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1. Here, shooting stars linger They give out A sparkling trail like a cauterized incision Silver, or amber If the moon is low and rising red 2. And the rain melts the roads And the roads Can rupture a spleen Or oust a kidney stone As for the heart It needs a beginning The narrative Burden of events 3. “Mize, zey eat mize” The Frenchman exclaimed with a smile “Rraized and shipped from za States” We raise rats! I thought That’s a lot of protein! “Maize maize!” it was, after our chickens Have had their fill 4. She was the only nurse in town before the war She spoke seven languages and died suddenly He was a merchant He’s a doorman now and buys us cigarettes 5. Here we are with love pouring out of every orifice Here they are dancing Around the funeral pyre, the corpse in absentia 6. One of the drivers ran over the neighbor’s ducks The neighbor demanded compensation For the post-traumatic stress disorder he accurately anticipates Do you know what it’s like To drive on roads occupied By animal farms: you cannot tell Who killed who or how Many ducks were there to begin with 7. In the morning, elephant grass moves the way Mist is visible in the breeze but doesn’t dampen the skin 8. Today, I yelled at three old women Who wouldn’t stop bargaining for pills they didn’t need One wanted extra For her grandson who came along for the ride 9. Like lip sores The asphalt blisters in the rain And the boys Fill the holes with dirt and gravel And broken green branches Then wait: No windex. No flowers or newspapers And gratuity is appreciated 10. “I have ants in my leg” And “My leg went to sleep” Are not the same thing! The French argue There is no sleep in a tingling numbness The symptom of sluggish blood: I agree. Me too my leg has been anted And we are learning to reconcile The dark with the electric 11. Four days the river runs to the border Nine days to learn it wasn’t the shape Of your nose that gave you away And debts are paid off in a-shelter-for-a-day A pile of wood plus change in your pocket Is a sack of potatoes and change in another’s 12. No more running long or short distance The old women Snicker at me when I pass them by 13. She was comatose post-partum And the beekeeper Bathed her in love everyday When she recovered I gave up What he’d promised me for the woman Who took up nursing their newborn Since as coincidence would have it Her name was Om Assel— Mother of Honey 14. The translation of a medical interview Is not a poem to be written Come recite a verse from childhood with me I see you’re unable to weep, does love Have no command over you? The sea’s like the desert Neither quenches the thirst 15. Here, dry grass burns the moon Here, a clearing of grass is a clearing of snakes 16. And the rain has already been cleansed from the sky The clinic is empty, soon The earth will unseal like a jar Harvest is the season that fills the belly 17. Here, I ride my bicycle invisible Except for a crescent shadow and the Milky Way Is already past 18. And a mirror gives the moon back to the moon Home is an epilogue: Which came first Memory or words?

So why assume [she] Is cold why not Assume drunk “Legless” Can keep up pretty good though With your car in the rural night You are a passenger Your left leg lolls and Your friend reaches a hand Across the emergency brake Which points now at the base of The gearstick shaft And can point at its head But nowhere else Thus does not “Speak” And unless overused abused is Reliable Whereas anyone can misunderstand Or willfully misinterpret the Point and represent Are very different (Moon!) 6am and the snow Sent enough light upward For this window to Transmit and permit My seeing I heard more than I saw I understood less than I heard I was well read compared to But not compared to I begin to feel warm in My crotch, as if a wodge Of moist electric blanket Were stuck in there And my friend was not Riding on the other side of the brake —I mean emergency—he is not Fox-hunting and on A horse in a novel In which the brake Is a strip of greenwood He is downstairs  the coffee’s Made  but he ignores My text   He works alone And I will have to go down there

The Moon is distant from the Sea – And yet, with Amber Hands – She leads Him – docile as a Boy – Along appointed Sands – He never misses a Degree – Obedient to Her eye – He comes just so far – toward the Town – Just so far – goes away – Oh, Signor, Thine, the Amber Hand – And mine – the distant Sea – Obedient to the least command Thine eye impose on me –

I was so worried the hickory I recognized had died from salt burn in the last hurricane I may have passed by vervain and apple haw like they didn’t matter, but this spring it put out seven shoots from its base. Still, the oldest trick is the moon missing, then the “new” moon appears, though we know it’s the old one, and we pretend to be taken in like the mother or baby behind the bath towel. Really it’s the moon winking, being the stone that holds stones and now footprints. And when I tell Frances, I see she is a moon motionless in the doorway, skin reflecting a lamp, a face that awakens on paper.

When you walked in it was like recognizing the moon when he returns. His lover bites his cheek; she has no choice. All we see is the dissolution, then await the reconstruction. Each time, the sky yanks her into his orbit. I want to say I’m sorry. I want to say You win.Our bodies are like the confessional booth these poems are stuck in. Even the priest can see that sin. You’ll be all spit and honey— or maybe I’m the poisoned flower gnawing on its own lip because it has no hands to reach for you. Only words that are as useless as the pollen for saying anything. I continue to serve them even with your hands around my throat from across the room. Your voice is home, I answer it like a bat guided across the atmosphere. This is a narrative that cannot end well but wants to, but must. I’ll continue to go down kicking and you’ll be sweet as anything until you bite back. No, it can’t end here—we won’t let it. Billions of years have passed since an asteroid last hit the moon: clearly some magnetic fields can be sustained.

Milly Sorensen, January 16, 1922 - February 19, 2004 It was the moonflowers that surprised us. Early summer we noticed the soft gray foliage. She asked for seedpods every year but I never saw them in her garden. Never knew what she did with them. Exotic and tropical, not like her other flowers. I expected her to throw them in the pasture maybe, a gift to the coyotes. Huge, platterlike white flowers shining in the night to soften their plaintive howling. A sound I love; a reminder, even on the darkest night, that manicured lawns don't surround me. Midsummer they shot up, filled the small place by the back door, sprawled over sidewalks, refused to be ignored. Gaudy and awkward by day, by night they were huge, soft, luminous. Only this year, this year of her death did they break free of their huge, prickly husks and brighten the darkness she left.

Your soul is like a landscape fantasy, Where masks and Bergamasks, in charming wise, Strum lutes and dance, just a bit sad to be Hidden beneath their fanciful disguise. Singing in minor mode of life’s largesse And all-victorious love, they yet seem quite Reluctant to believe their happiness, And their song mingles with the pale moonlight, The calm, pale moonlight, whose sad beauty, beaming, Sets the birds softly dreaming in the trees, And makes the marbled fountains, gushing, streaming— Slender jet-fountains—sob their ecstasies.

Called out of dream by the pitch and screech, I awoke to see my mother’s hair set free of its pincurls, springing out into the still and hurtling air above the front seat and just as suddenly gone. The space around us twisted, and in the instant before the crash I heard the bubbling of the chickens, the homely racket they make at all speeds, signifying calm, resignation, oblivion. And I listened. All through the slash and clatter, the rake of steel, shatter of glass, I listened, and what came was a blizzard moan in the wind, a wail of wreckage, severed hoses and lives, a storm of loose feathers, and in the final whirl approximating calm, the cluck and fracas of the birds. I crawled on hands and knees where a window should have been and rose uneven in November dusk. Wind blew a snow of down, and rows of it quivered along the shoulder. One thin stream of blood oozed, flocked in feathers. This was in the Ozarks, on a road curving miles around Missouri, and as far as I could see, no light flickered through the timber, no mail box leaned the flag of itself toward pavement, no cars seemed ever likely to come along. So I walked, circled the darkening disaster my life had come to, and cried. I cried for my family there, knotted in the snarl of metal and glass; for the farmer, looking dead, half in and half out of his windshield; and for myself, ambling barefoot through the jeweled debris, glass slitting little blood-stars in my soles, my arm hung loose at the elbow and whispering its prophecies of pain. Around and around the tilted car and the steaming truck, around the heap of exploded crates, the smears and small hunks of chicken and straw. Through an hour of loneliness and fear I walked, in the almost black of Ozark night, the moon just now burning into Missouri. Behind me, the chickens followed my lead, some fully upright, pecking the dim pavement for suet or seed, some half-hobbled by their wounds, worthless wings fluttering in the effort. The faintest light turned their feathers phosphorescent, and as I watched they came on, as though they believed me some savior, some highwayman or commando come to save them the last night of their clucking lives. This, they must have believed, was the end they’d always heard of, this the rendering more efficient than the axe, the execution more anonymous than a wringing arm. I walked on, no longer crying, and soon the amiable and distracted chattering came again, a sound like chuckling, or the backward suck of hard laughter. And we walked to the cadence their clucking called, a small boy towing a cloud around a scene of death, coming round and round like a dream, or a mountain road, like a pincurl, like pulse, like life.

That night the moon rose in the window. Its light touched the pane and spread over the floor. The girls climbed out of their beds and gathered in the glow, where their hands came alive. Their chatter filled their chests with such gladness it flowed out past the sentry girl at the door and down the corridor until it struck the matron’s ears. She rocked forward, enraged, and thundered up the corridor. The sentry girl gave the alarm. They flew for their beds. The matron burst in. Her arm swung and connected. A girl dropped. The hand of the moon went to the girl, tapping her on the shoulder, tapping to no avail. It withdrew, gliding back to the window and out. When the sun came up, its blaze seething into the floor, the girls gathered again at the window. They watched as the gardener dug a hole. His shovel thrust firmly in the ground, he lifted a covered figure and let drop. Its arms were crossed as it tumbled to the bottom. The gardener grimaced and covered the hole. That night the moon rose in the window. Its light touched the pane and spread over the floor. The girls climbed out of their beds and gathered in the glow, where their hands came alive. Translated from the American Sign Language

This is what I see: a grain of wheat in the hand of a small boy barefoot on the unnamed roads, sleeping in the dream another is having. An oud, a violin, a guitar, a mirror of dew, a man about to undress, a woman staring. A traveler returning everywhere and forgetfulness stealing from itself. Maktoub, the Moor says, we hold clouds in our mouth and imagine God in our breath.