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It was when they determined that I had been born dead That my life became easier to understand. For a long time, I wondered why rooms felt colder when I entered them, Why nothing I said seemed to stick in anyone’s ear, Frankly, why I never had any money. I wondered Why the cities I walked through drifted into cloud Even as I admired their architecture, as I pointed out The cornerstones marked “1820,” “1950.” The only songs I ever loved were filled with scratch, dispatches from A time when dead ones like me were a dime a dozen. I spent my life in hotels: some looked like mansions, Some more like trailer parks, or pathways toward A future I tried to point to, but how could I point, With nothing but a hand no hand ever matched, With fingers that melted into words that no one read. I rehearsed names that others taught me: Caravaggio, Robert Brandom, Judith, Amber, Emmanuelle Cat. I got hungry the way only the dead get hungry, The hunger that launches a thousand dirty wars, But I never took part in the wars, because no one lets A dead man into their covert discussions. So I drifted from loft to cellar, ageless like a ghost, And America became my compass, and Europe became The way that dead folks talk, in short, who cares, There’s nothing to say because nobody listens, There’s no radio for the dead and the pillows seem Like sand. Let me explain: when you’re alive, As I understand it, pillows cushion the head, the way A lover might soothe the heart. The way it works for me, In contrast, is everything is sand. Beds are sand, The women I profess to love are sand, the sound of music In the darkest night is sand, and whatever I have to say Is sand. This is not, for example, a political poem, Because the dead have no politics. They might have A hunger, but nothing you’ve ever known Could begin to assuage it.

Griffith Park, Los Angeles Every living heart . . . all over this broad land, will yet swell . . . , when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature. —Abraham Lincoln Because the body now and its organs suggest nothing but those pathologies in which we’ve been instructed, Because the gutter’s black as new blood, a Petri dish of piss and teeth knocked loose at the root, Because our walking here’s scared up pigeons and the air’s thick with their disease, because, therefore, we’re holding Our breath in silent prayer, Good People of Los Angeles, for our immune systems, for hand sanitizer, For swift and decisive return of the sun’s irradiating grace, I can hardly say I even know you much Beyond the turnstile’s slick in the discount supermarket, the sidewalk’s chewing gum and tuberculosis. But I’ve been thinking of you, of your eyes darting behind

There once lived a great king whose twin wives could bear him no children. A wandering sage saw the king’s grief and offered him a magical mango. She who ate the mango would be with child. As he had two wives, the king cut the mango into two perfect halves and offered one half to each wife. After nine months, each wife gave birth to one lifeless half. Horrified, the king ordered these clots of flesh to be left in the forest. A wandering demon found the two lifeless halves and cupped one in each palm. When she brought them together, the two halves fused and a whole child was made in front of her eyes—the demon named the child Jarasandha. Years passed by and this child grew to be an intimidating and invincible warrior. In a fight with Bhim, an equally invincible warrior, Jarasandha was ripped in half by his enemy. But, each time he was ripped apart, his halves found a way to meet up and become whole. Krishna, who witnessed how Jarasandha’s flesh found its own way back to flesh, motioned to his own cousin with his fingers:toss the halves of his body in opposite directions, he suggested. So, when Bhim ripped Jarasandha apart once again, he swung his left half to the right side of the arena and his right half to the left. And his body found no way to return to itself. In the Toronto airport, where I’ve arrived for a conference, I watch an older Punjabi lady—made to sit in a wheelchair behind two lines of customs officials, a security guard, a translator, and a service-staff member—scream that her son is outside the airport may she please just go tell him she is here she is here she is here please. I stand there holding her hand, my own luggage reluctantly traveling in loops on the belt. Beta—child— she says to me: please tell them my son is here and I am here what is the problem let me go let me go to him.

After Ernesto Trejo And the morning’s marine layer cloud cover’s   just beginning to unhinge, to let the buttery light of another daybreak slip through And weigh down the dead lawns and sagging rooftops of  this neighborhood, where Cold War era television antennas Still cast shadows like B-52s heading offshore, where poverty, this early is the smell of  Malt-O-Meal and the dregs of  thin beer Washed down the sink. Where the shift begins at 7AM, but consciousness has a way of coming round as slowly As this old computer monitor flickers its dull sixteen colors into being. On it, the names and numbers of  laundromat and liquor store owners, Fast food managers and lawn care companies; it’s my job to cold call them, read from a script on the benefits of membership In the Executive Dining Club, not take No for an answer. I’m no good and both the boss and I know it, and he’s hovering When the scraped-out voice of  the woman on my phone answers me with My husband’s been killed, and then, instead of  hanging up, Throws the receiver down next to something — dishwasher or window AC, I don’t know — but something close, it sounds, to tearing itself  apart, Something cycling through an awful, screeching noise. And it’s because I’ve paused that the boss flings a pencil Into the wall in front of  me and edges closer, and because of  the fear of  unemployment forms or the sky opening up if  I were to walk out, And because this sound — the un-oiled, flak-fouled crack of  it — has left me standing suddenly at the end of a runway, planes Screaming low overhead and loaded for the beginning of  the end of the world, that I start back into the script, start back as if  I believe each word, Even though, in the rattle and dust of  the jet-wash, no one hears a thing.

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe. “Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun The frumious Bandersnatch!” He took his vorpal sword in hand; Long time the manxome foe he sought— So rested he by the Tumtum tree And stood awhile in thought. And, as in uffish thought he stood, The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame, Came whiffling through the tulgey wood, And burbled as it came! One, two! One, two! And through and through The vorpal blade went snicker-snack! He left it dead, and with its head He went galumphing back. “And hast thou slain the Jabberwock? Come to my arms, my beamish boy! O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!” He chortled in his joy. ’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe.

I have become the smaller flag on a ship, the shorter rafters of a roof, a knave in a pack of cards. I wear a skimpy coat, tall leather boot, and leather drinking flask. I am captured in a child's game and hit when grown men gamble. I am what they call a tame ape. I was a common man whose job was to lift weight. Mechanical devices that replaced my muscles took my job and pay and more—they took my human name. And I, who used to pull my master's boots, hoist meat and turn the spit, work the roller and the winch, climb the steeple, strike the bell and connect lines in telephone exchange, am a daw, the tiniest of crows, gathering loose sticks to nest in castle ruins. The solace of six centuries—and still— is once, on a high and windy hill, beside a well that was clear and full, I kissed a girl named Gylle.

Jack was quite nimble, Jack was quite quick, Jack gave the beanstalk A mighty big kick. Down came the giant— GIGANTIC fall— Bottoms up in a crater, Thus ending it all.

Jack and Jill went up the hill To fetch a pail of water; Jack fell down and broke his crown, and Jill came tumbling after. Up Jack got, and home did trot, As fast as he could caper, To old Dame Dob, who patched his nob With vinegar and brown paper.

Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack jump over The candlestick.

So I'm an alcoholic Catholic mother-lover yet there is no sweetish nectar no fuzzed-peach thing no song sing but in the word which I'm starlessly unreachably faithful you, pedant & you, politically righteous & you, alive you think you can peal my sober word apart from my drunken word my Buddhist word apart from my white sugar Thérèse word my word to comrade from my word to my mother but all my words are one word my lives one my last to first wound round in finally fiberless crystalline skein I began as a drunkard & ended as a child I began as an ordinary cruel lover & ended as a boy who read radiant newsprint I began physically embarrassing—"bloated"—& ended as a perfect black-haired laddy I began unnaturally subservient to my mother & ended in the crib of her goldenness I began in a fatal hemorrhage & ended in a tiny love's body perfect smallest one But I began in a word & I ended in a word & I know that word better Than any knows me or knows that word, probably, but I only asked to know it— That word is the word when I say me bloated & when I say me manly it's The word that word I write perfectly lovingly one & one after the other one But you—you can only take it when it's that one & not some other one Or you say "he lost it" as if I (I so nothinged) could ever lose the word But when there's only one word—when you know them, the words— The words are all only one word the perfect word— My body my alcohol my pain my death are only the perfect word as I Tell it to you, poor sweet categorizers Listen Every me I was & wrote were only & all (gently) That one perfect word