The Brooklyn Rail

Name Day

my thirtieth name day in the market
I can see nothing but plastics
some somber silver fruit feeling eating remembered
blueberries in automatic February
wants traced on the very earth

when I lived I liked to rhyme it
my name’s James
and friendship dreamt
enough it was for me

radiant blue sleep starts
to slip from its husk

a people at the lip of weird heat
and worry inflected first as fruit is
usurped sadness its own
eaten ifs

my name not what
the word peeled
from raw rock
and tormented
perfect systems

then we’ll be hard past belief
and bear addressing

place our pleasures in a row
nest in each readiness
a split pedagogical fruit
says not the hoped for
but nonetheless
the born one

nonetheless
the one born

There is the question of what we do together. How will
we make enough time. How will we carry all the bags.
Who will keep the door open. How could the train go
any slower. Who will water the spider plants. Who will
remember the names of the eider ducks, and the auks.
Who will put their hands against the grate of a radiator.
Who will protect the young. Who will hold a bowl over 
the body to bathe it. Who will swim across the canal.
Who will chop the broccoli. Who will hear the crickets
sing. Who will sense the rain coming. Who will walk 
down the same hallway over and over. Who will breathe 
into their own hands. Who will feel the earth move. Who 
will shake the empty box. Who will see the sentence 
lighting up.

GUERRA DI TRINCEA
TRENCH WARFARE

Questa morte è un’officina ci lavoro da anni e anni conosco i pezzi buoni e quelli deboli, i giorni propizi, la virtù di applicarsi minuto per minuto e quella di sostare, sostare e attendere una soluzione nuova per il guasto. Vieni, amico mio, ti faccio vedere, ti racconto.

This death is a repair shop I’ve been working here for years and years and know the solid parts and the shoddy ones, the lucky days, the merits of tinkering, minute by minute, and those of pausing, pausing and waiting for a new fix after the breakdown. Come here, my friend, I’ll show you, I’ll tell you about it.

Tutto cominciò in una cameretta con i regali e le candeline che in un soffio spensero mio padre fermo nella sua giacca per sempre e un cerchio di puro niente mi assalì in un solo attimo franò sul tavolo e mi mostrò cento di questi giorni.

It all began in a little bedroom with presents and candles that, in one breath, extinguished my father standing still forever in his blazer and a circle of pure nothingness assailed me as all at once he collapsed on the table in a heap of happy returns.

......................................................... ......................................................... ..................nel 1967, dopo una lunga guerra di trincea, dopo una guerra di metri guadagnati e persi, iniziai una trattativa con la morte.

.........................................................  ......................................................... ..................in 1967, after a long war in the trenches, after a war of meters gained and lost, I began a negotiation with death.

Iniziai dunque a trattare, sì, a trattare ma lei recalcitrava, negava la firma, si dava per dispersa e riappariva sul più bello nella vela di una carezza o nella voce che indicava lassù un’orsa favolosa era lei con un sapore di mandorle bruciate iniettava nell’alba il suo buio primitivo.

I began, then, to negotiate, yes, to negotiate but she was stubborn, refusing to sign, she pretended to have gone missing then showed up in the swell of a sail of a caress or in the voice that pointed up to a bear in the heavens she bore an odor of burnt almonds and filled the dawn with its primitive dark.

Con la morte ho tentato seriamente per un po’ è stata buona ha rinunciato al suo impero universale ha cominciato a muoversi caso per caso ha lenito alcuni sussulti con il suo unguento poi ha cominciato a intonare una canzone cantata in re.

I gave death a serious try for a while she behaved she renounced her universal empire she started to proceed case by case she soothed some tremors with her ointment and began to sing a song in the key of D.

Con la morte ho cercato ancora un patto, ma lei era astuta e discontinua appariva nei traffici dell’amore, diventava giallore e numero fisso era il respiro e l’artiglio nel respiro un’ora murata galleggiava nel fradiciume della vasca.

With death I searched again for a deal, but she was cunning and fickle she showed up in the traffic of love she became jaundiced, a fixed integer, she was the breath and the talon in the breath a walled-up hour was floating in the vessel’s rot.

Poi, di colpo, un lunedì di febbraio  tutto è tornato come prima... è uscita dal suo feudo, ha fatto incursioni, all’alba, nella casella della posta, ha ripreso la sua cerimonia incessante, ha diffuso un canto di puro gelo ha cercato proprio noi.

Then, suddenly, a Monday in February  everything turned back to its start... she left her domain, she made a raid, at dawn, in the mailbox, she resumed her ceaseless ceremony, she spread a song of pure ice she searched for us alone.

E ha cominciato a parlare, quella figura plenaria, come il capobranco della nostra fine soffocava il lievito felice, affondava con il piede la barca infantile di due foglie ci lanciava il suo avvertimento.

And she began to talk, that plenary figure, like the ringleader of our end smothering the happy yeast, tipping over the two-leaved childish boat with her foot she was giving us her warning.

“Sarai una sillaba senza luce, non giungerai all’incanto, resterai impigliato nelle stanze della tua logica” “Sarai la crepa stessa delle tue frasi, una recidiva, una voce deportata, l’unica voce che non si rigenera morendo”

“You will be a syllable without light, you will not reach any enchantment, you will be caught in the rooms of your logic” “You will be the very crack of your sentences, a recidivist, a deported voice, the only voice that is not brought back to life by dying”

hands

when i dream i dig half-moons
into my palms—deem them
bone & vein
map, blood flow
landscape. home
to what my beloved calls
my deep beds, blotted
with calcium deficiency
blooms. hands
you hold each day’s
nourishment: purple
melatonin gummies, photos slipped
from album sleeves, marigold
dyed fabric set
on the altar, nearly dialing
my mother to ask
about her mother. hands
you’re my emissary
when a notch in spy park
trips me—hands
better you greet the ground
than my teeth, chin,
or nose—skin on my thumb’s
hillock left flapping.
hands better you
than the dildo
my lover keeps asking for—no lineage
or history or story
to surgical silicone—i prefer you
my wrist-jointed janus
opening the passageway
of pleasure or birth. when it feels good
my beloved reaches down, traces
the skin on my unnamed
knuckle side, & i think
of my grandmother
marked there
with an om tattoo
before she was loaded
onto the back of the truck
crossing the cracked
border of partition. she was four.
she would have six kids
who would have fourteen more
& i try to imagine the hands
before her, the hands
before that. i only see
her hands. adorned
silver cuff & red thread wet
washing my brother
under the tap. it’s always
his hands. bent
at the wrist like birds
singing his last summer
on earth. his fist then
the size of the garden’s first
tomato. at the grocer on mass ave
i pick up a tomato
so ridged, rippled
& massive it nearly
beats in my hands.

from A Travel Journal called Remote Work 

 

(Tanjong Pagar, Singapore) 

The continuous present of the port extends the city grid to the sea. Over kopi, the day
maintains its logistical pace. At the door, you are asked: Do you have an appointment,
sir? In 1942, all the public clocks of Singapore were moved forward from GMT+7:30 to
GMT+9:00, Japanese Imperial Time. Now, it is 9:45am, and it is 9:45am too at home,
as it is in all the banks in China, at pace with the clock hands of a Beijing time that
reaches from the westernmost Xinjiang, by the Kyrgyzstan border, to the easternmost
Liaoning province, which borders North Korea. You are here, just in time for the risk
management meeting, and as attendees introduce themselves, one participant shares
that the first thing he did upon entering was inspect the two, the required minimum,
fire exits on the floor.

Where is time?
the seasonal word asks—
replies the cutting word

 

(Công viên Lê-nin, Hanoi)

Is it light
autumn pours
into the cup?

Joggers circling the past in ordinary minutes capture me dreaming, as poems do.
Workers have time in the park, it pleases them. Arriving without schedule, making of
labor a making. In the café, our server shares that her name is Thu, meaning autumn.
It’s a beautiful name and a beautiful day to be alive.

Note

Perhaps even dangerous to recognize 
               the inadequacy of our attempts 
at communication To still Be present 
               with another person Sometimes 
all we are able to offer Attempted
               mimicry Attempted precision Even
nearing the end with no evidence Nothing
               on the page to indicate The page
divided The rhythm breaking off 
               With no evidence to follow No means 
of saying how it was we arrived here 
               In late spring perhaps when jasmine 
begins to bloom Something unlike 
               or outside of normative daily 
experience Forgive me Outside of the life
               we know This perhaps a place for soul
to slip in Futile enterprises This a place 
               for potential tightening or expansion. 

The Story I Promised Not to Tell 

features a boy, beloved, snug in his olive
uniform, gun slung over his shoulder—soldier
praised for refusing the high-ranking officer
entry without ID because rules are rules and no
amount of shouting from a reddening commander
matters if you don’t know the man’s name or face.
The boy, I’m told, handled the officer with firm grace
and someone above was watching, captured
the moment on film and granted the boy his dream
of becoming a sniper atop a building, so he, too,
can watch from above. All the stray dogs break
the boy’s heart—he promises to kill anyone who kills
a dog. But a person, reminds his mother, means more
unless they pop from the hole to take you. We remember 
the boy bobbing in floaties, charming strangers as children
do when alive and splashing, cootchie coo cootchie coo.
I tell his mother I’m leaving for the hole. She hopes
someone denies me entry—you have kids don’t
be crazy. I tell her I need to see and put to body 
what I know from people’s stories and books and TV. 
Some call it bearing witness. I call it landing on earth
where boys persist amidst glistening branches clinging
to olives, and gravity exists. Where has the boy been?
In his bedroom he shows me different types of bullets—
the curved ones are the ones that can cut through two
people at once. Unfortunate if behind your target
your mother happens to stand or wave her hands. 
I lower my eye to the ocular lens and find a red cross
flashing. Make of him a monster, screams the commander
in me, to serve the right side of history. I offer him
a pot of dragon pearl tea. I show my ID. I can only see
the sun if I am sun-like, said Plotinus in different words,
and in third person. Do not go roughly into the worst
of nights, said the dead. The story I promised not to lose
features a boy holding his brother, or filling 
an amber dispenser to its brim—olive 
oil for you: second person point of view: shimmering
mother, once removed.

fathermouth

who said pivoting isn’t pressure
doesn’t come with its own headwind

sometimes i blame you
for decisions i made
say you defeated me
or i’m defeated by you

but really
i’ve been distracted by a demon
we’ve come to love

casting you out was elemental
rarely evental
just a slow bone-deep static

i learned to speak
in the afterimage
of your silence

once i believed forgiveness
a verb of distance
a poethic interval
a way to keep me holy
and far

but weather became scar
and you
a collapsed architecture
shaped my ick

you ghost me
until the form needs a body

your love
a clerical error

your dying
a murmur of mercy
in a drawl i outgrew
a quiet rehearsal
for my release

how strange to pray
for the one
who unmade my heart

every sentence i form
still limping toward you
hurt as inheritance
grammar as grief

half erased by time
i mouth your name
like an old psalm
each syllable a tether
each prayer
a failure at bittering

paper-cut daddy
you arrive by margin

daddy as fallacy
as systemic glitch
in my making
as flicker
as milky text

the body re-members
what silence re-fuses

your hot guinness breath
your brick absence
all untranslatable bruise

let’s call it ambivalence
though it’s become
our faith

i won’t fix my face
to make your need
look legal

still
i’ve dreamt your hands clean
a miracle
i no longer expect

the hum of a man relic
buried in lines of gore

i learned to speak
inside your fracture

“little girl”
is what you call me
after my existence
dragged your voice
into its own coffin
of memory

if time can atone
let rot turn scriptural
let my cells lay it down
before spirit reenters

let my back
be all the dispensation
you see

repair—
a thin reed of freedom
i keep digging into
spent earth

your mind now
a field of locusts
the past fluttering
you thin-skinned

what you sowed
blooms in ruin

pops,
there’s no grace left
to cosign

things are just
living
and dead
between us

We’re watching bones scuttle. Home scattering heirlooms.
Bones. Filling our spas. Bones cutting the grass. Another.
August. And still the war. Bones spreading the congress of crow’s
beak. Bones shredding the upstairs. The screen door netting.

Bones at the back. Of the coffee shop. Bone broth graves. Of course.
Aspirated by rage and dreams. Just bones in the banker’s box.
These are the bones of bones. Making the harvest. Bone by steady.
Bone. The Terms written. “The girls, sisters whose bones became
lessons,” said so tenderly. Remembered.

All her fond wishes. To all the students. Of bones we’ve become.
If we can say nothing else. Nothing enough to heave. A question.
A membrane on our shoulders. Our life-wide backs. Who will read.
Or bonfire all our longing. In this life. And do we hope after. All
The bells have hushed. Their threnodies. And we are full. Forget
Nothing. Our blare. Of swifts here. This hurricane lifting the bone.

That becoming life. Knows death. At 6 P.M. The day officially dark.

Here come the men of bronze. Men of iron. This canal.
Goes clean. Down the Gulf of Paria. 45 feet underneath.
There, grouper. There, catfish. Haul their hundred-pounded
Lives. Into the company of owls. Young blue herons, gagged,

still in their white frock. Here, brackish water.
Scarlet water. For the great egret’s scare landings.
The tri-coloured heron’s toss. Of white subaltern.
A flash of red Mangrove. Is the ibis blaring its horns.
At sunset. Remembering its black birth. After three years.

Of eating into red. Red until death. Who can claim a victory.
So easily. The Flamingoes’ route. To reddening their years.
You should see them. Nesting April to October. It was April
Two days ago. Now even the calendar arrives taxed. Scarlet.
Lettered by the officers who still think it is 1782. And sisters.
On sidewalks. Only rust the patriots. So fast, lovers sicken.

Why be precise with foresight. Wages. Precious with loss.

Praise for The Inaugural Poet, January, 2009
          for Elizabeth Alexander

Perhaps it’s an impossible task
On an impossible day. A young poet
Fixes her gaze along the plaza,

Looks at this latest version of America in the eyes,
Looks in the camera at all the places we’ve touched
Or torched.

Sees who’s come to this roll call:
The out of the wood-works, the I never dreamts,
The I never thought we’d live this longs,

Stands in the sharp report of weak January sun.
The poet probably knows
This family is hers.

The poet probably knows
Before she cuts history to forty-three lines,
Before the capitol has more proof
Of what bullets and ropes couldn’t stop,

She has to straighten her back. She needs to take
A deep breath. A black woman is here to sing.
All the black women in her are here to sing.

The traffic light is on

This is 1524333. Goes

Person waits for each other 4

Person holding an umbrella: I’m waiting for the rain
Person + person + person sweating in the sun

Person waits for the first 4 to return

Person + Person facing each other: There are 20 feet
with no feet between them

Person + person is sitting on the stairs

khaki person pants mix with cement

Person’s feet person + person. Are related to the middle two legs

Person yells at person’s face:

Person does not answer:

One person does not answer:

Person does not answer:

Person does not exist:

Person cannot answer.

Person standing: person waiting for the rain in person’s voice:
person waiting for person to stop sweating

Person is more than 20 feet taller than person:
Their clothes sway in the air caused by person’s scream:

Person contemplating

Person does not exist.

Person follows person and continues screaming:
Person’s veins emit a yellow haze from under the skin:

Person tramples the cockroach and apologizes

Person passes through person + person’s airspace as
if they were in a gym.
Person doesn’t ask for help

Person gets down on his knees and kicks to find peace:
Person may be a little sad.

Person person + person. goes through

Person swings in the silence of person

Person doesn’t think they exist

Person does not allow Person to ask for help

Person crosses a sea of feet between them + soul of person

Person can project the Astral while passing through
the airspace of Person and Person

Person is wearing a t-shirt with anime characters

Person shouts at person so loudly that person starts whispering

This whisper is so imperceptible that it attracts many
specters that starve to death again.

Person lets person scream in their face.

Person smiles sweetly.

 

 

The traffic light is on a timer

It goes 1524333

A black woman waits for another 4

A black woman holds an umbrella: waiting for the rain

A black woman + a black woman + a black man sweat in the sun

A black woman waits for the first 4 to come back around

A black woman + a black man stand
directly across from each other:
there are 20 feet without legs between them

A white woman + a black man sit on steps

The white woman’s khakis blend in with the cement

The white woman’s legs belong to two of the feet
between a black woman + a black man

A black man screams in the white woman’s face

The white woman does not respond:

A black woman does not respond:

A black woman does not respond:

A black man does not exist:

A black man cannot respond.

The white woman stands: a black woman waits
for the rain to form in their voice:
The white woman waits for a
black man to stop sweating

A black woman crosses the 20
feet to the a black man:
Their clothes billow in the wind
created by a black man’s screams:

A black man ruminates

A black man does not exist. 

A black man follows the white w
oman and continues to scream:
their veins project a yellow mist
from beneath their skin:

The white woman steps on a cockroach and apologizes

A black woman passes thru
a black man + the white
woman’s airspace as if they
are on a jungle gym.

The white woman does not ask for help

A black woman falls to their
knees and digs to find peace:
she might be a little sad.

A black woman crosses back thru
the white woman + a black man

A black man swings on a black woman’s silence

A black man does not think they exist

A black man does not let
the white woman ask for help

A black man crosses the sea of feet between
them + a black woman’s ghost

A black woman might have astral
projected when crossing thru
The white woman and a black man’s airspace

A black man wears a t-shirt
with anime characters on it

A black man yells so hard at the white
woman that they begin to whisper

This whisper is so imperceptible
it attracts many memories
that have been in the midst
of dying for attention.

The white woman lets a black man yell in their face.

The white woman cracks a sweet smile.

2 a.m. on the vacant verging
dark of another bombastic 4th
the bill is slipped into a mailbox
on the corner of Beverley
and Coney and the Halal spot
just closed. You nod your bhai
goodnight as he closes the door
and with it the possibility
of a platter drenched in white
sauce and sumac. An American
Spirit midway between bruised
knuckle and breathlessness
nursed over nine hours of palaver
and promise, past due notices,
and the judge’s ruling against
your argument, forces the turn
on Lewis and you fold
back into the breast of this
neighborhood, this place
you grew up crying inside of.
One block and a world away
from the industrial refuse
and chop shops of the avenue
are trees that still hold
the crepuscular warmth
of fireflies like embers
hungover from late June.
The way they stud the stillness
you feel almost all the way
grateful for. All the way down
to the filter and swathed
in the sudden quiet, contested
by strings of families and ghosts
coming and gone from this zone,
imagined and reimagined
as another blank canvas, another
quaint name for the domestic
ideal, a too-small child holding,
as it’s held, a pair of shears
for deboning all that smoke.

Open your eyes to a present bare
as a winter tree, the tree a raw nerve,
not dead but at rest. A mistake to think

now is always; soon enough the bud
and bloom, the green leaf and husked fruit.
Soon enough the small jaw makes of the hard shell

dust; makes of the sweet meat a feast. What wild
soft hope to suppose that what was will be.
For now, take the attitude of work,

then the attitude of rest, then work—
a curious industry—then rest. For now,
grab the hand that pulls you up, the hand

that gets you dressed, the hand that soothes you
when you wake in the dark, startled and damp.
Is the hand your own? So be it. Is the hand

another’s? So be it. There is a future
in your mouth, smoky quartz on your tongue.
Where will you hold it: belly, teeth, or palm?

There is no love interest in these modern wars.
Gertrude Stein

When he deflates, horribly flat, with sticky crinkling noises, I peel his body from other parts of
his body, probe with my pinky, squeeze with index and thumb, put my mouth to his valve hole,
breathe him fat again.

I punch. He hisses. He’s mine, and I sock him. He flops backward, jerks upright, ballasted by sand
in his sack-bottom, filled with my breathed air.

I punch and I punch him. I dance on my toes like a boxer, lean to let him hit me in the face with his
face—not hard. He crumples about the ears, tapping me. I swim in my make-believe anger. His
sifty sand shifts when I shove my hands under him. Like Susie the color guard carrying her flag I
rest him against my pelvis. Shove him out to tumble on his dumb head.

He rights himself the instant he hits. I dive at him, we fall together, roll, I lie full on the floor, load
his weight on my belly.

Did you hear the wind last night punch our pear tree, beat and bend it till it thrashed its blossoms
in white suds at the window, at the emptiness in the other direction? Marriage, inventory, what?
You? America? Hello?

The angel Michael has sold his wings
and the double ring of his name.
He no longer listens to kings,
nor pursues the flame of his fame.
How terrible to see that face
without the grace notes of his faith;
how horrible to see that space
bereft of his presence and breath.
A dozen lines go through his head,
accents he thought he left behind;
he feels the apprentice’s dread
of words that he can never find.

      *

These soft stones dance at night;
the day goes red with longing.
Who here speaks of belonging?

      *

Solomon thinks that a slight
tremor of air he feels might
shape the latent melody
of God’s probable body.

      *

Hannah keeps her Sunday
skirt in a camphor box,
a small desert display,
a perfect paradox,
pious and quite profane.
Guido says she has lain
too long with all her clocks
set to love’s time, the stray
confusion of peacocks
left alone in a subway.

                  the styles upon styles upon styles of the sentence-makers in
a blender. damn the torpedoes. who’s your docent? somewhere
contradictory this way comes. the inevitable is tired. if it were a
grey wren, it wouldn’t sing. if the kids are alright, then why is the
school not burned down?

                  ollie ollie oxen free mumia abu-jamal.

                  the audience should feel they are hearing the future arriving
right on time. o, we naming names now? turn the style up to
blend and make the sentences glide.

                  it felt iterative like we rocked them bamas. worst case
scenario: the swallows never come back to capistrano again.
syntax, your chariot awaits. improvising on a theme like wishing
on a star.

The bake shop down the street has the cake on the counter. “There
you go—Ready when you are,” chef shouts as I enter. I pay in cash
with a gloved hand and shove the sweets into my bag like theft. In
darkened room, I eat the skin first, a hardened glaze, a soured
crunch. I peel the layer off with bare hands, squeeze each bite between
fingerprints. Roll the dough in palms, till flour turns wet again, back in
time, erase. “That one feeds seven to ten,” chef said weeks ago when I
placed my order for the first time, for the rest of time. “Perfect,” I said
in the voice I use in public.

I am seven to ten bodies. I am fourteen to twenty limbs. I am eight
tongues and nine stomachs sometimes. I am either no eyes or sixteen.
This body, alone, needs sugar enough for a family. This body, alone,
deserves dessert daily meant for the week. I will eat till I am sick. Then
I will continue. Stuffing crumbs into all my spaces, nose and eyes and
ears. Where nothing else can touch.

Here, the end of the word, of the book, of chance.

Desert!
                 Drop that dice. It is useless.

Here, the end of the game, of resemblance.
                 The infinite, by the interpretation of its letters
                 Denies the end.

Here, the end cannot be denied. It is infinite.

Here is not the place
                 Nor even the trace.

                 Here is sand.

In the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, the dinosaur exhibition is composed
largely of specimens excavated between 1906 and 1913 at Tendaguru, a site in
the former colony of German East Africa (today Tanzania). Of these dinosaurs,
the most iconic is Giraffatitan brancai. Coincidentally, European and other
major world powers met in Berlin, some twenty years prior to the dinosaurs’
excavation, at the Berlin Conference (1884–1885), where these powers
negotiated their claims to regions of Africa for colonial expansion.

At the feet of a precipice-tall skeleton,
we wonder about the horrors of the Jurassic,
predators stalking, then slicing into, their prey.
Walking among Berlin’s exhibited bones
embodying bridge-span necks and column
limbs, lance-point armor and knife-lined jaws,
we try to picture a world beyond our ken,
subject to claws evolved as killing
personified, laws of unremitting savagery—
Imagine on an over-muggy Earth, a head
towering above in the domain of treetops
and dogfighting pterosaurs, imagine
the head-crowned neck crashing down
like a felled alder, the impact thundering
as if a deposed god was hurled to Earth;
in final moments, would the aged Titan be able
to imagine scavengers biting into its cold skin,
its bones swallowed by tidal mud? Could
it then possibly imagine a world beyond its ken
hundreds of thousands of millennia later
in which twenty men in Berlin would carve
its continent into plantations, mines, and ivory-
hunting grounds, their talons manifest in
massacres charring within burning villages,
famine’s gaunt ribs slowly quelling rebellions,
black skin in the mouths of ravenous empires?
Even if so, why try wondering at all?
A predator is a predator after all, regardless
of the time in Earth’s history—they simply
differ in their habit and the hunt: some
sink their honed teeth into a scaly hide,
a roar professing their territory; others
convene over a landmass map, howling
false claims in English, French, and German.

I          imagine          I            been
science      fiction     always     —
even     as     was      they     done
sailed                         unidentified
floating                      obscenities.

To       whom       tha        natural?

Sure      as     shit      it’s      shady
calling    all    those    tall    ships
kin,     kith;     isn’t    we    forged
from      the     same      industry?

A Grapevine

On the street, a pretty woman complains to me
About her monotonous dreams, and I tell her
To plant a grapevine
At a place she often dreams of

I say: it will grow fast
Put forth new shoots
And soon climb up the old elm next to it
Or it will wrap itself around a rock
Thus, everything will be different

You know, for every person in this world
There is another thing that shares
The same fate with him

Believe it or not, your breast will be full again
When it bears a berry, small like a star
A blackbird will peck at it out of the blue

Quick as lightning, the blackbird appears
From a man’s dream hundreds of miles away
And has been bred for years already

I cannot tell you who he is, where he lives
Because if I did, in some courtyard
Wild grasses would die out

 

 

一棵葡萄

在街上，一个美丽的妇人
向我抱怨她单调的梦，而我告诉她
应该在她常梦到的地方
植一株葡萄

我说：它将长势旺盛
抽出新芽
并且会很快攀上旁边一棵年老的榆树
要么，缠住一块石头
因此一切会有所不同

要知道，人在这世上
会有另一样东西和他承受
相同的命运

你信不信。你的乳房也将再次充盈
当它长出星小的果实时
但一只黑鸟会突如其来地啄食

简直如同闪电
一只黑鸟，来自百里之外一个男人的梦境
并且已被豢养了多年

我不能告诉你他是谁，住在何处
因为一旦说出来，某个院子里
疯长的荒草就会死去

She appears—a moon, she sways—a willow branch
Her scent—ambergris, her gaze—a gazelle’s
Sorrow it seems adores my heart
The moment she leaves, it loves to return
Her gazing the moon recalled
To me our nights in al Raqmatain
Each of us beholds a moon
I with her eyes and she with mine

from Night 256

Plunged into the lions’ den and fortress,
Immersing deeper, further, lower,
Below these sounds, their leavened downpour—
More potent than the lion, than the Books of Moses.
Closer, closer, your call is nearing, close—
Before the birth of the commandments,
Before beginnings—a strand of Oceania pearls,
Meek baskets of Tahitian women.
You, continent of song that punishes and cleanses,
By valleys of this thick and sturdy voice, approach!
These well-born daughters’s sweet-savage faces,
Aren’t worth your little finger, matriarch.
My time to go has yet to come:
I too accompanied the universe’s rapture,
The same way that the organ’s hum
Accompanies the woman’s song in sotto voce.

February 12, 1937

Rabbit

You be the fox and try to eat me. Find me hopping along in the snow and
come chase me, with bloodshot eyes.
         I’ll run. So you chase me. I sometimes turn back, make sure you’re
still there, and hop, hop. My heart leaps. My ears perk. I’m happy. That
you want me so. That you should be this devoted to chasing me.
         My ears catch your footsteps, your pulse, your growl. I hear your
heat rise, your sweat flying.
         Don’t you dare give up. Should the skin fall off your feet, or should
you trip on a tree stump, get up and keep chasing me. Imagine how good
my flesh tastes. Your first taste of prey in three days. My flesh is insanely
delicious.
         On a winter mountain.
         Covered in snow.
         We are hopelessly alone.
         I run.
         Chase me. You will probably catch me. I will cry as I laugh, laugh as
I cry, as you eventually catch up with me. You will pounce on me. With
warm paws. Rapid pulse. Pouring sweat. Your breath on my ear. I’ve
been waiting, for this moment, since one thousand years ago.
         You should bite hard into my neck. That’s my weak spot. A flurry
of white fur. Trickle of red blood. The snow is dirtied. The sky is near. I
have rainbows in my eyes, I smile lightly, take my last breath.
You know I’ve been waiting, for this moment, all this time.

Alice, Passing by the Visitations 

                           Dreams are predictive and mind sharing.  

                                                                         —Alice Notley 

Plants, dwarf plants
Asteroids & comets
Venus a rocky scorched landscape
Primordial’s last day              rubble
Arab moon                 a panopticon’s mainstay
invented newly named orbs more “north stars”
      wondering appointing worrying
animation toward a Queen of Pentacles
            our ghost wells and wheels
& enigma  :    our wares  :     voyages of the messenger
                   & heading north, beyond homelands
hands in the well
     When I asked her, serve, how?
A lily, a crystal orb?    
          she:   It would be permanent, I would write
as dreamed I might from desert those lovely things
forever
         primary.  …..language ….. somehow rams
             a winged oracle, as in a color wheel  
miracle, emanation
she:   You would feel this liberation in what I say
however crazy and insincere the ice moons
they are ever estranged
It was a cold night lost you in the heat
 A hymn of mourning that day that day’s
Lasting light, holding you though a far away form
All the long day long week …..body closer, come
far
Then            Dark
      threnody.  Of discipline and lamentation
 riffing the puns for any listening
  The Salon des Refuses
 (souls days on what the fuses say)
In the dream a cabinet of workers went weak
who wondered fate      locked in installation
felt one could just walk off    pay love to a breaker of taboos
in a foreign land, Moroccan where people make of wood
their whistle, their star at forehead, veiled, chiseled
        female emanation, the men sat and cried
 spiritual freedoms who cry “Chorus, chorus!”
with instrument of feminist prophecy
 Wings & horns. “Chorus, chorus!” come back
O Aliss.      
        Adept ever surrenders her love & imagination
lineament of other place
becomes a babe of the abyss for you
Ancient evenings you irk shape in words as creatures
Of desire
To break the shell of the body
To sit at her feet, now
Worship her ground
Only she walks upon

We made it so far within the Atomic Age,
families in fix of war
instill the walking sticks, once again
staffs of our vocality
vocabulary
old torch shedding light on our
shadows, nightmarket tonight
 Jemaa el-Fna
Under tents of generosity
               trills and whispers of mosque and nervous
eyes glitter in the dance,
        as if charmed by snakes
born to cut the quick of precarious nights that take such
              imagination eld                   most contemporary
A list of ancient muses fierce insights and passion
the opens garden and heresies and attachment
a topology of purr   opens our heads off
see who traverses the sky with a scrimshaw orchid!
the code of three orchids!  I thought maybe falcon
(it was owl some say came too)
                  open any book

—Anne Waldman, Huautla 8/25 

Notes: Poem for Alice 

I don’t want 
anything from you but I do I want
everything, a fan
you made [your love] [your words], I want
to be close to the book open
over my open broken rib like a tent flower heart a black dahlia bleeding love. you poet
taught me to cry [taught me to cry] for poems. To be in them [like that] not made things but
things living for me [to enter] and live. [to live.] I want you to live, like words, to leave this
world [freely, follow] the quiet yesterday hier light you know how, you. [you] don’t undo the
hierarchies you [live] [past them]. The best reality, you make it [what we need] you’re
making it. making it still even as you fly off [with the dead].
What things can I show you you don’t
already know

The buzz before her readings and the buzz in the East Village that Alice is in town.
St Mark’s church packed with generations of poets.
Her epic poems, like The Descent of Alette, which a hundred or so poets and
performers read at St. Marks’ church on Anti-Inauguration Day 2025.
Her lecture on Allen Ginsberg’s airplane poems and her argument that airplane
poems are a genre, along with a loving and intimate discussion of his work.
That she was bold enough to speak for the dead.
Ambition, not afraid of it.
Alice said that all of Emily Dickinson’s poems can be sung to the tune of The
Yellow Rose of Texas. Not sure if that’s a good thing to know, but it’s too late if you
are reading this.