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Liebe, meine liebe, I had not hoped to be so poor The night winds reach like the blind breath of the world in a rhythm without mind, gusting and beating as if to destroy us, battering our poverty and all the land’s flat and cold and dark under iron snow the dog leaps in the wind barking, maddened with winter, and his voice claps again and again down the valley like tatters of revolutionary pennants birches cry and hemlocks by the brook stand hunched and downcast with their hands in their pockets Liebe, the world is wild and without intention how far this might be from the night of Christmas if it were not for you. Down the reaching wind shrieks of starlight bear broken messages among mountains where shadows plunge yet our brightness is unwavering Kennst du das land wo die zitronen blühn, im dunkeln laub die goldorangen ... liebe

if mama could see she would see lucy sprawling limbs of lucy decorating the backs of chairs lucy hair holding the mirrors up that reflect odd aspects of lucy. if mama could hear she would hear lucysong rolled in the corners like lint exotic webs of lucysighs long lucy spiders explaining to obscure gods. if mama could talk she would talk good girl good girl good girl clean up your room.

i tore down my thoughts roped in my nightmares remembered a thousand curses made blasphemous vows to demons choked on the blood of hosts ate my hat threw fits in the street got up bitchy each day told off the mailman lost many friends left parties in a huff dry fucked a dozen juke boxes made anarchist speeches in brad the falcon’s 55 (but was never thrown out) drank 10 martinis a minute until 1 day the book was finished my unspeakable terror between the covers, on you i said to the enemies of the souls well lorca, pushkin i tried but in this place they assassinate you with pussy or pats on the back, lemon chiffon between the cheeks or 2 weeks on a mile long beach. i have been the only negro on the plane 10 times this year and its only the 2nd month i am removing my blindfold and leaving the dock. the judge giggles constantly and the prosecutor invited me to dinner no forwarding address please i called it pin the tail on the devil they called it avant garde they just can't be serious these big turkeys

If no love is, O God, what fele I so? And if love is, what thing and which is he? If love be good, from whennes cometh my woo? If it be wikke, a wonder thynketh me, When every torment and adversite That cometh of hym, may to me savory thinke, For ay thurst I, the more that ich it drynke. And if that at myn owen lust I brenne, From whennes cometh my waillynge and my pleynte? If harm agree me, whereto pleyne I thenne? I noot, ne whi unwery that I feynte. O quike deth, O swete harm so queynte, How may of the in me swich quantite, But if that I consente that it be? And if that I consente, I wrongfully Compleyne, iwis. Thus possed to and fro, Al sterelees withinne a boot am I Amydde the see, betwixen wyndes two, That in contrarie stonden evere mo. Allas! what is this wondre maladie? For hete of cold, for cold of hete, I dye.

If no one ever marries me,— And I don't see why they should, For nurse says I'm not pretty, And I'm seldom very good— If no one ever marries me I shan't mind very much; I shall buy a squirrel in a cage, And a little rabbit-hutch: I shall have a cottage near a wood, And a pony all my own, And a little lamb quite clean and tame, That I can take to town: And when I'm getting really old,— At twenty-eight or nine— I shall buy a little orphan-girl And bring her up as mine.

If not for the cat, And the scarcity of cheese, I could be content.

Why is it, in Bristol Bay, a sea cormorant hovers, sings a two-fold song with a hinged cover for a mouth, teeth set in sockets, with a hissing grind of spikelets biting the air? Dip one. The lips of vanished flames in lava coals glow vermillion as an egg cracks. Dip two. She/I feel/s a chimera leaving the eider duck. Dip three. While still in the embryo, separating the body from death she/I smell/s of arsenic, the Chugach Range in unnatural bitterness. Why is it, man’s/woman’s nerve scarcely stifled and sane, comes to prey? While they swoon minerals of crude oil and sea spiders for tricking a way for gold. Will they crawl around her/me, sink their eyeteeth in the sea, ravaging the ecosphere and the ore gold for fuel. Drill.

“I have heard (but not believed) the spirits of the dead May walk again.” Winter’s Tale If spirits walk, Love, when the night climbs slow The slant footpath where we were wont to go, Be sure that I shall take the self-same way To the hill-crest, and shoreward, down the gray, Sheer, gravelled slope, where vetches straggling grow. Look for me not when gusts of winter blow, When at thy pane beat hands of sleet and snow; I would not come thy dear eyes to affray, If spirits walk. But when, in June, the pines are whispering low, And when their breath plays with thy bright hair so As some one's fingers once were used to play— That hour when birds leave song, and children pray, Keep the old tryst, sweetheart, and thou shalt know If spirits walk.

these are my people & I find them on the street & shadow through any wild all wild my people my people a dance of strangers in my blood the old woman’s sari dissolving to wind bindi a new moon on her forehead I claim her my kin & sew the star of her to my breast the toddler dangling from stroller hair a fountain of dandelion seed at the bakery I claim them too the sikh uncle at the airport who apologizes for the pat down the muslim man who abandons his car at the traffic light drops to his knees at the call of the azan & the muslim man who sips good whiskey at the start of maghrib the lone khala at the park pairing her kurta with crocs my people my people I can’t be lost when I see you my compass is brown & gold & blood my compass a muslim teenager snapback & high-tops gracing the subway platform mashallah I claim them all my country is made in my people’s image if they come for you they come for me too in the dead of winter a flock of aunties step out on the sand their dupattas turn to ocean a colony of uncles grind their palms & a thousand jasmines bell the air my people I follow you like constellations we hear the glass smashing the street & the nights opening their dark our names this country’s wood for the fire my people my people the long years we’ve survived the long years yet to come I see you map my sky the light your lantern long ahead & I follow I follow

They say you are made of clouds, they say you are made of feathers, they say you are everywhere or nowhere—we know you are both. Our flight is delayed, this airport another nowhere.If this is your final destination, the air murmurs,if a stranger or anyone you do not know well offers you anything... but how well & what's he offering & is this our final destination? At the hotel a man hands us the key to room three one three—home for a week or so. On the lobby tv a woman once apparently enormous holds her old jeans up to her body & smiles. Neil Diamond sings & when I go in- to the bathroom he follows.Everybody has one. Paradise is cloudless, they say, impossible to know. Yesterday a man was sucked into the earth as he slept—a sinkhole opened below his bed—not even his brother could save him. In the hotel restaurant my daughter orders corn flakes, they come with a pitcher of milk, she pours nearly all of it into her bowl, until I stop her she will keep on pouring. Three more tvs are screwed into the wall above us—a car goes round & round, a pitcher throws a baseball, a woman slams her racket to the clay. My daughter pushes her bowl away, picks two packets of jelly from the basket, pulls the plastic off one, then the other, lifts each to her tongue—red, then purple. The wallpaper is the texture of trees, a landscape seen from above, a contour map of an unnamed mountain, people wandering the face of it. If we were closer we could tell river from leaf, mountain from shadow, a fire making, unmaking itself. What is this strand of DNA between us, unconnected to & of the shadows parading past, our outlines already chalked into the earth? I live on air & light, I drag my daughter everywhere, this morning she muttered Federer Federer Federer like a spell & it was as if he stood before us again, his perfect red jersey. How many mornings, the sun not yet up, did I swivel on the red stool at the supermarket lunch counter, my mother in back extruding donuts, the aisles dark & empty behind us—she'd bundled me into the car still sleeping to get there. I'd twirl or wander or make toast, contemplating the basket of butter & jelly, each in its little wasteful tub, impervious to air or time or decay.Angel of Grape, your purple body not only filled those coffins but took the shape of those coffins—emptiness made whole, color now a shape.Angel, my daughter now wants only you, she asks for the whole basket, she pulls back each sheet, puts her tongue in— strawberry is her favorite, because it tastes like strawberry.