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“My doggy ate my homework. He chewed it up,” I said. But when I offered my excuse My teacher shook her head. I saw this wasn’t going well. I didn’t want to fail. Before she had a chance to talk, I added to the tale: “Before he ate, he took my work And tossed it in a pot. He simmered it with succotash Till it was piping hot. “He scrambled up my science notes With eggs and bacon strips, Along with sautéed spelling words And baked potato chips. “He then took my arithmetic And had it gently fried. He broiled both my book reports With pickles on the side. “He wore a doggy apron As he cooked a notebook stew. He barked when I objected. There was nothing I could do.” “Did he wear a doggy chef hat?” She asked me with a scowl. “He did,” I said. “And taking it Would only make him growl.” My teacher frowned, but then I said As quickly as I could, “He covered it with ketchup, And he said it tasted good.” “A talking dog who likes to cook?” My teacher had a fit. She sent me to the office, And that is where I sit. I guess I made a big mistake In telling her all that. ’Cause I don’t have a doggy. It was eaten by my cat.

hey music and me only white, hair a flutter of fall leaves circling my perfect line of a nose, no lips, no behind, hey white me and i’m wearing white history but there’s no future in those clothes so i take them off and wake up dancing.

mary is an old woman without shoes. she doesn’t believe it. not when her belly starts to bubble and leave the print of a finger where no man touches. not when the snow in her hair melts away. not when the stranger she used to wait for appears dressed in lights at her kitchen table. she is an old woman and doesn’t believe it. when Something drops onto her toes one night she calls it a fox but she feeds it.

a woman unlike myself is running down the long hall of a lifeless house with too many windows which open on a world she has no language for, running and running until she reaches at last the one and only door which she pulls open to find each wall is faced with clocks and as she watches all of the clocks strike NO

He says he doesn’t feel like working today. It’s just as well. Here in the shade Behind the house, protected from street noises, One can go over all kinds of old feeling, Throw some away, keep others. The wordplay Between us gets very intense when there are Fewer feelings around to confuse things. Another go-round? No, but the last things You always find to say are charming, and rescue me Before the night does. We are afloat On our dreams as on a barge made of ice, Shot through with questions and fissures of starlight That keep us awake, thinking about the dreams As they are happening. Some occurrence. You said it. I said it but I can hide it. But I choose not to. Thank you. You are a very pleasant person. Thank you. You are too.

My father was four years in the war, and afterward, according to my mother, had nothing to say. She says he trembled in his sleep the next four years. My father was twice the father of sons miscarried, and afterward said nothing. My mother keeps this silence also. Four times my father was on strike, and according to my mother; had nothing to say. She says the company didn’t understand, nor can her son, the meaning of an extra fifteen cents an hour in 1956 to a man tending a glass furnace in August. I have always remembered him a tired man. I have respected him like a guest and expected nothing. It is April now. My life lies before me, enticing as the woman at my side. Now, in April, I want him to speak. I want to stand against the worn body of his pain. I want to try it on like a coat that does not fit.

My father was a tall man and yet the ripened rye Would come above his shoulders, the spears shot up so high. My father was a tall man and yet the tasseled corn Would hide him when he cut the stalks upon a frosty morn. The green things grew so lushly in the valley of my birth, Where else could one witness the luxuriance of earth? The plow would turn so rhythmically the loose, unfettered loam, There was no need of effort to drive the coulter home. My father walked behind his team before the sun was high, Fine as a figure on a frieze cut sharp against the sky. And when he swung the cradle in the yellow of the grain, He could command all eyes around, or when he drove the wain. I wonder if his acres now that lie so far away Are waiting for his footprint at the coming of the day. I wonder if the brown old barn that still is standing long And ghostly cattle in the stalls are waiting for his song.

The flypaper hung from the ceiling cork- screws with the weight of dead bluebottles. Not a smidgeon of dust anywhere, the house burdened with an unbearable tidiness that means he will not return.

Avocado trees on the moon.Aichigum, mullukumb, Billy Blue Gum. This is not exactly a confessional. My father’s wound was also my wound, dirt outside Vedanta Hall, blood in the dirt below the gutter pipe, blood like washing undone in my banian fold. I am not saying that blood was the thing. My father was singing. From the tall narrow barred window, the gravel driveway, in the heat, my father’s wound is jelly to the touch. I touch it now. * A broken tree on the floor. Tarzan says, “Tarzan save Vivek father wound.” “The shadow before State House, he will ride his bike no more.” Once, I looked up from paper and saw the clouds move. It was terrible, that clouds could move. The clouds moving reminded me of my father’s wound. I don’t care if you like this, * I am going to take my time. My father came back from a hernia operation, there had been a mistake, the stitches had to be removed. Every day I had seen him shaving in the bathroom, whistling Balamurali’s songs. * “If you’re going to write a poem about me,” my father says, “don’t forget to mention my daily yoga.” * There is a large glass door looking onto the pool. My father cleared that place up. Surrealism only matters if it’s real. I listen to Michael, Mr. Mister, Genesis. On Kyrie, I saw a massive bird block the sky while I blasted the song from the car stereo to the playground and the driver sat quietly. Did I mention we had a driver? He drove me around when my father had his wound and could not move. * I betrayed the wound. I see it half-formed, my mother washing him, his long painful yelps. This was scary, to hear those animal sounds. My mother went in there instead of me. Splashing. A red oval among the ripples.

We are both strong, dark, bright men, though perhaps you might not notice, finding two figures flat against the landscape like the shadowed backs of mountains. Which would not be far from wrong, for though we both have on Western clothes and he is seated on a yellow spool of emptied and forgotten telephone cable and I recline on a green aluminum lounge, we are both facing into the August sun as august as Hiroshima and the autumn. There are differences, however, if you care to discover, coming close, respectfully. You must discover the landscape as you go. Come. It is in the eyes, the face, the way we would greet you stumbling as you arrive. He is much the smooth, grass-brown slopes reaching knee-high around you as you walk; I am the cracks of cliffs and gullies, pieces of secret deep in the back of the eye. But he is still my father, and I his son. After a while, there is time to go fishing, both of us squatting on rocks in the dusk, leaving peaks and tree line responsible for light. There is a lake below, which both of us acknowledge, by facing, forward, like the sun. Ripples of fish, moon, luminous insects. Frogs, owls, crickets at their sound. Deer, raccoon, badger come down to drink. At the water's edge, the children are fishing, casting shadows from the enormous shoreline. Everything functions in the function of summer. And gradually, and not by chance, the action stops, the children hush back among rocks and also watch, with nothing to capture but dusk. There are four of us, together among others. And I am not at all certain what all this means, if it means anything, but feel with all my being that I must write this down, if I write anything. My father, his son, his grandsons, strong, serene. Night, night, night, before the following morning.