The Brooklyn Rail

desire lines

a man once carved a passage
for me in snow following
a squall and said

here is your safe path

I didn’t think to question it
in my want of safety
and followed his line

of desire until it became
a deep internalized habit like
letting him drive the car

now nearing fifty, I see
that the words in a line
of poetry too express

desire, she becomes I
when a pronoun is replaced,
I rewrite the word

“billet doux” to “love letter”

on this morning’s run
I go off the paved trail
trace the path of the off-road

cyclist’s trace of want
while thinking about
the stranger who suddenly

entered my life and how
he answered when I asked
about longing

saying you move towards it

Echo Glen Detention Center

it’s the small details that stay
with me: store-bought frosted

cookies served on colorful plates
with apple juice poured into

red plastic cups, the things
that announce a day is special

we choose from a collection
of poems the young men wrote

while waiting to get out,
black tape binding a spine

they can stand up to read
but no one does, all other

movement restricted except
what’s approved by the dean

I keep my own gestures small,
stay in my chair, aware

of how freely I’m allowed
to flow through the carceral zone,

travel within its walls, go home
past mechanical gates, walk out

of a space that never feels quite like place

FLØD
after viewing Jónsi

I want to know
the solidness of a wall
the certainty of a handguard or rail

when moving through the dark

lit as if by lightning, a ray
of light beamed across
a ceiling reveals

prone bodies piled
side by side
thick and silent

as corpses, reminders
of a future tsunami
that choreographs us

to all lie down

stopping at chief si’ahl’s grave

the resting places of generals,
presidents, and other leaders

are so often marble mausoleums
bronze statues, crypts, asserting

their wealth and dominance,
even the towering spire of

a rinpoche, the stupa where
the bones are enshrined, here

on sacred land, the Suquamish
chief who ruled over the tribes

that made this place their home
before and now, his legacy

brought alive with his name,
his speech, his words

the soil.. rich with our kindred,  the land
awake beneath my feet, the grass

scorched brown from summer
heat, the rock that snuck into

my right shoe, alive with memories
of past and present, a shell,

some stones three sticks of Tibetan
incense that will turn to dust,

I left behind this offering