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Unable to pour boiling water over an edge from kettle to pot water boils from kettle to neti pot still boils from kettle to cup running over boil pool steam pool leak pool little cooling pot over the boiled edge of boil pooled salt vapors sulfurous stank boil heal dangled over the boiled edge of burnt earth cooling salt pool nettle stung black clotted blood at the bottom of the sink

What a relief you cannot live everywhere all at once. Today, here in Diamond Cave, there's no longer any reason to live. Stay one or two days: this world & the Other are drained of difference. Wind blows. As a pearl is born at seabottom in agony out of oyster flesh from within the most obscure darkness here the wind blows from the depths. I want to travel far & then return. The wind blows as if I were eighty-five, maybe eighty-seven.

All middle age invisible to us, all age passed close enough behind to seize our napehairs and whisper in a voice all thatch and smoke some village-elder warning, some rasped-out Remember me. . . Mute and grey in her city uniform (stitch-lettered JUVENILE ), the matron just pointed us to our lockers, and went out. ‘What an old bag!’ ‘Got a butt on you, honey?’ ‘Listen, did I get lost with these streetnames! Spruce Street, Water, or get this, VAN derwater—’ Cautiously, coolly, we lit up, crooking palms for the ashes. All fifteen or under, all from Manhattan, we loitered bare to the waist for the X-rays. In the whorling light from one rainy window, our shapes were mere outlines from floor to wall, opaque as plater, white, or terra-cotta, black . . . ‘Names or numbers,’ a skinny white girl with pale blue eyes shrugged her shoulders. ‘Why come here at all? You think little Susan (thumb mockingly hooked at herself) needs working papers to work in my uncle’s diner? If they’d let me off school at noon now—that’s where the real tips are!’ And she smiled at our objections around her smoking cigarette (I thought) like some museum mummy, amber-fingered, fishhook collar bones— ‘What are you talking? Don’t you know the city keeps like an eye we don’t get overworked?’ ‘Yeah, and your Social Security number, that’s for life, girl, that ain’t worth something to you?’ The skinny girl just cackled, goospimpled arms huddled against her ribs. ‘Whadda you two, work for the mayor? What’s this (swinging her locker key with its scarred wooden number)—the key to the city?’ She meant last week, when they’d offered it to some visiting queen. Even I snickered. I was younger than most of them, homesick among the near- women’s breasts and hair, even the familiar girls’ cloakroom odors: perspiration, powder, decades of menstrual fust—‘Well, I’m coming back in six months.’ This was one of the black girls, elbow swivelled on pelvic sidethrust, finest hair— filaments, finerimmed, sulky mouth. ‘She’ll be sixteen, getting married,’ the girl next over burst in eagerly, ‘He got a store job, still her folks against it, they say stay in school. But every afternoon—’ Distantly, the first girl listened to her own story, only breaking in at the end: ‘I want a real church wedding. Down here is just for the license, see?’ ‘A license,’ said “little Susan,” sourly, ‘like for a job?’ ‘His name is Harold Curtis,’ was all she answered, then ‘It too strong for my parents. They see it too strong for them in the end.’ In our silence, the gutter slurred strangely. And for just one moment, everyone breathless, the atmosphere grew almost tender. But nobody knew what to say except good luck, so we all went on smoking like chimneys except the one murmur, of old and incurable anger, ‘Listen. Listen. They get you coming and going.’ Now each girl tilts her face down, contemplating her own unseen choices, real tips, the solitary and common square foot of imaginary chance . . . Outside, the rain was letting up. The city, like a graph of its own mountainous causes, climbed in a mist across our window. And then the matron came, calling our locker numbers, one by one, for the X-rays. ‘Jesus, it’s late.’ ‘Hey honey, I’m ready!’ ‘Where’d we change at from the D Train?’ Through the clearing air on the far side of City Hall Park, I could see a narrow street and a streetsign: Broadway. Miles to the north my street had a number, and Broadway was really broad. In the concrete prows of islands, the innumerable old women were sitting, lonely as soldiers, silent as . . . ‘What’s up, girl? Goose step on your grave?’ Another number. And now, the room darker, each girl cast about for the cheering word, when ‘Listen,’ I suddenly heard my own voice saying, ‘Guess what I saw coming down? A street called Anne Street.’—‘So what?’—‘So my name is Anne.’ A pause, then ‘Hey kid, that’s really funny!’ They all grinned, and one of the older girls gave my shoulder a tolerant punch. I was one of the youngest, and as far as I can remember, that was all that I said.

Just tell me who the hell am I? What powers did I, do I hold? What right have I to say “my” or “mine” or “me” — all honey- glazed, all bullet-proofed and worshipful of any gangster “I”? The key to the Dollar Store hangs on my belt. Yes, “my” again. And what of roof, of bread, of loving laughter? What’s in? My vinyl favorite Booker Little, vintage, soothes me. He jars our ears with trumpet joy and stuff freed folks stash in cabinets. Never one to make too much of why we love and what, I love my powers. I might put you in my will.

It's not exile, homes and families behind us, where we meet. It happens anywhere, now: a stateless state of no name, quietly seceding from the crumbling empires round us, without stamps or Eurovision entries. No-one does it with a rough guide in a week. You inhabit it or nothing. Like this: in a pavement cafe you blink and you seem to surprise them, the crowd, all its separate faces at once, coming out of solution like crystals, like a rush of starlings or the breeze that lifts the canvas awning now and dents your cappuccino froth with a crisp little sound. And that's it: between breaths, just between you and me as if; yes, QED. You are received. This is the freedom of the city, and the key to the kingdom, and its borders ripple outwards like a frill of breaking wave onto flat sand, a wavering line already fading leaving spume-flecks high and dry, a prickling on your palm; you're five years old, looking up at the whole sea, unsure: will you laugh or cry?

Didn’t rain choke the animal throats of the cathedral      sputter against the roofs of the city      didn’t the flight of stairs rise up above the cobbled street didn’t the key clamor in the lock      flood the vestibule with clattering    didn’t we climb the second flight toward the miniature Allegory painted on the ceiling and touch the flat-faced girls winged      part animal who did not flinch and did not scamper

Game of Thrones In this story, she is fire-born: knee-deep in the shuddering world. In this story, she knows no fear, for what is fractured is a near-bitten star, a false-bearing tree, or a dishonest wind. In this story, fear is a house gone dry. Fear is not being a woman. I’m no ordinary woman, she says. My dreams come true. And she says and she is and I say,yes, give me that.

Kick in the heart. Kick the starting lance. Throw the ground a word and stand back. The color of terror is the envy on body rags, the dragonfly war scraped off a painting inside the door. Kick the shame. Kick the falling dawn as fortunate. Throw the corrupted guest out the door. A sequence of rhythms bound for the light on your bed. On the eggplant cooked for the husband working late: an ant, a hair— the only thing said to race the mind. Take someone else’s voice and touch their ears. Make sure they hear you cry in their own whispers, their harangue. Kick the soil. Kick the sweet drowning as if you know the round jubilance of pear is afraid of a darkening spoon, a honey of flavor, the tender one who never touches your plate. The tired one who rations food to thank God eternity is here and there. Slip the eye the blue-black stranger, his instrument of scars and neglect, its tune of every wish besides the grave of a careless, quiet man. Shape his sound into the thumb asking for a ride in the years of not going anywhere. Kick the alphabet. Kick the hungry thigh and try again. Reduce yourself to a moving mouth, a solemn happiness that smells of the past, takes hold of the throat and teaches you to despise omens— ignore Apache mirrors on rock arches as if you knew what their scratchings meant. Kick the heart. Kick the starting lance. It moves deeper into the month of blinking neon where vertigo is perfume, desire foaming on your bare feet killed by frost, taken by the animal waking inside your holy cross— a figure of green gowns and things that follows you until you dance. Kick the truth. Kick the belly until it confesses. Admit you were fed by a woman flapping in the wind, told to sit there by a father who made her give birth to a shimmering head, your brain of flowers blossoming upon the body always first to confess. What snow is left is tired water unmoved by your seasonal words, your circle healing by slowing down, swelling to the size of God, yellow leaves in the blood nothing dangerous— this impulse, this kick to the brittle lake where the snow goes away.

My sister rubs the doll’s face in mud, then climbs through the truck window. She ignores me as I walk around it, hitting the flat tires with an iron rod. The old man yells for me to help hitch the team, but I keep walking around the truck, hitting harder, until my mother calls. I pick up a rock and throw it at the kitchen window, but it falls short. The old man’s voice bounces off the air like a ball I can’t lift my leg over. I stand beside him, waiting, but he doesn’t look up and I squeeze the rod, raise it, his skull splits open. Mother runs toward us. I stand still, get her across the spine as she bends over him. I drop the rod and take the rifle from the house. Roses are red, violets are blue, one bullet for the black horse, two for the brown. They’re down quick. I spit, my tongue’s bloody; I’ve bitten it. I laugh, remember the one out back. I catch her climbing from the truck, shoot. The doll lands on the ground with her. I pick it up, rock it in my arms. Yeah. I’m Jack, Hogarth’s son. I’m nimble, I’m quick. In the house, I put on the old man’s best suit and his patent leather shoes. I pack my mother’s satin nightgown and my sister’s doll in the suitcase. Then I go outside and cross the fields to the highway. I’m fourteen. I’m a wind from nowhere. I can break your heart.

Never mind what you think. The old man did not rush Recklessly into the coop the last minute. The chickens hardly stirred For the easy way he sang to them. Red sun is burning out Past slag heaps of the mill. The old man Touches the blade of his killing knife With his fat thumb. I’m in the backyard on a quilt Spread out under the heavy dark plums He cooks for his whiskey. He walks among the hens singing His chicken song way down in his throat Until he finds the one who’s ready And he holds her to his barrel chest. What did you think? Did you think you just jerk the bird From her roost and hack her head off? Beyond the coop I see the fleeting white dress of my grandmother As she crosses and recrosses the porch To fill the bucket with scalding water. How easy the feathers will come When she drowns them for plucking And clouds the air with a stench I can’t stand not to breathe. I’m not even a boy yet but I watch The old man sing out into the yard, His knife already at the chicken’s throat When everything begins to spin in my world— He slices off the head without a squawk, And swirls the bird in circles, a fine Blood spray fanning out far enough To reach me where I wait Obediently, where I can’t stop watching The head the old man picks up, His free hand becomes a puppet chicken Clucking at me, pecking my head with the cold beak Until I cry for him to stop, Until he pins me down, clucking, laughing, blood All over his hands. He did it so I would remember him I tell myself all these years later. He did it because it was his last summer Among us. In August he didn’t feel the fly Come into his cancerous ear and lay its eggs. He didn’t feel the maggots hatch As he sat dazed with pills in the sun. He pecked my head and laughed out of love, Out of love he snatched me roughly to his chest And sang his foreign songs way, Way down in his throat.