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Invisible fish swim this ghost ocean now described by waves of sand, by water-worn rock. Soon the fish will learn to walk. Then humans will come ashore and paint dreams on the dying stone. Then later, much later, the ocean floor will be punctuated by Chevy trucks, carrying the dreamers’ decendants, who are going to the store.

Life kept rolling her over like a piece of driftwood in the surf of an angry sea she was intelligent and beau- tiful and well-off she made friends easily yet she wasn’t able to put the pieces to- gether into any recognizable shape   she wasn’t sure who she wanted to be   so she ended up being no one in par- ticular   she made herself al- most invisible   she was the person you loved so much who really wasn’t there at all.

Come in, come in. The water’s fine! You can’t get lost here. Even if you want to hide behind a clutch of spiny oysters — I’ll find you. If you ever leave me at night, by boat, you’ll see the arrangement of red-gold sun stars in a sea of milk. And though it’s tempting to visit them — stay. I’ve been trained to gaze up all my life, no matter the rumble on earth, but I learned it’s okay to glance down into the sea. So many lessons bubble up if you know where to look. Clouds of plankton churning in open whale mouths might send you east and chewy urchins will slide you west. Squid know how to be rich when you have ten empty arms. Can you believe there are humans who don’t value the feel of a good bite and embrace at least once a day? Underneath you, narwhals spin upside down while their singular tooth needles you like a compass pointed towards home. If you dive deep enough where imperial volutes and hatchetfish swim, you will find all the colors humans have not yet named, and wide caves of black coral and clamshell. A giant squid finally let itself be captured in a photograph, and the paper nautilus ripple-flashes scarlet and two kinds of violet when it silvers you near. Who knows what will happen next? And if you still want to look up, I hope you see the dark sky as oceanic — boundless, limitless — like all the shades of blue in a glacier. Listen how this planet spins with so much fin, wing, and fur.

Now spring appears, with beauty crowned And all is light and life around, Why comes not Jane? When friendship calls, Why leaves she not Augusta’s walls? Where cooling zephyrs faintly blow, Nor spread the cheering, healthful glow That glides through each awakened vein, As skimming o’er the spacious plain, We look around with joyous eye, And view no boundaries but the sky. Already April’s reign is o’er, Her evening tints delight no more; No more the violet scents the gale, No more the mist o’erspreads the vale; The lovely queen of smiles and tears, Who gave thee birth, no more appears; But blushing May, with brow serene, And vestments of a livelier green, Commands the winged choir to sing, And with wild notes the meadows ring. O come! ere all the train is gone, No more to hail thy twenty-one; That age which higher honour shares, And well become the wreath it wears. From lassitude and cities flee, And breathe the air of heaven, with me.

Come when the nights are bright with stars Or come when the moon is mellow; Come when the sun his golden bars Drops on the hay-field yellow. Come in the twilight soft and gray, Come in the night or come in the day, Come, O love, whene’er you may, And you are welcome, welcome. You are sweet, O Love, dear Love, You are soft as the nesting dove. Come to my heart and bring it to rest As the bird flies home to its welcome nest. Come when my heart is full of grief Or when my heart is merry; Come with the falling of the leaf Or with the redd’ning cherry. Come when the year’s first blossom blows, Come when the summer gleams and glows, Come with the winter’s drifting snows, And you are welcome, welcome.

Tonight, grave sir, both my poor house, and I Do equally desire your company; Not that we think us worthy such a guest, But that your worth will dignify our feast With those that come, whose grace may make that seem Something, which else could hope for no esteem. It is the fair acceptance, sir, creates The entertainment perfect, not the cates. Yet shall you have, to rectify your palate, An olive, capers, or some better salad Ushering the mutton; with a short-legged hen, If we can get her, full of eggs, and then Lemons, and wine for sauce; to these a cony Is not to be despaired of, for our money; And, though fowl now be scarce, yet there are clerks, The sky not falling, think we may have larks. I’ll tell you of more, and lie, so you will come: Of partridge, pheasant, woodcock, of which some May yet be there, and godwit, if we can; Knat, rail, and ruff too. Howsoe’er, my man Shall read a piece of Virgil, Tacitus, Livy, or of some better book to us, Of which we’ll speak our minds, amidst our meat; And I’ll profess no verses to repeat. To this, if ought appear which I not know of, That will the pastry, not my paper, show of. Digestive cheese and fruit there sure will be; But that which most doth take my Muse and me, Is a pure cup of rich Canary wine, Which is the Mermaid’s now, but shall be mine; Of which had Horace, or Anacreon tasted, Their lives, as so their lines, till now had lasted. Tobacco, nectar, or the Thespian spring, Are all but Luther's beer to this I sing. Of this we will sup free, but moderately, And we will have no Pooley, or Parrot by, Nor shall our cups make any guilty men; But, at our parting we will be as when We innocently met. No simple word That shall be uttered at our mirthful board, Shall make us sad next morning or affright The liberty that we’ll enjoy tonight.

Silent, about-to-be-parted-from house. Wood creaking, trying to sigh, impatient. Clicking of squirrel-teeth in the attic. Denuded beds, couches stripped of serapes. Deep snow shall block all entrances and oppress the roof and darken the windows.    O Lares, don’t leave. The house yawns like a bear. Guard its profound dreams for us, that it return to us when we return. November 1969

Señora, it is true the Greeks are dead. It is true also that we here are Americans: That we use the machines: that a sight of the god is unusual: That more people have more thoughts: that there are Progress and science and tractors and revolutions and Marx and the wars more antiseptic and murderous And music in every home: there is also Hoover. Does the lady suggest we should write it out in The Word? Does Madame recall our responsibilities? We are Whores, Fräulein: poets, Fräulein, are persons of Known vocation following troops: they must sleep with Stragglers from either prince and of both views. The rules permit them to further the business of neither. It is also strictly forbidden to mix in maneuvers. Those that infringe are inflated with praise on the plazas— Their bones are resultantly afterwards found under newspapers. Preferring life with the sons to death with the fathers, We also doubt on the record whether the sons Will still be shouting around with the same huzzas— For we hope Lady to live to lie with the youngest. There are only a handful of things a man likes, Generation to generation, hungry or Well fed: the earth’s one: life’s One: Mister Morgan is not one. There is nothing worse for our trade than to be in style. He that goes naked goes further at last than another. Wrap the bard in a flag or a school and they’ll jimmy his Door down and be thick in his bed—for a month: (Who recalls the address now of the Imagists?) But the naked man has always his own nakedness. People remember forever his live limbs. They may drive him out of the camps but one will take him. They may stop his tongue on his teeth with a rope’s argument— He will lie in a house and be warm when they are shaking. Besides, Tovarishch, how to embrace an army? How to take to one’s chamber a million souls? How to conceive in the name of a column of marchers? The things of the poet are done to a man alone As the things of love are done—or of death when he hears the Step withdraw on the stair and the clock tick only. Neither his class nor his kind nor his trade may come near him There where he lies on his left arm and will die, Nor his class nor his kind nor his trade when the blood is jeering And his knee’s in the soft of the bed where his love lies. I remind you, Barinya, the life of the poet is hard— A hardy life with a boot as quick as a fiver: Is it just to demand of us also to bear arms?

My eyes are on yours Looking for my body in the dark pools of your pupils And my mind is in a dark suburban town Where the milkman delivers clanking bottles To the homes of disenchanted Gen Xers. You label me an old soul but I digress. I am the broken bones you find on a beach On your lonely vacation, too worn down to Provide an exact time frame. Ageless. I could have been lying dormant as An existential crisis since the late seventies When you made a suicide pact with the neighbor You would never see again Or preceding the birth of the universe. Buddhists say that there is a source of And path out of suffering. But they do not know, do not say How to save yourself from a cycle of Emotional disconnect, of perpetual floating On the sands of time, How to embrace introspection’s anchor Like a long-lost brother. Untitled, 2014 by Minna Gilligan

Little Tokyo bar— ladies night, smoky gauze balcony, whispering. Tommy Becker, makes up words to “La Bamba”—request by Hard Jackson, mechanic on the left side of Paulie, oldies dancer, glowing with everything inside of her, shattered remembrances, healed in lavender nail polish, the jagged fingernail tapping. So play it hard above this floor, this velvet desert. I want the Titian ochre yeast of winter, keyboard man, fix your eyes on my eyes and tell me, handsome, how long will I live? How many double-fisted desires, crushed letters, will I lift in this terrain? And this rumbling sleeve, this ironed flint of inquisitions and imaginary executors, where shall I strike, what proud stones? Will this fauna open for me, ever, this fuzz, anointed beak inside the bartender’s mirrors, etched doves, a cautious spiral Harley tank, hissing, this Indian bead choker on Rita’s neck? How long shall we remain as wavy reflections, imitators of our own jacket’s frown? Who shall awaken first? Margo Fitzer, the waitress? I will say, Queen Margo, sing to me stoic princess of slavering hearts, three faint lines creased on your satin belly, toss our planet onto your umber lacquer tray, too empty now; make the earth spin its dog rhapsody, erotic through this silvery off-ramp and flake, unfurl. We tumble across this raceway in honey-glazed traces, our arms ahead, the hands flying to Ricky’s Ice Cream Parlour, outside. I want to own one someday, maybe on Thirty-Second Street. You will see me in my gelled waved hair, my busy wrists—so fast, a clown’s resolute gloves, dipping faster than finger painting—except I’d be stirring milk and the chocolate foam of love, churning, burning this sweet spirit, more uncertain, than the celestial sheaths above the prairie frost. See the boy coming, they chide, leaning, how he crosses his legs, his eyes dreaming, sideburns just shaved clean. He weighs the sour slate on his father’s breath; perfume, fortune, cards left on the bleeding table. Milo Wilkens, drummer at the curve, strokes his nipples with his arms as he hits the high hat. Somewhere in the back rooms, I know, a shrine, orange sponge cushions, two toilets and a wire wound wicker box, to leave flowers, occasional offerings by the Johnson County dudes, detasselers in jersey ties. Talk no more, enjoy. Darling singer, let your starry blouse sway me, steal this fresh peach half from its amber juice; I want the moon in this nectar, too. The flashing cymbals, feverish. Who can strike a votive candle, love, or sleep in this electronic night? Just listen to the two-part harmony, laughter, peeling beyond the cemetery, beyond the Iowa river—where the spike hat rooster bristles his tiny ears, bows his head, and sips from the dark canister under the carved pearl-stone. And then, returns. Let us drink, salute the bright spokes of meal, the dying wands of river blossoms, grandmother’s sacred hair; listen, her soprano owl, her bluish melody, so thin. Another glass please, we shall dance once again, our eyebrows smearing against each other’s cheekbones, loud with a Midwest sweat, a cantata from the crosshatch amp, click it. Click it, for wild kind rain, forgiving seasons, for the blushed bread of our shoulders and thighs, this night, everyone is here. Even Jeff Yoder came all the way from Illinois, to fill a bucket with passion, ruffled, thick. O sax player with a jail needle tattoo, leap onto this wet pavement, call my lonesome tempest heart, its buried mother’s kiss, bless us in staccato, with quivers of oak branch greenness, and sparrow longings riff over this brutal sky, give us your bell filled, conjure your tropic, our lover’s breath. Blues bar dancers, jangling gold popcorn, chord makers, opal-eyed Suzie in a flannel shirt; we beckon the spark, the flaring this lost body to live.