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My mother would be a falconress, And I, her gay falcon treading her wrist, would fly to bring back from the blue of the sky to her, bleeding, a prize, where I dream in my little hood with many bells jangling when I'd turn my head. My mother would be a falconress, and she sends me as far as her will goes. She lets me ride to the end of her curb where I fall back in anguish. I dread that she will cast me away, for I fall, I mis-take, I fail in her mission. She would bring down the little birds. And I would bring down the little birds. When will she let me bring down the little birds, pierced from their flight with their necks broken, their heads like flowers limp from the stem? I tread my mother's wrist and would draw blood. Behind the little hood my eyes are hooded. I have gone back into my hooded silence, talking to myself and dropping off to sleep. For she has muffled my dreams in the hood she has made me, sewn round with bells, jangling when I move. She rides with her little falcon upon her wrist. She uses a barb that brings me to cower. She sends me abroad to try my wings and I come back to her. I would bring down the little birds to her I may not tear into, I must bring back perfectly. I tear at her wrist with my beak to draw blood, and her eye holds me, anguisht, terrifying. She draws a limit to my flight. Never beyond my sight, she says. She trains me to fetch and to limit myself in fetching. She rewards me with meat for my dinner. But I must never eat what she sends me to bring her. Yet it would have been beautiful, if she would have carried me, always, in a little hood with the bells ringing, at her wrist, and her riding to the great falcon hunt, and me flying up to the curb of my heart from her heart to bring down the skylark from the blue to her feet, straining, and then released for the flight. My mother would be a falconress, and I her gerfalcon raised at her will, from her wrist sent flying, as if I were her own pride, as if her pride knew no limits, as if her mind sought in me flight beyond the horizon. Ah, but high, high in the air I flew. And far, far beyond the curb of her will, were the blue hills where the falcons nest. And then I saw west to the dying sun-- it seemd my human soul went down in flames. I tore at her wrist, at the hold she had for me, until the blood ran hot and I heard her cry out, far, far beyond the curb of her will to horizons of stars beyond the ringing hills of the world where the falcons nest I saw, and I tore at her wrist with my savage beak. I flew, as if sight flew from the anguish in her eye beyond her sight, sent from my striking loose, from the cruel strike at her wrist, striking out from the blood to be free of her. My mother would be a falconress, and even now, years after this, when the wounds I left her had surely heald, and the woman is dead, her fierce eyes closed, and if her heart were broken, it is stilld I would be a falcon and go free. I tread her wrist and wear the hood, talking to myself, and would draw blood.

My mouth is snow slowly caking that stiff pigeon. My mouth, the intricately moist machinery of a plant. I have forgotten if I ever had a mouth. I have two mouths. One like warm rain; or wind manipulating the worn limbs of an elm. My mouth knows nothing of music. Or of the oils of love. Its shape is the shadow of innumerable pigeons; its words, at times, their bones. My eyes too know of shadows. And of the delicate hairs of my grandmother's heart. And of the plums of puberty. And the shadow of the eggs inside the woman who moves immemorially through clover past the wheat field and alfalfa and the 1890 Roman Catholic cemetary near the farm in Palos Park. My eyes know of the blue shadow of the one desire. The mind does not; it is an animal, ignorant, ambiguous, talking, as it must, with many voices. I walk toward you as if wading through the waves in somebody else's dream. I walk toward you as if wading through the waves in somebody else's dream. I shall survive this death, even though the heart is a shadow of a bone. Or thick glass. My mouth quick with many bees.

My name came from my great-great-great-grandfather. He was an Indian from the Choctaw tribe. His name was Dark Ant. When he went to get a job out in a city he changed it to Emmett. And his whole name was Emmett Perez Tenorio. And my name means:  Ant; Strong; Carry twice its size.

I am      Invested in by a      Huge Fund Heavy                    highquality furniture Sense of heavy Addiction glossy pleasance I was lying  Down on a yoga mat My bones basketing air     Barely draped in skin the basket             Effulged by local Air      Highquality        scented humid air to support          My orchid        Skin Suffuged in this Air expense I nearly floated  Who was my  Body I am comfortable I am comfortable     Flying my spirit On a long leash She is            in the wind I am in the     belle belle jar shellacked and        brittle begins to      ding How can I      From inside this comfort Represent      Hope to No no I am                 Too tempted To think I            Deserve it Rigidly and with effort know my privilege I know my fluorescent doorway A rectangle   Among the ceiling tiles Ordinary flecked coated  1) foam rectangles and one hard white light regularly rubbled 2) glass rectangle these are my choices the ceiling tile                      I would tear in                         behind the Ugly lattice to the   Duct area Unscrew the grille    Smallen myself Into the dark cold  Square pipe To share  My cold  What is in My basket    Bone-basket With the other      breathers/Workers Or through the fluorescent door Means giving up   On going   behind the lattice. All that’s allowed   Through the flow light Is what   Is shined upon The light bends looking at my   Skin and hair   and   green blouse When I concentrate  The light bending All at once         Hooks my outsides Hooks them into itself Now I am absent that I am not / shined upon very small        dusty lizardlike   a  toad    a  turd on a tabletop     corner And the outside of that is hooked away wow my parents hooked away           People on the street   skin and clothing hung on hangers from    electric wires blooming and twisting    swells of breeze leave behind             on the street a fair       weather an easy            weather walk-through I think I’m better    than the walk-throughs because something is left of me that’s what I     think I must be wrong to     think so Would you like to    Eat at my house Fill up your              Walk-through You drive through               Fill it up with tea and sheets water from the toilet These could    be your eyebrows [crayons] these could be your knees, these coasters What could                be your inside? Paper       wadded paper It says something What about              Something sticky For your mouth             Honey Then we will read you      For dinner In my  transitional housing    [dirt ball toad] I picked myself apart   With a fork Connected a wire      Where my belly was Coiled up   the plug The prongs poke hurt This is the part        Light plugs into           My/The outside plugs into             To light up The    shine    is    from    unshiny sewn in place with the little Light hooks     Made a case for me Visible so I retaliated Against the hooks I was    trying       My lizard turd was trying    to    join the other Mud my thrashing         harnessed motored made the light Meanwhile       My toad absorbed pollution from the walkthroughs       High empty thoughts      Funneled   backchannel Won’t you be mine [mind]         Be my thought softening                   the rockmud I will reorient  now          I will claymation That is a scary    Gingerbready mud man walking          You can’t catch me       hole for Your thoughts tunneled invisible     Unreflecting unrepresenter Not wrapped The Sun is here    Also   later and at the same time   the sun burned up and we revolved around it dirt rock warm   dirt rock in the dark                     of coursing around the dark I have made myself the center of the galaxy I am very important to myself must lose this visibility The shine is off perspect while kicking Where do you      think they get the lights from? Burn it up, burn up all the fuel into furious dirt Nematodes don’t need light When I am in a room with forest It is not that myself comes home to myself Selva oscura,  ya Obsecurity of self I considered long and seriously before I was bornt I stood on the street With the hookers Who were selling Disappear into a hole Into Mama but come back out. Go in, boys. Go in and stay there.

for Ihab Hassan 1 Closing the door is supposed to open some inward source—as with, for example, the prayer- closet: the text says go in and “shut thy door.” It's a stroke of luck when traditional wisdom so matches the turning of the season. 2 I've ofen thought of writing a poem of grotesque length (an epic, yes) and setting the entire argument the instant after Gautama's enlightenment, while it seemed to him he would pass directly into Nirvana, while the powers of good trembled thinking man was lost. It was only an instant, because of course the Buddha reconsidered. 3 Bulls for the bull-fight must (this is absolutely essential) be innocent. The very brightest are certainly, by human standards, stupid, but after a few fights the dullest among them would learn not to charge an empty cape but turn and massacre the fancy-pants who dances there for a bloody crowd. But, as Hemingway noted, the bull never survives. I can't, myself, get excited about “life and death, i.e., violent death,” and have never been able to work up much sympathy for the brute who runs with his head down or for the show-off, who has it coming. I'll probably never develop a taste for battle or get seven novels written or kill myself. 4 History is hard for me. I’ve no sense for it. 5 The world—and if ever there was a self-evident proposition, here it is—the world is a big fish. I've caught it in my net. And now, long into the winter nights, wearily, I study my net. The fish stinks. 6 A friend talks passionately in favor of silence. I listen to him. He says, “Silence dissolves the categories” and “Silence renews the potential of consciousness.” And it strikes me that I should say something. But I've never been able to argue. And whenever there’s been a choice between speaking and keeping still, I’ve kept my mouth shut. Well, usually. And only after a certain amount of prodding I’ve produced the necessary conventional sounds, feeling the thread of words I spew inordinately fragile, certainly nothing to depend on. Whereas the craw of silence is vast and, anyway, already has us—it’s the scorching sunlight of a Nilescape or the wind across the Great Plains, burying us. Friend, waist deep in dust or sand, maybe we’d contrive a gesture. 7 I passed the peak of my energy at the age of—it's hard to believe— twelve. Since then, little by little, I've collected the furniture of my house. I teach meanwhile, and I study, but no one knows my specialty. 8 XMAS [after Pessoa] A God is born. Some other Gods die. Truth has neither come nor gone, only the Error has changed. We have now another Eternity, and the world is no better off than it was. Blind Knowing plows a sterile plain Lunatic Faith lives a dream of worship. A new God is nothing but a word. Seek not. Nor believe. All is occult. 9 Time is molecular—so much for Zeno—and each moment brings everything out of nothing. In the beginning (each beginning) the universe is only a point—no dimension—and then it’s a world, for a moment, and each moment is apocalypse.Continuous creation it used to be called, and now we say expanding universe because (I forgot to say) each moment is more. Whatever else it may be, it's always more. No wonder the poet cries “Oh,Oh,” or, on a higher level, lyrical verses. But don’t worry. I’m not violent. We all live in a residue of bright pulsations, a gob of time, an after-image. 10 How naive can you get?—I was wondering, when the Great Year comes around to this point again and the next me sits signing his poems Keith Waldrop, will he remember back across the void of Decembers to where I drift into these speculations? And a moment’s thought answers my stupid question: I remember nothing. 11 When I think of the books you could fill with what I don’t know,oof. The pressing need’s for a phenomenology of ignorance. Everything has horizons, and they’re not just out of sight, they loom. Yes, and they beckon. An open door is plain and simple, like a wall. A closed door is an invitation. But if the knob is turning . . . ? Well, I’m closing in, or opening up. I’ve been so bloody finicky the mysteries catch me sometimes with my lids down. But I’m preparing. I need many voices for my revenge.

I’ve spent the last 10 years In other people’s offices Learning the alphabet of nods and eyebrows And pursed lips, straining for the purse Legs crossed in easy confidence Confident nervous gestures of assurance Approved blue suits And sudden dreamed-up lies to be delivered A net of thirty days and sixty days and ninety Insanely stretched past promise into years Next week, for certain Floated haphazardly on possibles As slight as handshakes, Firm as agreements of subjective verbs And got nowhere. This happy corner, sucking up hard-boiled eggs And polish hots The seidel sliding down the polished bar Clatter of friendly pool balls in the margin Not exactly somewhere, but a certain place. A regular’s dark hair and polished eyes Glow in the glasses lined before her face Smoking and berating the muzak “Jack, when you gonna get some country music?” “Country Charlie Pride?” Outside, it’s as bright as the important phone call I always pretend to await Setting up the lunch meeting at Stouffer’s Linen napkins and hope’s frozen green peas Set up another round of handshake laughter for the pictures “Hey sweet thing, when we gonna have that date?” The barmaid pouts a 1940s frown— It’s Arnie (reaching now to slap me on the back) A gleaming brazen polyester clown, Tuesday seems longer than the day before Since I began to organize my life around My Office I stay a little later every day. A little rain hangs fire in the clouds Next trip, I think I’ll bring the wife

I. AT TEN 1955. A scratchy waltz Buzzed over the ice rink’s P.A. My classmate Tony, the barber’s son: “Alls He wantsa do is, you know, like, play.” Bored with perfecting my languid figure eights, I trailed him to a basement door marked GENTS With its metal silhouette of high-laced skates (Symbols, I guess, of methods desire invents). Tony’s older brother was waiting inside. I’d been “requested,” it seemed. He was sixteen, Tall, rawboned, blue-eyed, Thumbs hooked into faded, tightening jeans. I fumbled with small talk, pretending to be shy. Looking past me, he slowly unzipped his fly. II. CALLAS Her voice: steeped in a rancid syrupy phlegm: Whatever’s not believed remains a grace While again she invokes the power that yields: Splintered timber and quick consuming flame: The simplest way to take hold of the heart’s Complications, its pool of spilt religion: A long black hair sweat-stuck to the skin: The bitter sleep of the dying: the Jew in Berlin: Who sent you here? the sharp blade pleads: Stormcloud: thornhedge: starchill: Blood bubble floating to the top of the glass: The light, from fleshrise to soulset: The world dragging the slow weight of its shame Like the train of pomp: guttering candle: her voice. III. IN CLASS Parasangs, satraps, the daily drill . . . Beginner’s Greek its own touchstone. The sophomore teacher was Father Moan, Whom I longed to have praise my skill. The illustrated reader’s best Accounts of murder and sacrifice Only suggested the heavy price I longed to pay at his behest. He’d slap the pointer against his thigh. I quivered. What coldness may construe Of devotion was an experience As hard to learn as catch his eye. I kept my hand up.Here! I knew The right answer. The case. The tense.

I set out now in a box upon the sea.

Emma Wallace, 23 Farm Hand Seymour, Iowa I came hungry into the world, and for that, look no further than my Pa. A history buff and a small-p poet, he built so many book- shelves, our house became the local lending library. At least to those few who knew a book to be a friend.

...one begins, ungratefully, to long for the contrasting tone of some honest, unironic misery, confident that when it arrives Roddy Lumsden will have the technical resources to handle it. Neil Powell, TLS I’m trying to string together three words which I hate more than I hate myself: gobsmacked, hubby and...when I realise that words no longer count for much at all. And that’s me back down, head on the floor. It’s like Cathal Coughlan goes in his song: till I’ve seen how low I can go. It’s like what my ancestor told me in a dream: You’ll be a sponge for the pain of others. It’s like what I told the lassie from the local paper: I do not suffer for my art, I just suffer. And face it, while we’re at it, it’s like what curly Shona said that night at Graffiti when all the gang were gathered for the show: how she reckoned I would be the first to die, or the time I slipped back from the bogs in Bo’s to hear my best friend tell a stranger girl who’d been sweet in my company,mind how you go with Roddy, he’s damaged goods, you know.