Home is the hodgepodge house,
the vacant lot beside it, the ailing
mango tree, the stingy coconut trees
with nobody left to climb them anyway.
Perhaps, you think, home could be this
continent with its confused seasons,
the roads that roll out in front of you,
limitless as the night sky. Home be this
small silence you curl into anywhere you go,
the one hovering in your chest beating
its fleshy time. This planet you scar
with too many clothes and plastic bags: home.
And where to run but everywhere?
What to weep for, but what is going,
somehow, to be gone?

Two women on a train
sit beside me.

I am young and the world
is flying and I am watching.

One of them is frosty.
The other turns like a leaf

to hand me something —
it looked for all the world like a page.

I thought at the time
that it needed me and I was right.

The letters fell into place
and simple flowers grew.

Now it talks unceasingly
in long white verses

as if at a wedding,
something women understand

and gently want and then regift.
I myself agree with Herbert,

who in a dark mood conjured
the mushrooms underfoot

unseen by bride or groom
and with him I say, Perhaps

the world is unimportant
after all, though this is not

what one discusses with
women on a train, no matter

how long the journey,
or untroubled the land.

I’ve been writing this since
the summer my grandfather
taught me how to hold a blade
of grass between my thumbs
and make it whistle, since
I first learned to make green
from blue and yellow, turned
paper into snowflakes, believed
a seashell echoed the sea,
and the sea had no end.

I’ve been writing this since
a sparrow flew into my class
and crashed into the window,
laid to rest on a bed of tissue
in a shoebox by the swings, since
the morning I first stood up
on the bathroom sink to watch
my father shave, since our eyes
met in that foggy mirror, since
the splinter my mother pulled
from my thumb, kissed my blood.

I’ve been writing this since
the woman I slept with the night
of my father’s wake, since
my grandmother first called me
a faggot and I said nothing, since
I forgave her and my body
pressed hard against Michael
on the dance floor at Twist, since
the years spent with a martini
and men I knew I couldn’t love.

I’ve been writing this since
the night I pulled off the road
at Big Sur and my eyes caught
the insanity of the stars, since
the months by the kitchen window
watching the snow come down
like fallout from a despair I had
no word for, since I stopped
searching for a name and found
myself tick-tock in a hammock
asking nothing of the sky.

I’ve been writing this since
spring, studying the tiny leaves
on the oaks dithering like moths,
contrast to the eon-old fieldstones
unveiled of snow, but forever
works-in-progress, since tonight
with the battled moon behind
the branches spying on the world—
same as it ever was—perfectly
unfinished, my glasses and pen
at rest again on the night table.

I’ve been writing this since
my eyes started seeing less,
my knees aching more, since
I began picking up twigs, feathers,
and pretty rocks for no reason
collecting on the porch where
I sit to read and watch the sunset
like my grandfather did everyday,
remembering him and how
to make a blade of grass whistle.

We leave while he sleeps.
In the slack-mouthed morning, we spit
on the doorhinge to soften its sound.
Every night my father falls
asleep with his hands wringing
the voice out of my throat. A blood-thin song
trickling out of my mouth. I drive
across two states, counting roadkill, recording
my speed in miles
per dead thing.
*
In Nevada, my mother can’t pay
for the motel, so we sleep at the bottom
of the empty swimming pool, hunger
carving our collarbones into deep
bowls. On every table in my father’s house, a bowl
of fruit: dragon’s eyes, red papaya, green
mango. He plunges his thumb into the tender
pulse of a pit, chews for hours. To make the sweetness
last, he said, you must 切开, 吃多. He smiles with rubbled
teeth, cavities clean as bulletholes. Asleep, he’s still as a shot
& skinned animal. I pet his head, each hair black & needle
-thick enough to draw blood. Once, I found
a single honeyed strand. He joked he was dyeing
into a tiger, black & orange, the color
of a bruise forgetting its ache.
*
Some days, every hurt
feels like the first. Today crows
fall out of the sky & the ground stinks
of surrendered flight. Today I tear off
my clothing like scabs, walk naked
in public. In California, my first fatherless
home is infested with beehives
vibrating walls into muscle. Before bed,
I imagine bees laying eggs in my marrow,
waking up as a pool of stung honey. In the house
we left, my father is still
asleep, blanketed in bees.
His body the sweetest feast. I carry him
in my mouth like a fist
of sugar. I suck
until my teeth riot
with rot & I have nothing
left in my mouth to keep
quiet.