478 Identity poems

I carry you, a fleck, to Jamaica At the Chinese temple in Kingston I am sick daily Victor leads me upstairs, says this floor was once Nights, I hold the bed’s edges full of beds where men off the boat

After Rachel Eliza Griffiths’s “Self Stones Country” photographs Know what the almost-gone dandelion knows. Piece by piece The body prayers home. Its whole head a veil, a wind-blown bride. When all the mothers gone, frame the portraits. Wood spoon over Boiling pot, test the milk on your own wrist. You soil, sand, and mud grown bride. If you miss your stop. Or lose love. If even the medicine hurts too. Even when your side-eye, your face stank, still, your heart moans bride. Fuck the fog back off the mirror. Trust the road in your name. Ride Your moon hide through the pitch black. Gotsta be your own bride. Burn the honey. Write the letters. What address could hold you? Nectar arms, nectar hands. Old tire sound against the gravel. Baritone bride. Goodest grief is an orchard you know. But you have not been killed Once. Angel, put that on everything. Self. Country. Stone. Bride.

A brenda is missing—where is she? Summon the seeds & weeds, the desert whooshes. Phone the finch with the crowded beak;   a little pretenda is learning to read in the afternoon near the cactus caves. Near oleander & pulpy caves with the click-click of the wren & the shkrrrr of the thrasher, a skinny pretenda is learning to read till the missing brenda is found. Drip of syllables like olives near the saguaro. Nancy Drew will find the secret in raincoats & wednesdays & sticks. Nancy whose spine is yellow or blue will find the brenda in 1962, Nancy                   who has no mother, who takes suggestions from her father & ignores them. Gleam goes the wren ignoring the thorn. They cannot tell the difference. Click of the smart dog’s nails on linoleum. Nancy bends over the clues, of brenda’s locket & dress. Word by word between syllables a clue. Where has the summer gone, the autumn— are they missing too? Maybe Nancy will parse the secret & read the book report on Nancy Drew: “neat pretty sly cute.” Syllable by syllable & still no brenda!   Nancy puts her hand to her forehead; is the missing girl in the iron bird? is the clue to the girl in the locket?

Pink Dawn, Aurora Pink, Misty Pink, Fresh Pink, Natural Pink, Country Pink, Dusty Pink, Pussywillow Pink, Pink Heather, Pink Peony, Sunflower Pink, Plum Pink, Peach of a Pink, Raspberry Pink, Watermelon Pink, Pink Lemonade, Bikini Pink, Buoy Buoy Pink, Sea Shell Pink, Pebble Pink, Pink Piper, Acapulco Pink, Tahiti Beach Pink, Sunny Pink, Hot Pink, Sizzling Pink, Skinnydip Pink, Flesh Pink, Transparent Pink, Breezy Pink, Sheer Shiver Pink, Polar Bare Pink, Pink Frost, Frosty Pink, Frost Me Pink, Frosted Pink, Sugarpuff Pink, Ice Cream Pink, Lickety Pink, Pink Melba, Pink Whip, Pinkermint, Sweet Young Pink, Little Girl Pink, Fragile Pink, Fainting Pink, Helpless Pink, Tiny Timid Pink, Wink of Pink, Shadow of Pink, Tint of Pink, Shimmer of Pink, Flicker of Pink, Pink Flash, E.S. Pink, Person-to-Person Pink, City Pink, Penny Lane Pink, Pink Paisley, London Luv Pink, Pretty Pink, Pastel Pink, Pinking Sheer, Pink Piqué, Pink Silk, Plush Pink, Lush Iced Pink, Brandied Pink, Sheer Pink Champagne, Candlelight Pink, Fluffy Moth Pink, Softsilver Pink, Pinkyring, Turn Pale Pink, A Little Pink, Pinker, Pinkety Pink, Heart of Pink, Hug that Pink, Passionate Pink, Snuggle Pink, Pink-Glo!, Happy-Go-Pink, Daredevil Pink, By Jupiter Pink, Stark Raving Pink, Viva La Pink.

Is there a single thing in nature that can approach in mystery the absolute uniqueness of any human face, first, then its transformation from childhood to old age— We are surrounded at every instant by sights that ought to strike the sane unbenumbed person tongue-tied, mute with gratitude and terror. However, there may be three sane people on earth at any given time: and if you got the chance to ask them how they do it, they would not understand. I think they might just stare at you with the embarrassment of pity. Maybe smile the way you do when children suddenly reveal a secret preoccupation with their origins, careful not to cause them shame, on the contrary, to evince the great congratulating pleasure one feels in the presence of a superior talent and intelligence; or simply as one smiles to greet a friend who’s waking up, to prove no harm awaits him, you’ve dealt with and banished all harm.

Is she still Faith Franckenstein? Is she still the past somewhere between Frankfort, Kansas, and LA? Le Moulin du Soleil Ermenonville; her mom’s haunt with Harry Crosby, winter ’29, also haunted, still haunted. Those open fields haunted. The Faubourg Saint-Germain. The Faubourg darknesses and weeping willows, the drizzled cul-de-sacs. Is she still of memories thus deleted, giving her a certain absent aura, tall-shouldered? An uncertain world of make-believe made more believable, I wanna say. Those whims and glossy chance encounters, tossing caution to the wind. As such, a darkened moonless night, down by South Beach sans the Verrazzano, c. ’61. We plunged headlong, skinny-dipping in the languid surf with dreams of no tomorrows, no eternities. None but those decades lessened, disappeared. Those moments becoming one less and less. The near-to-next impossibility. The careless and carefree. The half-remembered face. The voice also half-remembered. Her hair way past shoulder-length, soft, satiny. Wordsworth’s “emotions recollected in tranquility”tout passé. The midnight skinny-dip.

The socks red with a white star in a crescent moon the shoes black red gold are to many like a warm foot in cold shoe leather to others a double knot in a life only as long as a shoelace but for all that on hot coals Translated by Oliver Pauley Die Socken rot mit weißem Stern in Sichelmond die Schuhe schwarz rot gold für viele ist es wie ein warmer Fuß im kalten Schuhwerk für andere ein Doppelknoten in einem nur schnürsenkellangen Leben aber das auf heißem Boden

a perfect symmetry of both parts animal, feline and quizzical, and man, made (undone) sworn in stormed again electric, transmitted from the foreground into appropriate weather the skin being elastic cause for several considerations contrite ((argued over) aren't we of beautiful tangents beautiful ox blood, black sand morning from small wire filigree, a gesture

I am a feather on the bright sky I am the blue horse that runs in the plain I am the fish that rolls, shining, in the water I am the shadow that follows a child I am the evening light, the lustre of meadows I am an eagle playing with the wind I am a cluster of bright beads I am the farthest star I am the cold of dawn I am the roaring of the rain I am the glitter on the crust of the snow I am the long track of the moon in a lake I am a flame of four colors I am a deer standing away in the dusk I am a field of sumac and the pomme blanche I am an angle of geese in the winter sky I am the hunger of a young wolf I am the whole dream of these things You see, I am alive, I am alive I stand in good relation to the earth I stand in good relation to the gods I stand in good relation to all that is beautiful I stand in good relation to the daughter of Tsen-tainte You see, I am alive, I am alive

I have a twin who bears my name; Bears it about with him in shame; Who goes a way I would not go; Has knowledge of things I would not know; When I was brave he was afraid; He told the truth, I lied; What’s sweet to me tastes bitter to him; My friends, my friends, he doesn’t love them; I walk the daylight in his dream; He breathes the air of my nightmare.