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And then when you stand where it is quiet so that you notice when thought ends and listening begins when listening ends and seeing begins when a bird flies when you glide as a black bird and scream when you start to speak in the clear air and can speak of nothing but the light as if it were the first light when you cast a shadow on the rock and say my shadow stays and the rock passes away when at this moment it is true that it is good to attempt the entire mission you can call the desert by its name Translated from the German

Dying, Dad wanted sunscreen. Nonstop. Frantic if withheld. Would say screen, and we just did it. Knew he was dying. Was angry. In last weeks wore red sleepmask over eyes day and night. Would ride it up onto his forehead for brief intervals, then down, pulled by hand that still worked. A bit. Sometimes shaking too much so just cried eyes. Cried now now. Once cried out light— more like a hiss — was there for that. Yanked it quick. Needed it so badly, the bandage, the world is a short place, wanted the illustration of it gone, wanted to not see out, wanted no out. But I am guessing. The vineyards down the slope, each latent bud beginning to plump. In the distance, mountains. Beyond sea. All of it distraction, but from what. A waste of what. The red sleepmask. I should have burned it with the rest but kept it. The pane made trees look painted on. Silky. Not good silky. In the next valley once, hammering. Thought it human at first. The woodpeckers went on for days. A carnival of searching for void. How full void is. Small tufts of grass growing so that I can keep track.Taking root is not an easy way to go about finding a place to stay

I found me in a great surging space, At either end a door, And I said: "What is this giddying place, With no firm-fixéd floor, That I knew not of before?" "It is Life," said a mask-clad face. I asked: "But how do I come here, Who never wished to come; Can the light and air be made more clear, The floor more quietsome, And the doors set wide? They numb Fast-locked, and fill with fear." The mask put on a bleak smile then, And said, "O vassal-wight, There once complained a goosequill pen To the scribe of the Infinite Of the words it had to write Because they were past its ken."

Yes, but beyond happiness what is there? The question has not yet been answered. No great quotations have issued forth From there, we have no still photographs Full of men in fine leather hiking boots, Women with new-cut walking sticks. So yes, it is the realm of thin tigers Prowling, out to earn even more stripes; It is the smell of seven or eight perfumes Not currently available in America. Maybe this is wrong, of course. The place may after all be populated, Or over-populated, with dented trash cans In the streets and news of genital herpes In every smart article in every slick magazine Everywhere in the place. But everybody there smiles— Laughs, even, every time a breath can be caught. This is all true. Beyond happiness, it’s all the same, Things come back to where we are now. Of course maybe this is wrong, But don’t believe it: a happiness exists, All right, I have seen it for myself, Touched it, touched the woman Who with her daughter together keep Ammonia in Mason jars by the side window. They will throw it all in his face God Damn him if he ever comes close again.

We fought in Salem, as she nosed the rented car through streets that stubbornly refused to match the squiggled lines accordioning from my lap. She pressed me for direction as I spun the folding paper like a compass point, urged me for instruction as I traced the lines like Braille, my fingers blinded, tapping out the spell of history; I could not navigate this town. How could I explain the pall of Salem? There’s not an inch on Earth that isn't steeped in blood— corpses pushing up the cobblestones in every town, and the buildings that blunt the sky are girdered in bone. One could travel anywhere and feel that chill, the hovering of ghosts above the landscape, the past’s damp breath against the ear. This town, though, descended like a shroud upon my holiday; Salem, its rectilinearity compressed the ribbon of my spine and sealed my thighs like doorways to a crypt; Salem, its somber abnegation, grimmest reprobation sought to suck me to a hollow shell through which the vengeful cries of God then could be heard. My lover, steering wheel in hand, stared into narrow streets with the eyes of a dark bird. “Which way,” she cawed, “which way?” But mine glowed with the blankness of a woman swaying from a noose, clothing asunder, curses drowning in an airless throat, spirit driven from its home; it circled now above our heads. The useless atlas crumpled at my feet, it could not lead me to a place where threat did not bear down like heavy stones; we fought in Salem.

Chorus rumbles constant throughout night storied roots curl around obsidian arrowhead dissolved into shaft groove you unbuckle the stems from your leg Coda’s systemic sameness & design monsoon shovels clay onto hand pushes up arm, pericardial shift dams its build you prostrate in an office chair Massacre song foundation roll fields hypoxic grasses scribe a hill slope horripilation a pronghorn horns the air stirs skin cells Unpeel bison hide bundle piece stem into its chamber pillar a room with red cedar smoke Confusion forms to recall its palms air push different if not warranted you hear only past reflections bounce off the keystone surface: a beast skips on a butte thrown across a wheeling prairie oak shadow outline casts to your interior walls angled from captured leaf veins Unmoved trailer homes center scene cottonwoods bend your head you thumb forward then walk

In a visually spectacular dream some years back, I took Paul Klee’s posthumous class in poetry and painting. What luck to be swept with the elect across the ocean that night to environs that could only be by Klee.Klee? you protest.Surely the dreamer is everyone in her dream.

To wave from the porch To let go of the grudge To disrobe To recall Ethel Rosenberg’s green polka-dotted dress To call your father and say I’d forgotten how nice everyone in these red states can be To hear him say Yes, long as you don’t move in next door To recall every drawn curtain in the apartments you have lived To find yourself at 33 at a vast expanse with nary a papyrus of 
guidance, with nary a voice, a muse, a model To finally admit out loud then I want to go home To have a dinner party of intellectuals with a bell, long-armed, lightly-tongued, at each setting To sport your dun gown To revel in face serums To be a well-calibrated burn victim to fight the signs of aging To assure financial health To be lavender sachets and cedar lining and all the ways the rich might hide their rot To eye the master’s bone china To pour diuretic in his coffee and think this erosive to the state To disrobe when the agent asks you to To find a spot on any wall to stare into To develop the ability to leave an entire nation thusly, just by staring at a spot on the wall, as the lead-vested agent names article by article what to remove To do this in order to do the other thing, the wild thing To say this is my filmdom, The Master’s House, and I gaze upon it and it is good To discuss desalinization plants and de terroir To date briefly a banker, a lapsed Marxist, and hear him on the phone speaking in billions of dollars, its residue over the clear bulbs of his eyes, as he turns to look upon your nudity To fantasize publishing a poem in the New Yorker eviscerating his little need To set a bell at each intellectual’s table setting ringing idea after idea, and be the simple-footed help, rushing to say Yes? To disrobe when the agent asks you to To find a spot on any wall to stare into To develop the ability to leave an entire nation thusly, just by staring at a spot on the wall To say this is my filmdom, The Master’s House To recall the Settler who from behind his mobile phone said I’m filming you for God To recall this sad God, God of the mobile phone camera, God of the small black globe and pixelated eye above the blackjack table at Harrah’s and the metal, toothed pit of Qalandia checkpoint the same To recall the Texan that held the shotgun to your father’s chest, sending him falling backward, pleading, and the words came to him in Farsi To be jealous of this, his most desperate language To lament the fact of your lamentations in English, English being your first defeat To finally admit out loud then I want to go home To stand outside your grandmother’s house To know, for example, that in Farsi the present perfect is called the 
relational past, and is used at times to describe a historic event whose effect is still relevant today, transcending the past To say, for example,Shah dictator bude-ast translates to The Shah was a dictator, but more literally to The Shah is was a dictator To have a tense of is-was, the residue of it over the clear bulb of your eyes To walk cemetery after cemetery in these States and nary a gravestone reading Solmaz To know no nation will be home until one does To do this in order to do the other thing, the wild thing, though you’ve forgotten what it was

The time of breathing into clasped hands hovering over a lighter to make a flame not knowing that an angry man threw his eyes into the night the belly of his shattered father weeping rain for separation of earth and sky harvesting bitter grudges from minds like hardened soil packing up the wounds with mud and whiskey and opening doors to wait for those curious to know how sky maps granted our existence how the weight of earth pushed against tongues of oars and our tīpuna pushed back and won.

After BIGBANG’s “Fantastic Baby” Matarose never comes home She’s hungry like a wolf She’s rosa de mota in lacroix all the girls hail on queens boulevard All the views she’s killed in the name of iman & yasmin le bon Mata’s quite meta Mata means kill Rose a curve from the real meat of it all She’s part my little pony into bronies she has loved & loved not by astro-pony compatibility chart She’s the queerest part of me What’s left after the clubs close & has yet to go home she never goes when she writes I always write in bed just woofed down a 3 musketeers                          mata’s on a mission which is to say I’m my most           queer my most mata- rose when she & I don’t need all the girls in the yard don’t need all the girls in the yard by which I mean the one who’s not the one whose blocked texts & torn up wish you wells flicker still      That riddle get you killed kind of a woman for whom matarose almost cut off a foot Went to the end of twobuck ghosting rails My man is a little afraid of mata            he accepts her tho Lets her come & go because I stay I am always with him because mata just wants every 7 train to dissolve into g-dragon sound wants you to howl boom mata mata boom mata mata wow g-mata dragonrose The most pony of them all g-mata 7 dragontrainrose Don’t wait up Never last stop never comes boom mata mata boom mata mata home