Corpuscle satellites of the blood a thief’s missing science wings harvested from demons’ backs death’s first refusal cherrybone mad dash through a beautiful woman’s vein the body’s half- a-million prayers minion and slave fatboys gorged on swindled strawberries ! we are happy you fall from the favor of gods Poem Beginning with a Woman Holding a Kiss in Her Hands I have to put this down and give it to you later and that’s how she leaves for Paris to spend some weeks with a handsome European except she doesn’t really say that to me she just leaves for she speaks five languages and mathematics and smells like ilang-ilang and writes poems – good ones – about the way the spirit plunges through a body and she takes beautiful pictures and almost always is herself beautiful especially in New York where everyone is a picture of something else but she is her own especially when she mates me in chess twice and again when the stranger who takes my seat to play for me loses to her too and again when she doesn’t put down that dragonfly she holds in her hand and again when she does and she does in the end say to me no uncertain goodbye Good Boys We prayed she would come back even if a little bruised or unable to hold out her hands in front of her We just prayed for her to come back We prayed our father wouldn’t beat us wouldn’t find out we had burned our own hands Prayed that bastard would get struck by a car We prayed for smooth stones to skip across the shit smelling pond We prayed at school to white saints Prayed for the budding rose on our wrists Prayed kneeling on uncooked rice And when we began to cry we prayed we would learn to stop – and we did We prayed to bread and basketballs We prayed the Italian girls would kiss us again But we barely prayed aloud We prayed under the spectacle of light through smoke Prayed the way we sweat – at night clutching a pillow like it was someone else’s girl between our thighs We prayed and prayed and when God finally came we called him out by name and he promised to give us everything we wanted only if we’d ask for it all again About Half-way Through a Cross-Country Drive for Jon Wei I sometimes wonder if the last unfamiliar place I enter will be Seattle or Bryce Canyon or Kansas City or L.A. but it won’t be L.A. because I’ve been there many times and emerged hardly a little sore in the throat It is one of two American cities where I have fallen in love When I am done with all this I will have stood at the exact midpoint between the poles of my heart both of them the beginning of love For that is the last strange place I think I’ll enter I am often afraid that love is changed or that I am changed or that longing is changed Just Wait Wait I say And of course it doesn’t But my heart is loosening in three distinct places of this country (I’ve marked the atlas as many times) Two of them are places where I have fallen out of misery The other is where I am where I always am which is the gorgeous terrifying unfamiliar I tell you I have listened a long time for the cracked clarions of a nation that someone else adores daniw ti laoag adda ili diay uneg ti pusok ket adut' tattao sadiay. diak ammo ti nagnagan da amin, ngem ammok nga adda da. agbiag da sadiay. agtrabaho da sadiay. agbartek da met. mang-mangan da ti inabraw a naimas. ket dida amin ammo ti nagan ko. dida maawatan ti pagsasaok nga amerikano. dida met ammo dagidi pam-panunot ko idi natay ni inang ko ket kasla tudo idi maysa nga aldaw ket kasla init ti sabali nga aldaw. kasdiay ti biag, haan? denggen yo: adut' mapaspasamak ng adayo. no agsapul ak idiay ili diay uneg ti pusok, no nalaing ak a dumngeg iti kan-kanta da, baka ammok ti aweng ti bang-es iti lallakay, uray ti karkararag iti ubbing uray ti saraisi iti karayan a nalemmeng. (agtagtagari pay dagidiay calsada da!) ibagakto kadakayo manen: no nalaing ak nga agsapul diay ili nga adda idtoy uneg ti pusok, baka ammok ti tim-timek da -- baka ammok kadi ti tim-timek yo. adda gayam ili diay uneg ti pusok, ket uray ania ti lugar ti ayan ko adda kayo amin – diay ili, idtoy puso – kaniak. |