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your black inscriptions cite a kino lau, whose feathered wingspan, nighttime eyes & pun- ishing beak comprise mo‘okū‘auhau. w/my oiled hands, I greet her, w/hun- gering for mo‘opuna. “mai,” she says, reciting from your thigh. “mai, mai e ‘ai.” I have traveled from Maui a lizard, mes- merized by dreams of ‘ōhi‘a & ai- kāne, lizard filled w/smoke. arrived, I eat transforming in the forest of your grand- mother’s memory: from lizard: woman dreaming: licking tattoo: permission land: skin. traveling the night of your kino to sleep your thighs, ho‘āo, ho‘āo, and wake.

Two sets of family stories, one long and detailed, about many centuries of island ancestors, all living on the same tropical farm... The other side of the family tells stories that are brief and vague, about violence in the Ukraine, which Dad's parents had to flee forever, leaving all their loved ones behind. They don't even know if anyone survived. When Mami tells her flowery tales of Cuba, she fills the twining words with relatives. But when I ask my Ukrainian-Jewish-American grandma about her childhood in a village near snowy Kiev, all she reveals is a single memory of ice-skating on a frozen pond. Apparently, the length of a grown-up's growing-up story is determined by the difference between immigration and escape.

He slips on ice near a mailbox — no gemsbok leaps across the road — a singer tapped an eagle feather on his shoulders — women washed indigo-dyed yarn in this river, but today gallium and germanium particles are washed downstream — once they dynamited dikes to slow advancing troops — picking psilocybin mushrooms and hearing cowbells in the mist — as a child, he was tied to a sheep and escaped marauding soldiers — an apple blossom opens to five petals — as he hikes up a switchback, he remembers undressing her — from the train window, he saw they were on ladders cutting fruit off cacti — in the desert, a crater of radioactive glass — assembling shards, he starts to repair a gray bowl with gold lacquer — they ate psilocybin mushrooms, gazed at the pond, undressed — hunting a turkey in the brush, he stops — from the ponderosa pines:whoo-ah, whoo whoo whoo—

Kissing your lips I try to forget roses or the fruit of palmyra trees sweet and strong Tongue lolling upon tongue heart beating against heart beating, these are my words signifying our human bodies which poetry does not capture, the absolute desire I have to kiss your lips on this hot and sunny afternoon. I do not know how much longer I can walk about the garden kissing roses, or perambulate the toddy tavern of my dreams where black faces and white toddy mix in black and white memories of Jaffna, Sri Lanka, my Tamil countrymen far away on an island across the sea. Far away and far away the palmyra fruit and your lips. To drink toddy now. To kiss your rosy lips now. To uproot the roses in my garden and offer them upon my tongue now. To fly to Sri Lanka and grab the last fruit on the tree before history throws the Tamils into the sea as is said it will do; before all this and everything else, before the apocalypse, I do so sincerely wish, though my words may not fit, to rest my head in your hair and kiss your lips.

A kiss on the forehead—erases misery. I kiss your forehead. A kiss on the eyes—lifts sleeplessness. I kiss your eyes. A kiss on the lips—is a drink of water. I kiss your lips. A kiss on the forehead—erases memory. 1917

By freezing passion at its blossoming perhaps Rodin knew he challenged Sophocles who said as lover you want ice to be ice yet not melt in your hands. How stone, implying permanence, might let us believe, a moment, the seated figures are beyond the leaf that cannot keep from letting go the branch, beyond even stupidly purpling grapes that do not understand the process by which they darken; darken nevertheless.

That kiss I failed to give you. How can you forgive me? The kiss I would have spent on you is still There, within me. It will probably die there. But it will be the last of me to die.

To these I turn, in these I trust— Brother Lead and Sister Steel. To his blind power I make appeal, I guard her beauty clean from rust. He spins and burns and loves the air, And splits a skull to win my praise; But up the nobly marching days She glitters naked, cold and fair. Sweet Sister, grant your soldier this: That in good fury he may feel The body where he sets his heel Quail from your downward darting kiss.

Are you shaken, are you stirred By a whisper of love, Spellbound to a word Does Time cease to move, Till her calm grey eye Expands to a sky And the clouds of her hair Like storms go by? Then the lips that you have kissed Turn to frost and fire, And a white-steaming mist Obscures desire: So back to their birth Fade water, air, earth, And the First Power moves Over void and dearth. Is that Love? no, but Death, A passion, a shout, The deep in-breath, The breath roaring out, And once that is flown, You must lie alone, Without hope, without life, Poor flesh, sad bone.

As in,in the, of course. The body knew the drill by now. Was are we there yet and then never been so, then so long. Heart tied with twine, with shorthairs, trip wires—whispered that bind. Drew the short straw, scared herself apart to spit-sweet shards and into time that counted backwards from two lips ago. Said done is done and is between me and those teeth