The Brooklyn Rail

we don’t always get absolution

we don’t always get absolution
is what a psychic told me

when I was wintering with heartbreak
because someone else built a carceral narrative
and placed me in it just in time for the holy days

but the prisoner was just a sloppy hologram

and the real me stood barefoot in the backyard
pouring fresh water in the birdbath every day
despite the frost or ice

many made the pilgrimage to self-baptize
even a bluebird who showed up alone once
and sat in the water like a sage

I took pictures thru the binoculars for a close read

I had to make peace with the wrong story
and forgive myself for ending up there

when you point the finger of blame
there are three fingers pointing back at you

the messiah is not going to save the day
there are no chosen people

we’re either doing damage
or course correcting rather badly

The galaxy that echoes my heart
is very legit
very loving kindness
very angelic

It’s regret that gets iffy

Start with yourself, they say to us
as if everyone knows where that is

there’s enough information
coming thru the airwaves to make us seasick

it’s actually a total tsunami
a flood of topsoil in search of roots

hopefully seeding new worlds
more gentle than this one

and on the windowsill overlooking
the variously frozen and slushy lake
of a disrupted continuum

is the petrified lemon from Los Angeles
that I found on a walk—many such walks,
softened by reverence for my
romantic California

not the twitchy sketchy California
so much

but maybe that’s also part of the tension
of longing and desire

anyway, the lemon is next to sweet moss from Oregon
next to an evergreen sprig from Maine

and there’s a shell in my pocket from a kingdom
where the forests no longer exist

these tokens are a means of locating oneself

On Sunday I bought a green wallet
it is made from the hide of a sacrificial cow

puff, the year of the magic dragon is upon us

it’s time to get cracking

I’m going to choose my next rebirth
instead of having it thrust upon me
by some shady doula
who mirrors the abyss

In fact, let’s schedule the c-section for this

a regenerative salamander self
who will know what it means to emerge from fire

so shiny so shiny, dancing
in my suit of a thousand skins

the flames feel like a cold plunge and my flesh breathes heat
to keep enemies at bay

imagine if your outer layers were renewable
and courtship rituals were signaled by pranayama

it’s the breath that gets them every time
a rite of passage thru the microbiome and beyond

let me see your snake unfurl

I’m wishing for a home to appear in my empty house
an interior that’s outside of karmic stutter and short fuses

it’s gonna be cute

a think tank for nonhumans and demigods
which is to say birds and creatures galore

we may not always get absolution
but I guess I don’t need a psychic to tell me that

and anyway, on an airplane I prayed for an apology
and it appeared on a cloud the very next day

deep down, the golden cord
tuned to the earth’s core
sang:
your spirit is bright
you're perfectly aligned
you just have to participate.

idylls

In an old future, the sun tells our story—lithic, stanzaic.
The vault holds books, an assemblage of proper idylls.

Today I plunder treasure: coral, copper, quartz, and some other stuff. A clay lamb and a
glass horse. I’m making kith for the ark.

In the garden, invasive ribbons and crêpe arch in halting attitudes while a fiery refrain is wilding
the thaw. From cocoons we become miraculous.
Hermitage for two, sovereign. No echo, no echo.

We look at glinty geometries from mines and caves, and in a tiny cinema we sit close to
the screen, every frame a secret unearthed. We keep laughing into the wind and the wind laughs
back. It could be that simple. But not yet.

I'll use the bones of a beast whose skeleton emerges from melting permafrost. I'll dig deep in soft
dark soil and plant seeds thousands of years old. The biggest star will bring them up like fingers
full of pollen and the rain will beget honey.

Maybe myths are locked memories, heirlooms in the form of monsters. We’ve met in
another realm but not at all in this one. Many fortnights gone and leagues below, innumerable
hours dress me in longing waves—every hem a sheer drop to another ocean.

What is the greatest city but loss upon loss repeatedly forgotten anew. I’m floating in the sea, my
legs folded in lotus, jet fuel opalizing my auric field. It’s nice to think that the best is yet ahead.

Our rituals are archived and a preservationist will oversee their care, but who cares.
We inherited ruination in the wake of our becoming. Insect-angels have been flagged for antiquity:
the pond of newts paved over, nascent impressions of weird hands in cement ever baking in the
kiln of the sun for other creatures to parse.
Fossils and glyphs become a sentimental pastime.

These days fade… fallen columns, crashing beams, more war. Grief is a dusky thing, wedded
golden-gold, undressed. I want to read a hauntology of rural childhood. It’s ok if this is fiction.

At the matinee, shimmering veils made fake portals of belief as a way out. I hold a yellow
diamond quality for the new path, hushed in the forest with fresh skins snaking in.