i synth my finger across my phone screen
& watch the crane fly backwards, an echo

of yarrow, white as
a statue. next was white queer unfucking

themself : then rapture : then neon w/ holes.

in a clinic i will not tell the nurse
my name. my name,

in a dead language, means broad field.
then paradise. then fell.

a decade from now, we would have had words
to describe what looking at me

feels like. a time machine is a machine
for forgiveness. when the world is done

w/ us, i wld see u glint in her noise.

...

but i wanted to build
a natural thing :

meadow, chandelier, a twentieth century

of leather frontiered in lace. imagine
every countryside unwomanly

& sirens. the grass sobs : is sobbed across.

handcuff, white-gold, cross
-dresser:
linger here.

& who of us would be chorus elsewhere?
every mirror an aperture of we.

let me show u.

when i was a boy, i only spoke one language.
when i was a day, i licked its glass from the floor.

Georg Trakl died of cocaine all my life
The stories I was told replaced my life
My father’s father died when I was eight

The stories I was told about my father
He never showed up when I was born or showed up late
George Byron died of fever all my life

My father lived in Oregon then Brazil
With two new children and a dark-skinned wife
His father died when I was eight

He lived too far away to visit
My mother’s parents told me not to wait
George Moses Horton died of _____ all my life

My father’s family stole and did drugs and was black
His brother with a hammer or a knife
Murdered my father’s father I was eight

My mother’s parents knew you have to kill
The child with what you want the child to hate
Her kidneys killed George Eliot all my life
My father’s father died when I was eight

i put artificial
tears in my eyes
so the mascara
doesn’t run.

what does the
language of proof
afford.

lonely guys don’t
have girlfriends
so they build
them in their
basements.

this is nature.

i am nothing
more than:
the face
the dress
the important
bits.

i remember the
tall women and
water spraying
out my mouth
and nose.

i wonder, tonight,
burial of whose
golden bird.

alienation, like
the man to the
shower,
forecloses the
luxury of
loneliness which,
in turn, extends
it’s guilt as
alienation on
others.

there is nothing
west of this.

a woman ought
not be put
in the dative.

i was enhungered
and you
gave me meat.

“Oh, I wish I had died before this and was in oblivion, forgotten.”
—Mary giving birth, The Holy Qur’an

Truth be told, I like Mary a little better
when I imagine her like this, crouched
and cursing, a boy-God pushing on
her cervix (I like remembering
she had a cervix, her body ordinary
and so like mine), girl-sweat lacing
rivulets like veins in the sand,
her small hands on her knees
not doves but hands, gripping,
a palm pressed to her spine, fronds
whispering like voyers overhead—
(oh Mary, like a God, I too take pleasure
in knowing you were not all
holy, that ache could undo you
like a knot)—and, suffering,
I admire this girl who cared
for a moment not about God
or His plans but her own
distinct life, this fiercer Mary who’d disappear
if it saved her, who’d howl to Hell
with salvation if it meant this pain,
the blessed adolescent who squatted
indignant in a desert, bearing His child
like a secret she never wanted to hear.

My path is a cross of burning trees,
Lit by crows carrying fire in their beaks.
I ask the guardians of these lands for permission to enter.
I am a visitor to this history.
No one remembers to ask anymore, they answer.
What do I expect in this New England seaport town, near
the birthplace of democracy,
Where I am a ghost?
Even a casino can’t make an Indian real.
Or should I say “native,” or “savage,” or “demon”?
And with what trade language?
I am trading a backwards look for jeopardy.
I agree with the ancient European maps.
There are monsters beyond imagination that troll the waters.
The Puritan’s determined ships did fall off the edge of the
world . . .
I am happy to smell the sea,
Walk the narrow winding streets of shops and restaurants,
and delight in the company of friends, trees, and small
winds.
I would rather not speak with history but history came to me.
It was dark before daybreak when the fire sparked.
The men left on a hunt from the Pequot village here where I
stand.
The women and children left behind were set afire.
I do not want to know this, but my gut knows the language
of bloodshed.
Over six hundred were killed, to establish a home for God’s
people, crowed the Puritan leaders in their Sunday
sermons.
And then history was gone in a betrayal of smoke.
There is still burning though we live in a democracy erected
over the burial ground.
This was given to me to speak.
Every poem is an effort at ceremony.
I asked for a way in.