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In the backyard of our house on Norwood, there were five hundred steel cages lined up, each with a wooden box roofed with tar paper; inside, two stories, with straw for a bed. Sometimes the minks would pace back and forth wildly, looking for a way out; or else they’d hide in their wooden houses, even when we’d put the offering of raw horse meat on their trays, as if they knew they were beautiful and wanted to deprive us. In spring the placid kits drank with glazed eyes. Sometimes the mothers would go mad and snap their necks. My uncle would lift the roof like a god who might lift our roof, look down on us and take us out to safety. Sometimes one would escape. He would go down on his hands and knees, aiming a flashlight like a bullet of light, hoping to catch the orange gold of its eyes. He wore huge boots, gloves so thick their little teeth couldn’t bite through. “They’re wild,” he’d say. “Never trust them.” Each afternoon when I put the scoop of raw meat rich with eggs and vitamins on their trays, I’d call to each a greeting. Their small thin faces would follow as if slightly curious. In fall they went out in a van, returning sorted, matched, their skins hanging down on huge metal hangers, pinned by their mouths. My uncle would take them out when company came and drape them over his arm—the sweetest cargo. He’d blow down the pelts softly and the hairs would part for his breath and show the shining underlife which, like the shining of the soul, gives us each character and beauty.

Under Mirabeau Bridge the river slips away And lovers Must I be reminded Joy came always after pain The night is a clock chiming The days go by not I We're face to face and hand in hand While under the bridges Of embrace expire Eternal tired tidal eyes The night is a clock chiming The days go by not I Love elapses like the river Love goes by Poor life is indolent And expectation always violent The night is a clock chiming The days go by not I The days and equally the weeks elapse The past remains the past Love remains lost Under Mirabeau Bridge the river slips away The night is a clock chiming The days go by not I

"We will gather images and images of images up till the last, which is blank. This one we will agree on." - Reb Carasso Mardohai Simhon claimed the silk scarf he wore around his neck was a mirror. "Look," he said, "my head is separated from my body by a scarf. Who dares give me the life if I say I walk with a knotted mirror under my chin? "The scarf reflects a face, and you think it is of flesh. "Night is the mirror. Day the scarf. Moon and sun reflected features. But my true face, brothers, where did I lose it?" At his death, a large scar was discovered on his neck. The meaning of this anecdote was discussed by the rabbis. Reb Alphandery, in his authority as the oldest, spoke first. "A double mirror," he said, "separates us from the Lord so that God sees Himself when trying to see us, and we, when trying to see Him, see only our own face." "Is appearance no more than the reflections thrown back and forth by a set of mirrors?" asked Reb Ephraim. "You are no doubt alluding to the soul, Reb Alphandery, in which we see ourselves mirrored. But the body is the place of the soul, just as the mountain is the bed of the brook. The body has broken the mirror." "The brook," continued Reb Alphandery, "sleeps on the summit. The brook's dream is of water, as is the brook. It flows for us. Our dreams extend us. "Do you not remember this phrase of Reb Alsem's: 'We live out the dream of creation, which is God's dream. In the evening our own dreams snuggle down into it like sparrows in their nests.' "And did not Reb Hames write: 'Birds of night, my dreams explore the immense dream of the sleeping universe.'" "Are dreams the limpid discourse between the facets of a crystal block?" continued Reb Ephraim. "The world is of glass. You know it by its brilliance, night or day." "The earth turns in a mirror. The earth turns in a scarf," replied Reb Alphandery. "The scarf of a dandy with a nasty scar," said Reb Ephraim. ("Words are inside breath, as the earth is inside time." - Reb Mares) And Yukel said: "The bundle of the Wandering Jew contains the earth and more than one star." "Whatever contains is itself contained," said Reb Mawas. The story I told you, as well as the commentaries it inspired, will be recorded in the book of the eye. The ladder urges us beyond ourselves. Hence its importance. But in a void, where do we place it? ("God is sculpted." - Reb Moyal)

My notebook has remained blank for months thanks to the light you shower around me. I have no use for my pen, which lies languorously without grief. Nothing is better than to live a storyless life that needs no writing for meaning— when I am gone, let others say they lost a happy man, though no one can tell how happy I was.

Someone once asked me, what are the words I do not yet have — .... .... .... verbs that will story our bodies into something more than missing, more than squaw or lost, beyond statistics: 1 in 3 Native women will be raped in her lifetime. Daily ritual: my hands search and sift through layers of tiny earthquakes, shifted verdicts not guilty not enough evidence not prosecutable not our jurisdiction I dig. Native women are 2.5 times more likely to be sexually assaulted compared to all other races. I dig. We are vanishing lines in history books, treaties; laws do not protect us. I dig until mud and earth find home underneath my fingernails. I’ll plant something new in the absence burn vanish underreport Invisible, our ghosts starve, while the rest of the world keeps on eating. A recent government study found that there were14federal human trafficking investigations in Indian Country between2013and 2016. During that same period theFBIinvestigated 6,100 elsewhere. Let us poem a place where you cannot erase us into white space. .... .... .... Let us dig to remind ourselves our roots are ancestral and there is nothing deeper than these sacred, dirt-covered hands.

No reverie begs “light” in the blind eye. Reverie says: dig this depth-of-blank Deeper. Dig deeper With the Whale below the white-capped waves— A twitch of his tail, a twitch of his white tail Birthed from ocean-bed the wave That broke calm water into each cracked plank Of the harpooner’s boat, made that man sway, And cast him on the spear his arm meant to cast At you. Beneath the sun’s evil weight Men burn nightwards but never darken Past night. There’s always the moon’s hook On still water to deny them. But Whale, you dive down Until the ocean’s ground begs you solid, “Stop.” Whale, you do not stop. You beat your head against the jagged rocks. Blind in depths so dark light itself is blind, You knock your head against the rocks to see And scratch the god-itch from your thoughts. Flame is jealous of flame, once lit, it ever Reaches higher. You wait, match-tip, White Whale. I see how you wait in silence for silence To say:write it in, tell me who I am now.

in the shooter’s face, she recognizes her sibling’s coarse unforgiving hair, his yellow skin, & vacant stare, the year her brother broke down, she was still in high school, seventeen — w/ a taste for cutting not class but hands & arms any outlet to escape this “community” denies illness, a family reacts — against crying out loud let it be some other Asian in the shooter’s face, I recognize my sibling’s coarse unforgiving hair, his yellow skin, & vacant stare, the year my brother broke down, I was still in high school, seventeen — w/ a taste for cutting not class but hands & arms any outlet to escape this “community” denies illness, a family reacts — against crying out loud let it be some other Asian

It ended, and the morrow brought the task. Her eyes were guilty gates, that let him in By shutting all too zealous for their sin: Each sucked a secret, and each wore a mask. But, oh, the bitter taste her beauty had! He sickened as at breath of poison-flowers: A languid humour stole among the hours, And if their smiles encountered, he went mad, And raged deep inward, till the light was brown Before his vision, and the world, forgot, Looked wicked as some old dull murder-spot. A star with lurid beams, she seemed to crown The pit of infamy: and then again He fainted on his vengefulness, and strove To ape the magnanimity of love, And smote himself, a shuddering heap of pain.

In our old shipwrecked days there was an hour, When in the firelight steadily aglow, Joined slackly, we beheld the red chasm grow Among the clicking coals. Our library-bower That eve was left to us: and hushed we sat As lovers to whom Time is whispering. From sudden-opened doors we heard them sing: The nodding elders mixed good wine with chat. Well knew we that Life's greatest treasure lay With us, and of it was our talk. "Ah, yes! Love dies!" I said: I never thought it less. She yearned to me that sentence to unsay. Then when the fire domed blackening, I found Her cheek was salt against my kiss, and swift Up the sharp scale of sobs her breast did lift:— Now am I haunted by that taste! that sound!

I am not of those miserable males Who sniff at vice and, daring not to snap, Do therefore hope for heaven. I take the hap Of all my deeds. The wind that fills my sails Propels; but I am helmsman. Am I wrecked, I know the devil has sufficient weight To bear: I lay it not on him, or fate. Besides, he's damned. That man I do suspect A coward, who would burden the poor deuce With what ensues from his own slipperiness. I have just found a wanton-scented tress In an old desk, dusty for lack of use. Of days and nights it is demonstrative, That, like some aged star, gleam luridly. If for those times I must ask charity, Have I not any charity to give?