Poems

The House on the Hill

They are all gone away,

The House is shut and still,

There is nothing more to say.

voyage, oh voyage!

voyage, oh voyage!

the final fire that ravages the air

unveils the soil on which

we walk aimlessly

and tirelessly

the hypocrisy of the strong protects us

My Brother at 3 A.M.

He sat cross-legged, weeping on the steps

when Mom unlocked and opened the front door.

         O God, he said. O God.

Pan Dulce

My niece calls me from my brother-in-law’s phone

While I’m getting ready to wash dishes. I pick up.

She says she needs to talk to her grandfather.

I tell her that her grandfather just went to sleep,

In Jerusalem

In Jerusalem, and I mean within the ancient walls,

I walk from one epoch to another without a memory

to guide me. The prophets over there are sharing

the history of the holy ... ascending to heaven

So, we’ll go no more a roving

So, we’ll go no more a roving

So late into the night,

Though the heart be still as loving,

Application Form

Please read all the instructions carefully before proceeding.

Use only permanent blue or black ink.

If you have special needs that require accommodation,

please explain.

America (I’m Putting My Queer Shoulder to the Wheel)

The night America took off her mask

we slept together poorly. I'd woken up early

that Tuesday, dragged myself to a gymnasium

in Jersey City to cast my vote into the void.

One Art

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;

so many things seem filled with the intent

to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Between Strangers

Stranger, who can measure the distance between us?

Distance is the rumor of a never-before-seen sea.

Distance the width of a layer of dust.

Maybe we need only strike a match

for my world to flicker in your sky,

juxtaposition with seeds

i thought you were gone / stupid bird / darling worms shifting in the mud / this time i am not so certain / is it kinship or are you gloating? / have i grown bitter with the bees / how they bring the blooms reliably?

Constellations

There's a general presumption that rhyme is an affair of

two. Most expected are, of course, end-rhymes in formal

structures—ABAB, etc., but even thinking more loosely,

Through Time and Bitter Distance

Unknown to you, I walk the cheerless shore.

The cutting blast, the hurl of biting brine

May freeze, and still, and bind the waves at war,

Ere you will ever know, O! Heart of mine,

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,

And Mourners to and fro

Kept treading — treading — till it seemed

Love (III)

Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back,

Guilty of dust and sin.

But quick-ey’d Love, observing me grow slack

World Town

Entirely windless, today’s sea; of these waters’ many names

the best seemed “field-of-pearl-leaves,” for it smelled like the air

in the house he built entirely of doors: pink school door,

Nocturne

It turns out there wasn't a door, so she stood looking at the wall, and then

at the ground, and then again at the wall, and then about the sky. The sky

was doorless, which was comforting, especially at night, when she could

Women Do This Every Day

Hotel Centrale, Rotterdam

I am awake between stiff

sheets tonight in room thirty

four, listening to the heat

My Idea of the Circus Is My Idea of the Circus Otherwise Known As: My Mother Was a Celebrated Stunt Motorcyclist, Vietnam, 1958 to 1962

Very loud    a mad frenzy    The wooden

barrel she rode would have roared

(I first wrote “road”)

Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes

’Twas on a lofty vase’s side,

Where China’s gayest art had dyed

The azure flowers that blow;

I’ll Teach You Cree

with the tip of my spring tongue, ayîki 

your mouth will be the web

catching apihkêsis words,

Come Up From the Fields Father

Come up from the fields father, here’s a letter from our Pete,

And come to the front door mother, here’s a letter from thy dear son.

Lo, ’tis autumn

The Snow-Storm

Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,

Arrives the snow, and, driving o’er the fields,

Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air

La Figlia che Piange

O quam te memorem virgo...

Stand on the highest pavement of the stair —

Lean on a garden urn —

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Guanahani, 11

like the beginnings — o odales o adagios — of islands

from under the clouds where I write the first poem

its brown warmth now that we recognize them

Mantra of No Return

my mother occupies the passenger seat. my brother and i

                     stick in the back.

We Are Surprised

Now, we take the moon

into the middle of our brains

so we look like roadside stray cats

with bright flashlight-white eyes

in our faces, but no real ideas

of when or where to run.

Doña Josefina Counsels Doña Conceptión Before Entering Sears

Conchita debemos to speak totalmente in English

cuando we go into Sears okay     Por qué

Porque didn’t you hear lo que pasó     It say

on the eleven o’clock news anoche que two robbers

The Charge of the Light Brigade

I.

Half a league, half a league,

Half a league onward,

Solitude

Laugh, and the world laughs with you;

Weep, and you weep alone;

For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,

To an Athlete Dying Young

The time you won your town the race

We chaired you through the market-place;

Man and boy stood cheering by,

They Flee From Me

They flee from me that sometime did me seek

With naked foot, stalking in my chamber.

I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek,

Conversion

sam says you can’t name your book good boys without a dog

but sam doesn’t know that i am the dog

i am the ultimate mutt and i am telling him this story

Catastrophe That Nearly Brought Down a Plane

After late-night Li Bo,

on a plane to Houston, out of sheer intumescence

I begin unravelling a sickness bag—

starting with the wired throat,

then the pleated sides, then bottom.

From Verso 4

I was nine and I stood at the top of the street for no reason except to make the descent of the gentle incline toward my house where I lived with everyone and everything in the world, my sisters and my cousins were with me, we had our bookbags…

Adam Posed

Could our first father, at his toilsome plow,

Thorns in his path, and labor on his brow,

Clothed only in a rude, unpolished skin,

The Chimney Sweeper: A little black thing among the snow

A little black thing among the snow,

Crying “weep! ‘weep!” in notes of woe!

“Where are thy father and mother? say?”

Enigma

Who I am

depends on which side of my skin

you stand on.

In here

it’s all neurons firing

synapses telling stories

blood tracing ancestral histories

races blending in veins