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1. RUSSIA, 1927 On the day the sienna-skinned man held my shoulders between his spade-shaped hands, easing me down into the azure water of Jordan, I woke ninety-three million miles from myself, Lev Davidovich Bronstein, shoulder-deep in the Volga, while the cheap dye of my black silk shirt darkened the water. My head wet, water caught in my lashes. Am I blind? I rub my eyes, then wade back to shore, undress and lie down, until Stalin comes from his place beneath the birch tree. He folds my clothes and I button myself in my marmot coat, and together we start the long walk back to Moscow. He doesn’t ask,what did you see in the river?, but I hear the hosts of a man drowning in water and holiness, the castrati voices I can’t recognize, skating on knives, from trees, from air on the thin ice of my last night in Russia. Leon Trotsky. Bread. I want to scream, but silence holds my tongue with small spade-shaped hands and only this comes, so quietly Stalin has to press his ear to my mouth: I have only myself. Put me on the train. I won’t look back.

LISTEN TO THE RADIO PLAY JOE, a doctoral candidate in literature RACHEL, his fiancée POET/CRITIC SCENE 1 POET: Again like a rebellious nation my heart Stands and cries: forward, to the battle! To the battle? Now? What's a battle to an old man Like me. O barricades of washed-up words, Stanzas filling books with my heart's murmurs, My love is lined with lies and sweetened With the sweetest white sugar. My thoughts are rusty, My feelings but smoky furniture And scraps of youthful rage gone by. All this, piled on the barricades. But whither my flag, my withering flag? Spring is in my heart again and winter in my eyes, Fall in my arms and frost in my toes. O desire, O vain rebellion, What more . . . [The voice fades into the background.] JOE:   This is the end. This is the end. [We hear knocks at the door.] This is the end. This is the end. [RACHEL enters as JOE continues grumbling.] RACHEL: Joe, Joe, what's with you? JOE:   This is the end. [We hear him furiously tearing newspaper.] The end! The end! The end! The end! RACHEL: [Anxiously.] What's wrong with you? The end of what? What happened? Good God. I have never . . . JOE: [Apathetically.] This is the end. Read the newspaper. RACHEL: Which newspaper? Where? JOE: There, that ball, that ball of paper. [RACHEL opens it.] Well read it! RACHEL: One moment. You've torn and crumpled it . . . hold on . . . this is a   serious act of archaeological reconstruction. JOE: Come on, read it out loud! RACHEL: . . . and frost in my toes. O desire, O vain rebellion, What more do I ask? O dark desperation In a tenebrous valley like a ship of ghosts. But behold! What is that light on the horizon, Yonder as if from a distant cave? My legs fail me, yet my heart Soaks up hope like a big sponge in the bathtub. [She laughs.] A big sponge in the bathtub! JOE: Go on. Go on. RACHEL: [A little hurt.] Fine, fine, stop rushing me . . . one moment, one moment . . . it's hard to make out . . . OK: Three maidens sit in that cave weaving my fate. Spin-spin on the spindle, no not on the spindle, no. They crouch over books by lamplight. The students. How studious! Till dawn breaks they study and maybe read my poems of yore. JOE: Go on! RACHEL: Slowly I'll sneak through the rustling summer grass And watch, struck with awe. There is a window Ancient, arched, and there she sits with her hand stroking The hair of her . . . head. O, my studious one, I begged to see you, only to see, not to touch, Not to sit in your room, only to know your name, To call your name, O your name, your name and your name and your name. I'll peep stealthily . . . Enough, I can't read anymore. JOE: Do you know what this means? RACHEL: I know. JOE:   The end of my glorious dissertation. The end of the literature department's rising star. I'll remain a teaching assistant forever. I might as well go back to the army. RACHEL: I won't let you, I love you. JOE:   So what? I'll sit and start writing on a new subject. Come to me in four years when I'm done . . . RACHEL: You're out of your mind. JOE:   . . . only to discover, like Sisyphus, that it was all for naught. [Despairingly.] What an idiot! And just yesterday I wrote the final chapter! [Sarcastically.] Here, look, the dissertation that will revolutionize the appreciation of D.G. Castleman's poetry. RACHEL: [Sweetly.] And I drew the letters on the cover: "D.G. Castleman's Poetry and its Interpretation." JOE:   The long silence of D.G. Castleman . . . [Slight pause, then with anger.

Kills bugs dead. Redundancy is syntactical overkill. A pin-prick of peace at the end of the tunnel of a nightmare night in a roach motel. Their noise infects the dream. In black kitchens they foul the food, walk on our bodies as we sleep over oceans of pirate flags. Skull and crossbones, they crunch like candy. When we die they will eat us, unless we kill them first. Invest in better mousetraps. Take no prisoners on board ship, to rock the boat, to violate our beds with pestilence. We dream the dream of extirpation. Wipe out a species, with God at our side. Annihilate the insects. Sterilize the filthy vermin.

I really do wish I did. Because if I loved lawnmowers I could go to the lawnmower museum I just heard about on the radio in a piece about small museums. It’s in Southport apparently — a seaside town “fringed to the north by the Ribble Estuary,” according to Wikipedia. It would be quite a trip to go up there, and I’d almost certainly have to stay the night. I think I might stay in the Prince of Wales Hotel, which looks conveniently situated for the station and the museum too. I can hardly bear to think how much I’d be looking forward to making that trip if I loved lawnmowers. On the radio they said they have all sorts of models from Victorian ones all the way through to a state-of-the-art robot one that’s powered by solar energy. If I was planning the visit I’d probably have a bit of a virtual walk-round on Street View, and in fact I’ve just done exactly that in an effort to capture the feeling I’d have if I was actually anticipating a trip to the lawnmower museum. Exploring the area I discovered that Southport looks very much like Weston-super-Mare, where, as it happens, I stayed in a halfway house many years ago after doing a stint in rehab. Now crack cocaine —that I loved.

The black kitten cries at her bowl meek meek and the gray one glowers from the windowsill. My hand on the can to serve them. First day of spring. Yesterday I drove my little mother for hours through wet snow. Her eightieth birthday. What she wanted was that ride with me— shopping, gossiping, mulling old grievances, 1930, 1958, 1970. How cruel the world has been to her, how uncanny she’s survived it. In her bag, a birthday card from “my Nemesis,” signed Sincerely with love—

and it was political. I made coffee and the coffee was political. I took a shower and the water was. I walked down the street in short shorts and a Bob Mizer tank top and they were political, the walking and the shorts and the beefcake silkscreen of the man posing in a G-string. I forgot my sunglasses and later, on the train, that was political, when I studied every handsome man in the car. Who I thought was handsome was political. I went to work at the university and everything was very obviously political, the department and the institution. All the cigarettes I smoked between classes were political, where I threw them when I was through. I was blond and it was political. So was the difference between “blond” and “blonde.” I had long hair and it was political. I shaved my head and it was. That I didn’t know how to grieve when another person was killed in America was political, and it was political when America killed another person, who they were and what color and gender and who I am in relation. I couldn’t think about it for too long without feeling a helplessness like childhood. I was a child and it was political, being a boy who was bad at it. I couldn’t catch and so the ball became political. My mother read to me almost every night and the conditions that enabled her to do so were political. That my father’s money was new was political, that it was proving something. Someone called me faggot and it was political. I called myself a faggot and it was political. How difficult my life felt relative to how difficult it was was political. I thought I could become a writer and it was political that I could imagine it. I thought I was not a political poet and still my imagination was political. It had been, this whole time I was asleep.

to L. Y. I was told that I was a sad man. Sadness is a fatal disease in this place where happiness is a key to success. If you are sad, you are doomed to fail— you can’t please your boss, your long face won’t attract customers, a few sighs are enough to let your friends down. Yesterday afternoon I met Pham, a Vietnamese man who was once a general. He came to this country after nine years’ imprisonment. Now he works hard as a custodian and always avoids meeting his former soldiers here, because every one of them is doing better than he is. “Sadness,” he told me, “is a luxury for me. I have no time for it. If I feel sad I won’t be able to support my family.” His words filled me with shame, although I learned long ago a busy bee feels no sorrow. He made me realize I’m still a fortunate one and ought to be happy and grateful for having food in my stomach and books to read. I returned home humming a cheerful tune. My wife smiled wondering why I had suddenly become lighthearted. My son followed me, laughing and frolicking, while I was capering on the floor. Last night I went to a party in my dream. Voices and laughter were drifting in a large hall that was full of paintings and calligraphy. Strolling with ease I ran into the handwriting of yours hung in the air piece by piece waving like wings. Dumbfounded, I turned and saw you sitting on a chair, motionless, the same lean detached face, only your blue clothes had grown darker. Something snapped in my chest and my tears flowed. What’s the use of promising? I have promised, a hundred times, but never returned. Wherever we go our cause is the same: to make a living and raise children. If a poem arises, it’s merely an accidental blessing. For several hours my heart ached, but I woke up—smiling.

I won’t come I won’t go I won’t live I won’t die I’ll keep uttering The name And lose myself In it I’m bowl And I’m platter I’m man And I’m woman I’m grapefruit And I’m sweet lime I’m Hindu And I’m Muslim I’m fish And I’m net I’m fisherman And I’m time I’m nothing Says Kabir I’m not among the living Or the dead

breezy, floral, dancing with color soft, silky, flows as I walk Easter Sunday and you always liked to get dressed, go for brunch, "maybe there's a good movie playing somewhere?" Wrong religion, we were not church-goers, but New Yorkers who understood the value of a parade down 5th Avenue, bonnets in lavender, powder blues, pinks, hues of spring, the hope it would bring. We had no religion but we did have noodle kugel, grandparents, dads who could fix fans, reach the china on the top shelf, carve the turkey. That time has passed. You were the last to go, mom, and I still feel bad I never got dressed up for you like you wanted me to. I had things, things to do. But today in L.A.— hot the way you liked it—those little birds you loved to see flitting from tree to tree— just saw one, a twig in its mouth, preparing a bed for its baby—might still be an egg, I wish you were here. I've got a closet filled with dresses I need to show you.

I would drive to your grave but your grave is the crash the froth foam pebbles small rocks the sand smoothed soothed each rising each leaving tide you lie in the ocean the water in the waves your home the stern the back the wake of a boat those curled white lines of leaving I would visit your grave but your grave is a single blue afternoon of passing isles the green and granite shores I would come to your grave but your grave is the fire oh mother it is cold tonight and I have no heart for this burning for the fine sift of ash which is all that comes back all that comes after I would visit your house but your things are missing are missing your touch as your eyes failed I brought you lights and I would see again that brightness I would drive to your grave but I am your grave your marker oh mother I am your stone