478 Identity poems

It doesn’t take the full-wind sickness, just the mere, the constant threat of it, just the salt trace, its faint knocking to bring the spirits of chance and chaos into this house - they stand in doorways: quaint, foul allies, swivelling their ghost hips, tugging at their gowns of transparency and mischief. They buzz me with lust, and I’m undone. Remember these: the Cupid who ducked up from behind a wall and aimed an arrow, one evening on Broughton Street; whatever grabbed my shoulder at Earlshall; a sound of heavy boxes pushed up and down the empty hallway; the past is the self’s ghoul. What is it, Roddy, you know you’ve blocked out? What left your brain so empty that it gushed full with circus music and the safe bet of trivia? Here I am swinging on the fence of fences, in limbo, where the other world loves to try my pragmatism and it’s I who have invited them, summoned by this self-indulgent ouija. But what is it that folds my clothes as I sleep and leaves them on the edge of the bed? Who hides my slippers, re-hangs the paintings?Deja vu. Did a minor goddess filch me in Manila and follow me home, prone, as they are, to easy-led mortal men. And I’m easy, easy. So, come now, teach me to believe in the soul. Hurt me with the truth. Press me back down on this cheap, wine-coloured carpet; let me know for once and for all how fucked I am.

My name came from my great-great-great-grandfather. He was an Indian from the Choctaw tribe. His name was Dark Ant. When he went to get a job out in a city he changed it to Emmett. And his whole name was Emmett Perez Tenorio. And my name means:  Ant; Strong; Carry twice its size.

Or is it on account of my radiant eye I have lived so long?—I never slept in the study hall, or called anyone by an improper name. I never urinated in a desolate synagogue. I never ate or drank in a desolate synagogue or picked my teeth. I did not walk into a desolate synagogue in the summer just because of the heat, nor in winter just because of cold rain. Also, I know one may not deliver a eulogy for an individual inside a desolate synagogue. But you can read scripture inside a desolate synagogue, or you can teach in a desolate synagogue, or deliver eulogies for the community. When synagogues are deserted they are to be left alone and weeds allowed to grow. One should not pick the weeds, lest there be anguish that the synagogue is in ruins. When are the synagogues to be swept so that weeds do not grow inside them? When they are in use.—When synagogues are in ruins, weeds are not to be picked there. Because I know these things I was approved, although unworthy, after a three-day oral examination before the king of Sicily to whom by custom the power of approval is entrusted. Thereafter, I have worn the laurel crown—my eye radiant to this day.

What a giant I must seem to them, an exhausted giant who dozes above her sewing. Asleep in mid-stitch, sorting the day’s haul of cinders, rubies, griefs— They were laughing and carrying on, their tiny silver needles flying in and out, tiny silver thimbles on their fingers. It’s no use of course, keeping secrets from them, when chattering is almost their religion. Some held corners of the flag like an enormous quilt, and some danced on little shelves above the workshop. They were so merrie that I fell asleep again. In the morning my beautiful flag was finished, every stitch in place and every seam. So now I raise it—slowly, underneath a secret sky. Near the door to the half-daft and the cradle of kleptocracy. Where it rips and shivers, rips and shivers once more And makes me furiously glad, and fills me up with serious pleasure.

My tongue is divided into two by virtue, coincidence or heaven words jumping out of my mouth stepping on each other enjoying being a voice for the message expecting conclusions My tongue is divided into two into heavy accent bits of confusion into miracles and accidents saying things that hurt the heart drowning in a language that lives, jumps, translates My tongue is divided by nature by our crazy desire to triumph and conquer This tongue is cut up into equal pieces one wants to curse and sing out loud the other one simply wants to ask for water My tongue is divided into two one side likes to party the other one takes refuge in praying tongue english of the funny sounds tongue funny sounds in english tongue sounds funny in english tongue in funny english sounds My tongue sometimes acts like two and it goes crazy not knowing which side should be speaking which side translating My tongue is divided into two a border patrol runs through the middle frisking words asking for proper identification checking for pronunciation My tongue is divided into two My tongue is divided into two I like my tongue it says what feels right I like my tongue it says what feels right

To cure myself of wanting Cuban songs, I wrote a Cuban song about the need For people to suppress their fantasies, Especially unhealthy ones. The song Began by making reference to the sea, Because the sea is like a need so great And deep it never can be swallowed. Then The song explores some common myths About the Cuban people and their folklore: The story of a little Carib boy Mistakenly abandoned to the sea; The legend of a bird who wanted song So desperately he gave up flight; a queen Whose strength was greater than a rival king’s. The song goes on about morality, And then there is a line about the sea, How deep it is, how many creatures need Its nourishment, how beautiful it is To need. The song is ending now, because I cannot bear to hear it any longer. I call this song of needful love my voice.

There are moments when I feel more clearly than ever that I am in the company of my own person. This comforts and reassures me, this heartens me, just as my tridimensional body is heartened by my own authentic shadow. There are moments when I really feel more clearly than ever that I am in the company of my own person. I stop at a street corner to turn left and I wonder what would happen if my own person walked to the right. Until now that has not happened but it does not settle the question.

Hanging out the wash, I visit the cats. "I don't belong to nobody," Yang insists vulgarly. "Yang," I reply, "you don't know nothing." Yin, an orange tabby, agrees but puts kindness ahead of rigid truth. I admire her but wish she wouldn't idolize the one who bullies her. I once did that. Her silence speaks needles when Yang thrusts his ugly tortoiseshell body against hers, sprawled in my cosmos. "Really, I don't mind," she purrs—her eyes horizontal, her mouth an Ionian smile, her legs crossed nobly in front of her, a model of cat Nirvana— "withholding his affection, he made me stronger.'

If I have created a world for you, in your place, god, you had to come to it confident, and you have come to it, to my refuge, because my whole world was nothing but my hope. I have been saving up my hope in language, in a spoken name, a written name; I had given a name to everything, and you have taken the place of all these names. Now I can hold back my movement inside the coal of my continual living and being, as the flame reins itself back inside the red coal, surrounded by air that is all blue fire; now I am my own sea that has been suddenly stopped somewhere, the sea I used to speak of, but not heavy, stiffened into waves of an awareness filled with light, and all of them moving upward, upward. All the names that I gave to the universe that I created again for you are now all turning into one name, into one god. The god who, in the end, is always the god created and recreated and recreated through grace and never through force. The God. The name drawn from the names.

If the sea is a cathedral, a tide pool is a chapel. Sculpins dart under the wind that blusters their cupped oceans. Sculpted by wave on rock, their pockets of salt grow thin from the rain, the suffocating fresh water. Sculpin and hermit crab and limpet endure the sea's absence, the lost comfort of constant temperature, while the unconceived sky drums the roof over their pooled world with litanies of unbreathable torrent. Christ, I have no praise for you. Beyond saying a vodka-wrecked troller and shacks the color of the desire to die, beyond saying predatory snails that glide on their bellies like the penitent, flexing their borers, beyond saying seraphim that bicker exactly like gulls, the shells that are my ears sing no psalms except I can name many small creatures in the world of a tide pool. Christ, have mercy on all things that drown in air, I have no praise for you. I say the tide: Tide! Tide! Tide! I say:Ebb! Flood! Ebb! Flood! I always start with "Ebb!" I always end with "Flood!" "Names" is from a sequence titled "Hard Weather Prayers."