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new york, madame, is a monument to a city it is TA-DA a gigantic pike whose scales bristled up stunned and what used to be just smoke found a fire that gave it birth champagne foam melted into metal glass rivers flowing upwards and things you won't tell to a priest you reveal to a cabdriver even time is sold out when to the public's "wow" and "shhh" out of a black top hat a tailed magician is pulling new york out by the ears of skyscrapers

I / omen What was going on in the New York American Black/red/green helmeted neon night? The elevator door was closing behind us, we were the ones Plunging floor after floor after floor after floor To the abyss—but it was someone else’s face Staring from the screen out at us, someone else’s face Saying something flashing from the teleprompter: Though what the face said was meant to reassure, Down in the abyss the footage kept playing, All of it looping back like children chanting The answers to nonsensical riddles, taunting A classmate who doesn’t know the question: “Because it’s too far to walk” “Time to get a new fence” “A big red rock eater.” And as the images rewound And the face kept talking, the clear night sky Filled up with smoke and the smoke kept puring Itself out into the air like a voice saying something It can’t stop saying, some murky omen Like schoolkids asking: “Why do birds fly south?” “What time is it when an elephant sits on the fence?” “What’s big, red and eats rocks?” 2 / in front of st. vincent’s A woman hugging another woman Who was weeping blocked the sidewalk. Nobody moved for a moment. They were an island caught at the tide turning: Such misery in two human bodies. Then the wearing away of the crowd Moving flowed over them and they Were pulled swiftly along down the sidewalk. 3 / joke Faces powdered with dust and ash, there they were In the fast food place, raucous and wild, splitting The seams of their work clothes, weary to hysteria As they hunched in their booth next to the buffet Under heat lamps reflecting incarnadine Off pastas and vegetable slag. Then the joke Ignited, they quivered on the launch pad, Laughter closed around them, they couldn’t Breathe, it was as if they were staring out From a space capsule porthole and were asking The void an imponderable riddle While orbiting so high up in space That the earth was less than the least hint Of light piercing the smoke-filled, cloudless night. (What was the joke about? Nobody knew.) And then they stopped laughing and stared into their plates, Ash smearing down their faces as they chewed. 4 / spell spoken by suppliant to helios for knowledge from the Greek Magical Papyri Under my tongue is the mud of the Nile, I wear the baboon hide of sacred Keph. Dressed in the god’s power, I am the god, I am Thouth, discoverer of healing drugs, Founder of letters. As god calls on god I summon you to come to me, you Under the earth; arouse yourself for me, Great daimon, you the subterranean, You of the primordial abyss. Unless you tell me what I want to know, What is in the minds of everyone, Egyptians, Greeks, Syrians, Ethiopians, of every race And people, unless I know what has been And what shall be, unless I know their skills And practices and works and lives and names Of them and their fathers and mothers And brothers and friends, even of those now dead, I will pour the blood of the black-faced jackal As an offering in a new-made jar and put it In the fire and burn beneath it what’s left Of the bones of all-praised Osiris, And I will shout in the port of Busiris The secrets of his mysteries, that his body, Drowned, remained in the river three days And three nights, that he, the praised one, Was carried by the river into the sea And surrounded by wave on wave on wave And by mist rising off water through the air. To keep your belly from being eaten by fish, To keep the fish from chewing your flesh with their mouths, To make the fish close their hungry jaws, to keep The fatherless child from being taken From his mother, to keep the pole of the sky From being brought down and the twin towering Mountains from toppling into one, to keep Anoixis From running amok and doing just what she wants, Not god or goddess will give oracles Until I know through and through Just what is in the minds of all human beings, Egyptians, Syrians, Greeks, Ethyopians, of every race And people, so that those who come to me. Their eyes and mine can meet in a level gaze, Neither one or the other higher or lower, And whether they speak or keep silent, I can tell them whatever has happened And is happening and is going to happen To them, and I can tell them their skills And their works and their names and those of their dead, And of every human being who comes to me I will read them as I read a sealed letter And tell them everything truthfully. 5 / from brooklyn bridge Sun shines on the third bridge tower: A garbage scow ploughs the water, Maternal hull pushing is all out beyond The city, pushing it all out so patiently— All you could hear out there this flawless afternoon Is the sound of sand pulverizing newsprint To tatters, paper-pulp ripping crosswise Or lengthwise, shearing off some photo Of maybe a head or maybe an arm. Ridiculous flimsy noble newspaper, Leaping in wind, fluttering, collapsing, Its columns sway and topple into babble: All you’d see if you were out there Is air vanishing into clearer air. 6 / from the plane Pressed against our seats, them released to air, From the little plane windows we peered four thousand feet Down to the ground desert-gray and still, Nothing seeming to be moving on that perfect afternoon, No reminder of why it was we were all looking, Remembering maybe the oh so flimsy Wooden sawhorse police barricades, as the woman In front of me twisted her head back to see It all again, but up there there was nothing to see, Only the reef water feel of transparency Deepening down to a depth where everything Goes dark and nothing moves unless it belongs To that dark, darting in and out or undulating Slowly or cruising unblinking, jaws open or closed. 7 / spell broken by suppliant to helios for protection from the Greek Magical Papyri This is the charm that will protect you, the charm That you must wear: Onto lime wood write With vermilion the secret name, name of The fifty magic letters. Then say the words: “Guard me from every daimon of the air, On the earth and under the earth, guard me From every angel and phantom, every Ghostly visitation and enchantment, Me, your suppliant.” Enclose it in a skin Dyed purple, hang it round your neck and wear it. 8 / roll of film: photographer missing Vines of smoke through latticework of steel Weave the air into a garden of smoke. And in the garden people came and went, People of smoke and people of flesh, the air dressed In ash. What the pictures couldn’t say Was spoken by the smoke: A common language In a tongue of smoke that murmured in every ear Something about what it was they’d been forced To endure: Words spoken in duress, Inconsolable words, words spoken under the earth That rooted in smoke and breathed in the smoke And put forth shoots that twined through the steel, Words plunged through the roof of the garages’ Voids, I-beams twisted; the eye that saw all this Tells and tells again one part of the story Of that day of wandering through the fatal garden, The camera’s eye open and acutely Recording in the foul-smelling air. 9 / lamentation on ur from a Sumerian spell, 2000 B.C. Like molten bronze and iron shed blood pools. Our country’s dead melt into the earth as grease melts in the sun, men whose helmets now lie scattered, men annihilated by the double-bladed axe. Heavy, beyond help, they lie still as a gazelle exhausted in a trap, muzzle in the dust. In home after home, empty doorways frame the absence of mothers and fathers who vanished in the flames remorselessly spreading claiming even frightened children who lay quiet in their mother’s arms, now borne into oblivion, like swimmers swept out to sea by the surging current. May the great barred gate of blackest night again swing shut on silent hinges. Destroyed in its turn, may this disaster too be torn out of mind.

1 I stare at a faint spinning disc in the black endlessly ready to pounce. 2 I actually say, "I'm so sick of zombies!" 3 Viral relics in the genome? Genes that switch themselves off and on, unthinking but coordinated? 4 Zombie surfeit Half-off zombie. The best zombie imitation. Invisible zombie hand

News from a foreign country came, As if my treasures and my joys lay there; So much it did my heart inflame, ’Twas wont to call my soul into mine ear; Which thither went to meet Th’ approaching sweet, And on the threshold stood To entertain the secret good; It hover’d there As if ’twould leave mine ear, And was so eager to embrace Th’ expected tidings as they came, That it could change its dwelling place To meet the voice of fame. As if new tidings were the things Which did comprise my wished unknown treasure, Or else did bear them on their wings, With so much joy they came, with so much pleasure, My soul stood at the gate To recreate Itself with bliss, and woo Its speedier approach; a fuller view It fain would take, Yet journeys back would make Unto my heart, as if ’twould fain Go out to meet, yet stay within, Fitting a place to entertain And bring the tidings in. What sacred instinct did inspire My soul in childhood with an hope so strong? What secret force mov’d my desire T’ expect my joys beyond the seas, so young? Felicity I knew Was out of view; And being left alone, I thought all happiness was gone From earth; for this I long’d for absent bliss, Deeming that sure beyond the seas, Or else in something near at hand Which I knew not, since nought did please I knew, my bliss did stand. But little did the infant dream That all the treasures of the world were by, And that himself was so the cream And crown of all which round about did lie. Yet thus it was! The gem, The diadem, The ring enclosing all That stood upon this earthen ball; The heav’nly eye, Much wider than the sky, Wherein they all included were; The love, the soul, that was the king Made to possess them, did appear A very little thing.

So today, yet another Guyanese will try to run the border dressed in a dead housewife’s hair—all they’ve recovered since her disappearance in a downtown shopping mall. An “incident,” the paper says. Another “routine occurrence”— wresting my trust from the publicans assigned to keeping us safe, whole. Rather: vow to stay vigilant against the maiming that waits in each landscape, even in this mundane procession of muddy spring days. To see the tenacity of rooted hair for what it is: an illusion as fleeting as courage. To keep the meat between one’s ribs from being torn, to keep the hard marble of the cranium covered with its own skin. To stay vigilant. To watch the signs of violence stirring even in one's own machine. To keep both breasts attached and undiseased. To keep the womb empty; and yet to keep the organs living there from shriveling like uneaten fruit, from turning black and dropping. And not to mistake the danger for a simple matter of whether to put the body on the streets, of walking or of staying home—; there are household cleansers that can scar a woman deeper than a blade or dumdum bullets. The kitchen drawers are full of tools that lie unchaperoned. Even with the doors and windows bolted, in the safety of my bed, I am haunted by the sound of him (her, it, them) stalking the hallway, his long tongue already primed with Pavlovian drool. Or him waiting in the urine-soaked garages of this city's leading department stores, waiting to deliver up the kiss of a gunshot, the blunted kiss of a simple length of pipe. But of course I mean a larger fear: the kiss of amputation, the therapeutic kiss of cobalt. The kiss of a deformed child. Of briefcase efficiency and the forty-hour workweek. Of the tract home: the kiss of automatic garage-door openers that despite the dropped eyelid of their descent do nothing to bar a terror needing no window for entry: it resides within. And where do we turn for protection from our selves? My mother, for example, recommends marriage— to a physician or some other wealthy healer. Of course it’s him, leering from his station behind her shoulder, who’s making her say such things: the witch doctor, headhunter, the corporate shaman, his scalpel drawn & ready, my scalp his ticket out.

I That case-hardened cop. A bull moose in a boghole brought him to a stop. II From his grassy knoll he has you in his crosshairs, the accomplice mole. III The sword once a share. This forest a fresh-faced farm. This stone once a stair. IV The birch crooks her arm, as if somewhat more inclined to welcome the swarm. V He has, you will find, two modes only, the chipmunk: fast-forward; rewind. VI The smell, like a skunk, of coffee about to perk. Thelonius Monk. VII They're the poker work of some sort of woodpecker, these holes in the bark. VIII My new fact checker claims that pilus means "pestle." My old fact checker. IX Those Rose and Thistle. Where the hummingbird drops in to wet his whistle. X Behind the wood bin a garter snake snaps itself, showing us some skin. XI Like most bits of delf, the turtle's seen its best on one's neighbor's shelf. XII Riding two abreast on their stripped-down, souped-up bikes, bears in leather vests. XIII The eye-shaded shrike. BIRD BODIES BURIED IN BOG'S a headline he'll spike. XIV Steady, like a log riding a sawmill's spillway, the steady coydog. XV The cornet he plays was Bolden's, then Beiderbecke's, this lonesome blue jay. XVI Some fresh auto wreck. Slumped over a horn. Sump pool. The frog's neck-braced neck. XVII Brillo pads? Steel wool? The regurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgitations, what, of a long-eared owl? XVIII The jet with the jot. The drive-in screen with the sky. The blood with the blot. XIX How all seems to vie, not just my sleeping laptop with the first firefly.

That night the moon over New Hampshire wore a face I knew in high school of a pudgy boy whose mother was a singer and whose sister was once trapped in a burning building. When she was a girl, my sister and 17 of her classmates could not leave school because the janitor ran amok. The moonlight on the lake glides like Persian slippers wingtipping on the surface of the water. And the road with its arms around the lake is silent and American. In Thai,Sasithon stands for full moon, a name for a woman who once saw a pair of hands on the dashboard of my car. Not hers, but of another who died a violent death. In the whir of static between Top Forty and twang, I listened to the news report of Pol Pot’s capture. And like a man whose bowl of soup has grown too cold to eat, I realized that I had overdriven— missed the road I was supposed to turn into. In a false memory, I look back at the burning building that claimed my classmate’s sister. I see her moonface veiled in blue— blue as a flame of a lit match telling me the road I missed on the map. I could pull over and rest my eyes. I could sleep like an entire race of bones underneath the tall grasses where a man hacks and hacks at something in the heat. Once in a while he might stop to examine the pattern of a tattered fabric suspended on the tip of his machete, and try to remember his wife.

To a Venetian coin, the first Gazetta For its generic title became debtor. Whither excursive Fancy tends thy Flight? Like Eastern Caliph masking thee at night, By Vezier memory attended still, Thou pertly pryest in each domicil. Woe! to the Caitiff then who in his cups, Unconscious with sublimity he sups, Shall vow in Bacchanalian truth or fun Thou art not kindred to the glorious sun! I fear thee not, clandestine ambulator! Thou most sophistical and specious traitor To Truth and Reason, those imperial twins Whose Empire with thy Martyrdom begins. What is thy drift in brandishing a flag, Whose motto is a metamorphosed rag! As by those motley streaks of white and jet, I trace that aboriginal Gazette, The British prototype of ’65 From which all modern journals we derive. At first confined to faction’s revelations, Mere politics, or plodding speculations. Now to a semi-cyclopedia risen Which the assembled arts, delight to dizen. Its grand mosaic ground work ever graced With polished gems of miscellaneous taste. Philosophy his portico regains In columns where profoundest science reigns. While in relief a neighboring sphere discloses Clio’s with Nature’s kind exotic roses. A curious melange of mental food In fragments thus promiscuously strewed; Rising Aeronauts, and sinking funds, Fearful phenomena of stars or suns. Men in the stocks, uneasy as old Kent, Others appalled by fluctuating rent. New ministers to preach, and spirit lamps, Foreign intelligence from Courts and Camps Don-Pedro – and a fresh supply of leeches A ball that blackens, and a wash that bleaches, Here, Hymen’s herald to the world declares When Love triumphant at his shrine appears. There, tenderness bereaved, its tribute brings And Hope’s crushed odours on Death’s altar flings. Advertisements of various commodities, And anecdotes of Irish whims and oddities. Bills of mortality, and Board of Health, A fine green turtle – and a miser’s wealth. The prices current – a cheap hasty pudding, Detected fallacies – and falcon-hooding, Arrivals and departures – births and deaths, A dreadful Storm – and artificial wreaths, One fugitive forsakes the Cotton pod, In terror of the Supervisor’s rod. Another dreading critic castigation, Flies from the fields of rich imagination. Thus from discordant interests Genius hurled The elements that form this typic world.

Moving from Cheer to Joy, from Joy to All, I take a box And add it to my wild rice, my Cornish game hens. The slacked or shorted, basketed, identical Food-gathering flocks Are selves I overlook. Wisdom, said William James, Is learning what to overlook. And I am wise If that is wisdom. Yet somehow, as I buy All from these shelves And the boy takes it to my station wagon, What I’ve become Troubles me even if I shut my eyes. When I was young and miserable and pretty And poor, I’d wish What all girls wish: to have a husband, A house and children. Now that I’m old, my wish Is womanish: That the boy putting groceries in my car See me. It bewilders me he doesn’t see me. For so many years I was good enough to eat: the world looked at me And its mouth watered. How often they have undressed me, The eyes of strangers! And, holding their flesh within my flesh, their vile Imaginings within my imagining, I too have taken The chance of life. Now the boy pats my dog And we start home. Now I am good. The last mistaken, Ecstatic, accidental bliss, the blind Happiness that, bursting, leaves upon the palm Some soap and water— It was so long ago, back in some Gay Twenties, Nineties, I don’t know . . . Today I miss My lovely daughter Away at school, my sons away at school, My husband away at work—I wish for them. The dog, the maid, And I go through the sure unvarying days At home in them. As I look at my life, I am afraid Only that it will change, as I am changing: I am afraid, this morning, of my face. It looks at me From the rear-view mirror, with the eyes I hate, The smile I hate. Its plain, lined look Of gray discovery Repeats to me: “You’re old.” That’s all, I’m old. And yet I’m afraid, as I was at the funeral I went to yesterday. My friend’s cold made-up face, granite among its flowers, Her undressed, operated-on, dressed body Were my face and body. As I think of her and I hear her telling me How young I seem; I am exceptional; I think of all I have. But really no one is exceptional, No one has anything, I’m anybody, I stand beside my grave Confused with my life, that is commonplace and solitary.

One day we’re told to look at the sun through a hole in a cereal box     All there is to be seen is the rest of  the world disappearing     This somehow shadows aliveness but almost everyone who has ever lived is restlessly sleeping as dead For who     About what     The end is near over & over yet we insist on making dates to keep talking Always about the last eclipse the next blood flower buck worm strawberry ice wolf event Then there’s a last constellation we might ever see until there’s something else to look out for Gone are the frightening & gorgeous conspirators that I’m sure I will not see again Traces of sweat & mystery streaks some hells     communion & of course a few awkward goodbyes     The mattress is gone forever like so many of the bodies I’ve worshipped Here we are left with impressions & a recollection of  my side of  the story     I cry w/ one eye all the time but the right one staid defiant What would you read to someone you love if you knew that they were dying If  it’s over again can we share more than black sites & drownings     skin turned confetti     blue turned coal & innards swept down sewers w/ brooms We give way beyond what we know     So the gun in my mouth made me a monster for a while Coming back shoeless calloused me everywhere but the bottoms of feet     Someone dressed like a traitor convinced me there are loyalties that deserve to be broken     Someone w/ death to the klan on the door let me know I already broke free Hear them both     They’re dead & it’s tricky since the decomposed & me are close but here I am w/ you     The friend who is you Impossible almost lover you The us we chose as family you& others in the fullness of  time None of us breed but someone will give birth behind bulletproof glass where life & the divide begin     This is a fabled event packaged as betterment     It will spawn someone who pays to spray us like invasive bugs in the street     Cops were children so we can look forward to good regime/bad regime during future questioning     Thanks for the theater but we’ve seen the play     Civil discourse is broken down in the destruction manual     They can have all the orchestras     Classical music will never drown out the sins What would you write to someone you love if   you thought you might be dying Maybe once I was someone who I’d love to see punched in the face     But I am here & not yet dead so a constellation of the imaginary is no imaginary constellation     There is no sky w/o a dream of sky You who are family   fuck a grid & thanks to you I see brightness independent of state-sponsored power We talk about who threw that brick through the window     & how it’s now part of a path in a garden Broken glass is as old as glass     but the sound is more than fresh wounds     There are fresh worlds still to be heard Oh  &you my friend   I will fight anyone who says you’re not pretty     That is just ridiculous talk     Distant impractical you I believed we could be possible w/ translation software & hearts-for-eyes emojis     No dice but not before I entertained dressing in a tux as your husband     Look I never thought when you said no more haircuts until wars were over that you’d never have short hair again     My beautiful barber brushes my face     I feel funny I moan a weird prayer for peace     I guess it could happen lol     after all we deserve a new start     Soon we’ll be dead & brag about riches     We were here & looked right into the sun