Let’s not get mathy Cathy or walk
away Resnais but Colonel Tibbets’
Enola Gay thunderous mushroom
fireburst above Hiroshima mon amour
41 days before I’m born instantly
zapped 79,831, perhaps somewhat
more than a third of that once
gorgeous city’s population —
it was filmed for our viewing
pleasure by a companion B-29
ironically named Necessary Evil

I linger over plump, plush, push-up-bra valentines,
those with glitter and bling, iridescent textured papers,
laser-cut-love in plastic, wood, flammable, frameable
rice paper, limited-edition fabrications to rival-any third
world butterfly. Cards as big as a menu in a decadent
Antoine’s or Galatoire’s of 1960s New Orleans. Will
this memento salve an indiscretion

Droughts are just as dangerous as floods
I’m not an artist I just like holes in my
body
And daydreaming of ink in my veins
Circling in charcoal patterns my father once drew
With strong hands. We shared the old studio.
I’m not emotional I just like the electric color of red eyes
And showering in the dark with someone else’s
Voice echoing my thoughts in the background

Mechanically, you circled
out of the garage, the same
one you parked in Monday through
Friday for the past 25
years. When you reached the exit,

you couldn’t remember which
way to turn to make it to
the same house you lived in for
19 years. That’s when the doctors
discovered the tumor.

i tried something awful
to impress
at the edge
of a koi pond
& slipped.
an olive film
couldn’t know
i loved her. in years i found
if i hit my palm against my jaw hard & fast
under running water it created
a band of fuzzy light
& done again
the ringing was renewal.

It is that first cold
that brings the apples,
the apple-cold,
the cold that moves the white moon
further, further up the tree,
the cold where the still, clear sky
lifts and stretches out
as if waking and making itself ready
for when the apples
and the moon
and the warm sun are gone,

You answered my rhetorical questions.
A search for certainty that
Thieved my rhetoric
Replaced it with yes and no’s
You turned my world binary
Made my epiphany quotidian:
A tropical disease that
Denies the feverish
Rush of frenzied surprise.

Cannot dream but if possibility were
possible, you’ll find that men exist
elsewhere, too,
but that’s in the preterite.
Impossible to do anything
except for what is happening now.

When she was a young girl she was beguiled by the trappings,
the manners, the elocution of a mighty vocabulary.
She would listen for the rich tones
delivered by tongues that were born and raised
in upper crust high rise apartments ruling over lake Michigan.
Knew how to follow the money, how to modulate words,
the subtleties between rough wool and smooth as silk cashmere

That night in the temple, when he hurt her,
the asps found her ravaged, her hair tangled;
they buried their tails into her scalp
as tree roots sew into earth and soil.
They kept her safe from his sea, enthralled her,
and pointed with their tongues to her escape.
They guided her through meadow and forest
to a quiet cave high atop a cliff.

freed from for a moment my sonic mechanics
and I started to hear a free fiddling buzz it was
that wild clicking din of innumerable tiny tigers
-eye bug-leg violins: crickets!
cruising from the roofs of blades
play vesper serenades for June boys,
vim Julies, whose bodies’ limbs are pinwheeling
vibrato by their sides in halls of tall wheat grasses…

Light explodes from darkening skies.
Not Sun,
Yet, light unleashing elemental forces.
The fragrance of recently mown grass
As would be remembered by a thoroughbred
Not so long ago a colt
Building muscle and endurance
Running like the wind through the grass just because
You were meant to run like the wind when you are a colt.

They say that he hid my skin, but what they
do not know is that I threw it into the sea
at high tide, such that it will not drift back
even if I change my mind. I was always the
stubborn one, they said. I must learn to bend,

tired of waiting he writes
while there’s timeand the white space
to trace the light’s line
from place to place
from all the corners of his mindfind
the dust of all that’s gathered there

I’d like to say that the day I quit God
was like a knuckle-sandwich,
a lightening bolt, or a surprise
seizure that tore through my brain. I’d like
to say that the earth shook, shattered,
and birds screamed their shrill cries. I’d like
to say that hurricanes raised hell,
ice caps melted and died.

My father buys plums and asks me not to ruin them this time.
When he leaves the room, I press my thumbs
into them until the skin gives out, until the whole kitchen is muscle and juice,
dark-purple in desperation.
I can’t remember the word for touch in Spanish, can barely remember it
in my own tongue.

For three days I was a stranger in your city,
Pressing my palms to a train window
Watching for the blue glint of the bay.
I thought I might find you in the water’s thin skin,
In the creamy foam, speckled and bearded with wrack.

I was not born in these kinds of waters
but I came to believe and to canoe away
on the river of silty glass
bugs skating the surface
sunlight pouring into me
laughter echoing off the empty
voices raised, poles poised, fish fleeing upstream even.

I am going to pay a man
to stand by my car
and protect it
from the nomadic thieves
of the grid deserts,
the car I dreamed about
when I was a child
when I was unemployed
when I was weeping
in small painted rooms
with my hands in a ring.

Kids, when I cut out of this life,
don’t turn on the tears and grieve;
kids, when I die I don’t want
any golden speeches saying kind things
about me or some windbag sniveling about
death’s sting, God’s grace and
the triumphant rise to heaven.

I feel forty-six pieces of her
forming inside of me:
Her fingers dig into the underside of my belly
button, and her feet kick ferociously
for freedom.
In this moment, I want to yell for her
to stop searching for a way to escape this haven.

Hello?
You don’t know me; but,
I am so excited to speak with you.
Strangers—
at once the same…but different.
Divided by violence
Splintered and torn from one another
Families…
Friends…
Strangers…

The fish
flops
against
the
table
with its last breaths.

I forget it only “breathes” in water,
but just the same…

in my homeland little girls and
grandmothers are knotted with silk-threads
called stories
grandmothers walk nimble-footed
to the past, careful not to fall into
memory’s ditch
little girls traipse on it, tumbling
on fantasy and sport, daring
to dream