands, On his spindle-shanked forearms balanced, Unbalanced, with his big feet looming and waving In the great, untrustworthy air He flew in each night, when it darkened. Dust fanned in scraped puffs from the earth Between his arms, and blood turned his face inside out, To demonstrate its suppleness Of veins, as he perfected his role. Next day, he toppled his head off On an island beach to the south, And the enemy’s two-handed sword Did not fall from anyone’s hands At that miraculous sight, As the head rolled over upon Its wide-eyed face, and fell Into the inadequate grave He had dug for himself, under pressure. Yet I put my flat hand to my eyebrows Months later, to see him again In the sun, when I learned how he died, And imagined him, there, Come, judged, before his small captors, Doing all his lean tricks to amaze them— The back somersault, the kip-up— And at last, the stand on his hands, Perfect, with his feet together, His head down, evenly breathing, As the sun poured from the sea And the headsman broke down In a blaze of tears, in that light Of the thin, long human frame Upside down in its own strange joy, And, if some other one had not told him, Would have cut off the feet Instead of the head, And if Armstrong had not presently risen In kingly, round-shouldered attendance, And then knelt down in himself Beside his hacked, glittering grave, having done All things in this life that he could.

wolf moon No moon in sight, so I howled at the exit sign instead. Red runes, electric. Telling an old story of escape, of wind, a wide cold. A distant car alarm. Otherwise: the dark, and our bodies, two strange women trying to touch each other. Breathing strange. Moving toward or away from each other as the red ghost in the sky opened, called us gone, showed us the door to another world. Otherwise, the dark, and our mouths, tearing at what bones we could find. Grinning and hungry for something — something we couldn’t, with all our words, name. snow moon The magic where the streetlights turn the snow pink lasts only for the first night, the same way, maybe, a blanket loses track of its scent when it’s been touched by too many hands, or the way a body grays when too many feet have dragged their cigarettes and complaints through it. But for that one first night, everything cold- flecked and whispering was ours, the pink light ours, sent from some other world so we could, for a night, feel untouched. So we could feel like sugar—crumbling, and perfect for it. worm moon Like any girl, I pulled myself into shreds to test the rumor that something with blood like mine could be halved and still whole. And what did I learn? I buried myself all over the garden, but the pieces only sprouted into new riddles: squid leg, spaghetti squash, a jerking thumb. Their names still sounded like mine; everyone in the same dress, chewing dirt to avoid each others’ eyes. I lay down next to the one beneath the porch, hiding among the oyster shells.Don’t cry, I said, but she cried anyway. Her tears fell straight into my eyes. What a lesson—to watch them float back and forth between us until we knew each one’s shape. Until we knew, finally, what to do with them. pink moon Outside, the colors leapt from the trees. Here, inside, some new word was blooming in my underwear—darker than I’d expected. I’d expected something pink; a slow, sweet trickle. Not this wet tar, treacle, dark, like the blood had been stretching inside me for years, slow-building into a sticky chord, the first falling away. Soil’s been watered; come play. First stuck, first gum, first hum of pollen, calling in the bees and readying to wilt. flower moon Spring is the season of crying and seeing nothing. Of choking up on someone else’s trash. Barbed tennis balls that lodge wherever air’s supposed to go, nasal cavity homewreckers. All spring my lenses wrenched themselves from my eyes, jumped ship, spore-lined and furious. Everything melted and ran down my face. All the trees wanted my number. Sent fuzzy messengers to murmur in my ears:I get so afraid sometimes all I want all I want is. All spring I brushed confessions out of my hair. Tore the little letters apart and locked myself in the refrigerator, until the world promised to stop birthing such soft things. strawberry moon The house was filled with the smell of it, the last misshapen, sweet-heavy berries of the season losing their shapes on the stove. The house was filled with the smell of fruit unbecoming, fruit pulled to its knees at fire’s feet. All summer long, the bushes had whispered take me, shown us all the places we could kiss if we wanted. And so, as the light died, we put our mouths on the least lovable, the too-full, the easy-bruised, we shouted,I choose you, and you, and you, and you, and canned that hunger, and spooned it into our mouths on the coldest days. buck moon Some of the cloven-hoofed things are good at leaping from one rock shelf to another without shattering. Good, in other words, at falling. I never trusted that ankles were any match for my body’s insistence on becoming earth again. So when I found myself on the cliff face, I knew it was dive or dust. A boy called to me from the bottom of the gorge, called me all the names he knew, and I stood frozen, wearing a crown of bones. The gravel laughed as it fled from my feet. I shouted down to the boy,Don’t try to milk me unless you’re fond of being kicked — buck and bray and jawbone. He responded,No, totally, sounds tough, how are you feeling? sturgeon moon I hid in his rivers and estuaries. I ate his wet earth’s crops. I grew plump for him. Grew egg-lined, thirty tiny hearts in my belly, fruit thumping with seeds. He pulled me from the mud. Laid me out in the sun. Opened me down the center. Scraped every dead daughter from my silly maw. I learned better next time. Next time, I grew three extra rows of seeds. Hid them in my mouth. Sharpened them to teeth. harvest moon Last winter, when we finally kissed under fluorescent lights, that was the seed we pressed between the ground’s lips. Then I laughed when the sky collapsed into pathetic rivers. Then I drank the dirt through my hooves, and liked it. Then I ate all the sun I could find. Though the weeds claw, sugar-starved, at my thighs. Though the sky casts over, cataract, callous, and the earth fumes as iron claws uproot the children’s children we keep warm in our bellies. Still, when the moon and the horses are fat on the horizon, still you’ll find me, arms heavy with eggplant, chard, tomatoes bruised blue, blushing kohlrabi till the kohlrabi’s gone. Will you pluck me before the dust does, root and all, radicchio tendon? I promise, I’ll feed no upright animal. Only the bees and the bees, beans sitting on the squash’s face. Will you turn your palms to the sky? Will you turn your palms to the prayer hunger makes? Will you feed and feed, and lick the bowl clean when we’re both full? hunter’s moon I picked up my own scent somewhere on the forest’s edge. Spoiling flour, holy basil, sweat. My oldest smell is the smell that still clings to pajama sleeves late into Saturday afternoon. Toothpaste, mixed with the musk of rest. I pressed my snout to the ground and breathed deep, watched the tendrils of my slug trail bloom blue, bioluminescent. I followed the maze, pushbrooming forest floor with face, followed the promise of a rapid heart. Don’t ask who’s the bloodhound, who’s the hare, when there’s a chase to be made: the clarity of a cardinal direction clicking into place. And: the quickening—the tendons that appear, sudden, when the distant, rabid howl of hunters rolls across the tree line, and you lift your head in greeting. beaver moon We made our home in the place where the water slowed. Yes. We flooded the plains until the landscape bloomed with wet. We stopped the tub. We drew a bath and called the river to its new, quieter life. Ring-builders. Kingdom carved. At the end of the line, we made our own place. Sure, from above, it looks like a snaking tail, headed by a circle. From here, in the mud, it doesn’t look like that at all. It looks like a world. Like a cleared space. Like everything that’s left when the trees soften and come, at last, crashing. cold moon Back below the ice. Back to swim. Seastar. Creeping brine. We salt, sink. We pull down the cold. We pull the moon to our floor.      Hello.      Waterstone. Brinicle. Cold-blooded and still flesh.    Still    horned    fingers groping the kelp bed. Still salt. Pull. Everything the ice touches. Is ours. Is quiet now. We sink slow. We pray still. For moon. We answer it now. Ourselves.

Perishable , it said on the plastic container, and below, in different ink, the date to be used by, the last teaspoon consumed. I found myself looking: now at the back of each hand, now inside the knees, now turning over each foot to look at the sole. Then at the leaves of the young tomato plants, then at the arguing jays. Under the wooden table and lifted stones, looking. Coffee cups, olives, cheeses, hunger, sorrow, fears— these too would certainly vanish, without knowing when. How suddenly then the strange happiness took me, like a man with strong hands and strong mouth, inside that hour with its perishing perfumes and clashings.

Someone said you were dead it’s not that I didn’t care You were not bacterial You were not frozen water in winter You were not a hairbrush broken by hair You were a treasure of gold in the world-toilet For you appraised the world of grains And flung the earth to the earth The good wine is mixed with the bad wine, come to the wine jar’s lips and let’s unmix it Poor people only have one soul but you and I have two let’s go on vacation to Mexico or Rome Everybody returns home How should old people associate with young people? Shut up—Be like a compass. The King has erased your name from the book of speech

1 We hoped to see things as they are by which we meant without us. We thought once we stripped away smell, taste, color — anything improper — leaving only location and number, the thing would be naked on the teeter-totter of an equation. 2 Then Archimedes told another one. If I had a long enough lever and a fulcrum, I’d get a high resolution image of objectified bodies and hoist myself on my own petard.

After Elinor Lipper The creature that had once been a man handed over his petition, a stained and grimy scrap, handed it to his lord and master, a petition asking to be transferred to the status of a horse. You son-of-a-whore, the master, kicking for good measure, bellowed. What do you mean by this? The creature that had once been a man, having considered deeply his petition, answered: If I were a horse, I would have one day off in ten. As is, I have none. As a horse, I could rest now and again during work. As a former man, I cannot. As a horse, I would be expected to perform work equal to my strength. As a prisoner, I am always hungry, and hungry, I work less and get less bread, so I can barely stand. A horse gets a stable and two blankets. I have no blankets, no jacket. If a driver beats a horse too hard, he is punished, for a horse is precious. If the brigadiers beat and kick me, it is like beating a tree. So you see, a prisoner is nothing here. But a horse? A horse is something! Inside the frozen and the broken vista, the plea had a ring of truth heard even by the lord and master, who had previously been a man himself, and who, when no other former men could see, attached that name to the page, granting the horse a stable and two blankets.