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All this tall grass has ruined my gold acrylic nails & I know something’s dead just beyond my window. I grew up with rats running my floorboards & know the smell straining from a body once caught in a trap. In the city what little I have of an ass is always out, a simple wind blow from Marilyn Monroe-ing the street. Here, in all this nature, there is nobody but me & my 5 friends for a week & I promised myself I’d be naked but the first day I found a tick clinging to my arm hair for dear life & decided no way I’m exposing my pussy to the elements. My love for nature is like my love for most things: fickle & theoretical. Too many bugs & I want a divorce. Last week, before I was here my uncle drove me from our city to the suburbs & sang “Project Chick” in the car. When we parked he asked me to take off my shoes & there we walked, silent, barefoot circling the lake, trying to not step in goose shit. He walked in front & I trailed behind both our hands clasped behind our backs. When you were my daughter, those were the happiest days of my life. I wish you would come home.

O my Love sent me a lusty list, Did not compare me to a summer's day Wrote not the beauty of mine eyes But catalogued in a pretty detailed And comprehensive way the way(s) In which he was better than me. "More capable of extra- and inter- Polation. More well-traveled -rounded multi- Lingual! More practiced in so many matters More: physical, artistic, musical, Politic(al) academic (I dare say!) social (In many ways!) and (ditto!) sexual!” And yet these mores undid but his own plea(s)(e) And left, none-the-less, the Greater Moor of me.

especially the rarest kind / or the kind named Priscilla G & not drowning in bleach cream / creamy spin / but spinning blades on a black Nina gunship in the gargantuan ghetto / not killing & maiming my brothers & potential husbands / when the working mothers give up & when they do not & when boys in their mad survivalist tactics want a movie sex parade / silk-edging their sweaty fists in 30 watt lit basements just because / death switch of a future / none of that has to do with any kind of blackness or a crazed horizon in the plumed summers of Los Angeles wherein television reenactments of real fathers didn't occur enough for news sidebars / but more than generally believed / they showed up to dailiness / cash in hand but as the school year revved up the rest of the madness had nowhere to hide / ballooned horizon / chemical concerns / fire up the blue turbines / fire up unconscious intention plus the acne of ignorance / on the city's glittery filth façade but not because of blackness / not for me / when I would get home sometimes there might be food sometimes just blackness I could live on / which I love

My lover, who lives far away, opens the door to my room and offers supper in a bowl made of his breath. The stew has boiled and I wonder at the cat born from its steam. The cat is in the bedroom now, mewling. The cat is indecent and I, who am trying to be tidy, I, who am trying to do things the proper way, I, who am sick from the shedding, I am undone. My lover, who lives far away, opens the door to my room and offers pastries in a basket spun from his vision. It is closely woven, the kind of container some women collect. I have seen these in many colors, but the basket he brings is simple: only black, only nude. The basket he brings is full of sweet scones and I eat even the crumbs. As if I've not dined for days. My lover, who lives far away, opens the door to my room and offers tea made from the liquid he's crying. I do not want my lover crying and I am sorry I ever asked for tea. My lover, who lives far away, opens the door to my room pretending he never cried. He offers tea and cold cakes. The tea is delicious: spiced like the start of our courtship, honeyed and warm. I drink every bit of the tea and put aside the rest. My lover, who lives far away, opens the door to my room like a man loving his strength. The lock I replaced this morning will not keep him away. My lover, who lives far away, opens the door to my room and brings me nothing. Perhaps he has noticed how fat I've grown, indulged. Perhaps he is poor and sick of emptying his store. It is no matter to me any longer, he has filled me, already, so full. My lover who is far away opens the door to my room and tells me he is tired. I do not ask what he's tired from for my lover, far away, has already disappeared. The blankets are big with his body. The cat, under the covers, because it is cold out and she is not stupid, mews.

My lute awake! perform the last Labour that thou and I shall waste, And end that I have now begun; For when this song is sung and past, My lute be still, for I have done. As to be heard where ear is none, As lead to grave in marble stone, My song may pierce her heart as soon; Should we then sigh or sing or moan? No, no, my lute, for I have done. The rocks do not so cruelly Repulse the waves continually, As she my suit and affection; So that I am past remedy, Whereby my lute and I have done. Proud of the spoil that thou hast got Of simple hearts thorough Love's shot, By whom, unkind, thou hast them won, Think not he hath his bow forgot, Although my lute and I have done. Vengeance shall fall on thy disdain That makest but game on earnest pain. Think not alone under the sun Unquit to cause thy lovers plain, Although my lute and I have done. Perchance thee lie wethered and old The winter nights that are so cold, Plaining in vain unto the moon; Thy wishes then dare not be told; Care then who list, for I have done. And then may chance thee to repent The time that thou hast lost and spent To cause thy lovers sigh and swoon; Then shalt thou know beauty but lent, And wish and want as I have done. Now cease, my lute; this is the last Labour that thou and I shall waste, And ended is that we begun. Now is this song both sung and past: My lute be still, for I have done.

I haled me a woman from the street, Shameless, but, oh, so fair! I bade her sit in the model’s seat And I painted her sitting there. I hid all trace of her heart unclean; I painted a babe at her breast; I painted her as she might have been If the Worst had been the Best. She laughed at my picture and went away. Then came, with a knowing nod, A connoisseur, and I heard him say; “’Tis Mary, the Mother of God.” So I painted a halo round her hair, And I sold her and took my fee, And she hangs in the church of Saint Hillaire, Where you and all may see.

Big Jack and his walking stick live on the ridge. Navajo orphan kids dance for him, bobcat urine’s in the weeds, the shotgun barrel's up his sleeve, a Persian coin is on the wind. The Chinese Mountains smell the moon and arch their backs. I tell him, Jack, there’s times I wish I was living in canvas France, the old west, a picture book, the Sea of Tranquility, or even in the den near the hot spring. He says, kid, to hell with phantom limbs; spring is a verb, a wish is a wash, a walking stick is a gottdam wing.

She said the cornflake cake made her day, she said a man cannot be blamed for being unfaithful: his heart is not in tune with his extremities and it’s just the way his body chemistry is. She said all sorts of things. We saw a duck pond and a man with a tub of maggots and a tub of sweet corn, we saw the walled garden and the old-fashioned library in the park, stopped for a cup of tea in a cafe where we had the cornflake cake cut into halves with the handle of a plastic fork. We saw yellow crocuses growing in a ring around a naked tree, the sky showing in purple triangles between the branches. We looked in the window of Butterworth’s at the bikes: they were beautiful, all of them. Gorgeous, she said. The sun was pushing through the iced air and landing on us on our heads and our shoulders and the backs of our legs. We bought nail varnish remover from Wilko’s, a bath sheet, and two Diet Cokes. She said she’d been talking to Jesus and God because she didn’t want to go to hell, although, she said, correctly, we’ve been through hell already, haven’t we. She said a woman should know her place, should wait. She lit a cigarette.

In the evenings of my childhood, when I went to bed, music washed into the cove of my room, my door open to a slice of light. I felt a melancholy I couldn't have named, a longing for what I couldn't yet have said or understood but still knew was longing, knew was sadness untouched by time. Sometimes the music was a rippling stream of clear water rushing over a bed of river stones caught in sunlight. And many nights I crept from bed to watch her swaying where she sat overtaken by the tide, her arms rowing the music out of the piano.

In her last notes, when her hand began to tremble, my mother tried to teach it the penmanship she was known for, how to make the slanted stems of the p's and d's, the descending roundness of the capital m's, the long loops of the f's crossed at the center, sending it back again and again until each message was the same: a record of her insistence that the hand return her to the way she was before, and of all the ways the hand had disobeyed.