The unthinkable

tastes like the peak of a fable, rolled around in

my beautiful mouth like anise, a cold syrup

pooling at the base of my throat, spreading across my collarbone.

Whose hand is this, linking with mine?

Whose voice is this, whispering in my ear, asking me

to pray? I've forgotten too many of you

to keep track of anymore.

Outside, I feel the earth binding itself, ribs knitting, scabs

sugaring over the wounds. The oak doors are seven hundred years old,

the woman tells me; it is late at night, and very cold

and the cathedral is a stone mountain pressing down on us.

I hadn't meant to stop here, I almost feel the need to tell her this.

What brings you here tonight, she asks, and I suppose for a moment

she is a nun, sent out to fetch the lost souls of the night.

It is my birthday, I answer, as if this explains anything.

Many returns of the day,

she says.

Yes. I say. Yes. and thank you.

She leaves when the bells begin to toll, and I shiver

at being alone.

Carved granite faces stare down. I feel a hand on my shoulder,

turn, gasp and roll my eyes.

Heat down the back of my neck.

A stitch bursts. Somewhere a rock rolls down a hillside.

The bell rings itself out, the city sleeps on, ignorant.

Deep breath now, and the cold sliding up my calves through my shoes.

Pray? That's your advice?

Well, I've heard worse. Pick a god, then.

I was eleven years old when a grown man told me I was beautiful

and it all went downhill after that. But it was like sunshine,

like a wheatfield in the summer, the coast nearby and filling the air with

the idea of

brine and slippery things. Yes, I could have laid down in the field

among the stalks of wheat, hidden. I know that now. I could have even filled my pockets and gone home and made bread

and sat in a chair in front of the oven and felt the warmth of created things, of

handcraft and earth. Something at the back of the tongue, sticky,

salty, will not go down. Instead I stood and waited for the colors of names of god

to swirl about me like a cloak, wrap me like loving arms, lead me past walls

of stone into a circle of people who also feel the blood of the earth

coursing in underground veins, and light at all hours

and whose voices sang in the endless blackness between stars, calling or praying

to the god of being listened to for once,

to the god of a peaceful and loving family of your own choosing,

to the god of remaining small and overlooked,

to the god of finally, dear god, getting something I want,

to the god of knowing better next time.

Love twisting like a hand around a shepherd's crook,

the fangs of forgiveness sunk deep and drinking,

the throat choked with

almost words.

The smell of bread, of cold wet stone,

licorice.

Does this maudlin paint

give me an air of vitality? of bargaining? Cheating?

On the phone all day, learning about

health insurance benefits; be simple, be easy my heart.

This, the last, dead week of the year,

where everyday feels like Sunday evening

rattles the frame of the window looking out on the canal. I

cough

the name of someone I used to love, or who loved me,

I can't really remember; last spring they found a body

in that flow

just below my window and for

week I could not sleep.

Angle my face in the mirror

just the right way, and I could be floating in grey water.

Sometimes I would sit on the balcony and play the concertina

and the woman across the canal would play her spinet.

We would keep time

with the great kick drum, tossed into the cavity under

the broken ribs of the earth

and stitched back together with our human heartbeats and this

is why every man and woman and child

has a song in them, even if they ignore it.

But we have never met each other.

The glass is cold against my cheek, the hot is on the other

side of my skull, burning outward.

Smudge on my fingers, cheek, under my eyes.

The room is cold, with the windows open, sweat still

slithers down my spine, a frozen coin down its slot.

Look at this face, lined now and still young somehow;

I'm cruelly vain, this I cannot bear.

Something, the vent or a car outside, spits my name

and I sit up, head swimming, blood sloshing,

my mouth filling with copper.

One of these Sunday evenings this week I will take a hammer and

drive a nail into my molars

and then everything will be

as it should be

like that day in 1916 when more than 800 people from all over the world

claimed to have seen Charles Chaplin at the exact same moment in the flesh.

Later, his body was stolen from its grave. How are these two

things connected? At the pharmacy, the girl showed me how to put the drops

under the tongue instead. God bless her, god bless the nurses and

the morticians.

I should pack a bag and go to see the Northern Lights

but then I think, Dying in Norway? what a queen.

All these thoughts need to be collected, is what they tell you

as the road runs out. Why can't I just

blather on into the fog and let my parents and my friends and former loves -

and current ones, if there are such -

hear what they want to hear, this is the final mercy, I think. Ambiguity.

Remember what you want, because it's all true. I am everywhere, my body is stolen.

Sure, maybe I sing to myself at times

and why should I not try a little

tenderness

after all.

My name is gone, swallowed up in the cold air.

I would stand up, go to the window, look for it.

Why would I do that? There is nothing

out there.

So

I am going to die, they said.

What do I do with this information?

Barefoot on the cobblestones, the Mediterranean

filling my lungs, I stagger and nearly trip

on the streetcar rails.

It's the middle of the night, there's no traffic,

but pretty girls just park where they want to

anyway

and I sink to the ground with my back against

the passenger door of a white Peugeot

and sob until a stray cat emerges

from the haze at the edge of my eyes

and stands watching me.

Somewhere behind me is a fountain,

burbling water falling on marble, it sounds like a woman's voice-

not just a woman, but a mother-

a mother's voice, singing to a baby awakened in the

night

by some incomprehensible terror.

Well, some nights are like that.

When I was a kid I would have recurring dreams of being on a boat

on a vast ocean, all alone, nothing but the sea forever on all sides and the sun burning overhead and a thick white rope coiled around my hands and wrists and forearms. Nothing would happen, no storm or shipwreck. I would just drift, until I woke up.

The atoms of the human structure, the synaptical architecture

miles and miles of nerves and veins

an unending expanse that one day has an end.

A bicycle zips past, a boy pedaling carefully over the rutted cobbles,

a girl clamped to his back, laughter.

It scares the cat, who scampers away into the dark.

My bones are hollow, I am a bird,

I vomit worms for my nonexistent children.

To remain silent is a lie, but what do I do now,

when the boys gather in their buzzcuts and their veined arms

and scream Viva la muerte

without a hint of irony?

This day has no night,

the boundaries are pushed back to beyond

what can be counted up.

What will even matter, in the end, when we reach the final

barrier? Reach out your

arms as wide as they will go, and I will stand beside you

and do the same; our fingertips will touch, we will be

an unbroken unity of form.

(There shall be peace in the land)

A river turns in oxbows, nearly kissing it's own back

and carving through green fields, but always in the same

direction.

(I should have told you I could live without you,

but I don't want to.)

The concertina collapses, the ends rush together, meeting with a

click, a sorrow of air.

The sun is motionless overhead, evening will not come nor dawn,

we will never see the stars or the moon, the distant winking Venus

or angry Mars. It is enough, to be denied the heavens, to be drawn back

from the edges of finite space and time to this one time and space.

A hand within a hand, secretly, under the table where no one

can see,

but surely they can all see the radiating light that is bursting and pulsing

from my chest like a newborn star, fed on the touch, the boundary finally

broken.

We are each a secret

we are each to be denied to all but the other. This is mine, we both say in our

heads, at the same time, to ourselves.

Do not let me go

is written across the sky of this new world

and we will be brave

and explore together, willful as children, fearful and adamant.

And the days remain days, even when the dark comes; thought is an egg,

held dear and protected within (I still think of you, even after all this time)

the hard iron cage of the body, which unlocked at this touch,

the hard iron fist around the heart

loosened one finger

and breathing was no longer automatic, but a conscious labor.

We sat side by side on the bus, each trembling.

We will write numbers on the backs of our hands,

on the pale fishbellies of the undersides of our forearms.

We will love each other, amateurs of war.

The sun moved forward, a molten drop falls into place,

the first of what will become,

in time,

the barrier.

But we love each other in daylight, and moonlight is merely

the sun reflected,

so there is no night, no night not ever, really.

There are beautiful things in the sadness,

else why does woe, woe and ever mourning

and sounds of a boys' choir sting and stab

at unseen wounds, known but forgotten?

a gate opens, and music, birdsong,

we were never warriors the way we should have been

but this is our Valhalla; we enter like the gods

who never paid for the walls, who never feel

the bite of iron in the back, just the dampness

of the blood and

leave the gates open behind, because whatever

could hurt us now

but each other?

It is always twilight, the edges of things are always obscure;

there is a shape, indistinct, on all sides, above and below;

the edges we don't see

cut

so softly

I thought it was a kiss;

when it was over the heat lingered

like my name on a breath

exhaled in the cold night, drifting up toward the moon.

Dissipating, finally gone, high above the roofs,

drifting over walls,

through leaves, like a memory finally released,

turning sparkling folding over itself,

and the bells ring in the morning and the birds leap from the branches

and the sky is high and the rich shall have their ice in summer

and the poor shall have their ice in winter

and the water will flow over and over and on

and they will close the gates

and say themselves, yea at last we are free at last we know solace

and then and then-

Is there sea?

Is there the water within, to cool, to soothe?

Ash orange, bitter, the bite and grit of breath,

the scrape down the throat, everywhere dry,

everywhere the hot heat of hate,

boiling

from seven fires in a man's back

boiling

from a knee on another man's neck.

Breathing, burning, fists upraised; the air is not air

just acid gas smoke scream cry anger;

filth is a film upon the skin, it coats the lungs and keeps

the right words from being spoken.

Tar and fog and is there rain enough, when the matches kill you

in your sleep

and go again? Sometimes when you walk, you slip

along a clean clear line,

but now we walk blind and fall and there are many hands

to hold us down.

When it comes, it will be everywhere and

all at once.

On the windowsill,

a radio has been left on, softly leaking static

into the kitchen. Outside

the tram rolls by and rattles the teacup in its saucer.

Rain pitters on the window, through the nude branches

of elms and plane trees, and I watch their runnels down the pane.

Two crows fight over a chicken bone on the railing of the balcony,

their forms blurry and rounded.

There is still time. There is still time

to do many things.

In that case, how long have I been sitting here listening to static?

Minutes are consumed, by the eyes, the lungs;

syllables become a colossus bestriding the world.

I wake up and the sea has frozen over,

the waves like the ridges of a fallow field,

gulls swooping and calling through a vast

and spreading blue, a blue like a colony,

like love in a violent age;

the answers coming back off the face of the ice,

almost a foreign language, almost incomprehensible,

a thing not completely unrecognizable and so

not able to be ignored; what is this music within

the signal? It sounds endless, like a bell

ringing to the end of the universe, a long note

expanding in all directions at once.

The eyes beneath the sea, eyes overhead, passing through air

and stars, seeing the growth of things

buried, folded over by the plow; our hands plow

the rich black ground and blood comes up, tendrils

filaments ganglion, tortured things born of torture,

born of good intentions; brought up into the light,

into the breath of sky and sun, to wither to grown stronger to sprout new

invasion. Reaching and grasping, breaking the surface,

a desperation like combat, rhythm out of step out of sequence,

the last first just as it was foretold,

and a great and fathomless forgetting, knowing that something

is being forgotten, the knowledge of it precise and empty,

a vessel to be filled, never to be filled.

Plains, like glaciers or the craters and canyons of other planets,

open unobstructed ever-onward to the line where they become

something else, something bounded and so vulgar, mundane.

Ice cracking, something rolls and shifts.

There is a blinking blue light that never stops, the telephone in

its cradle, the tea in the teacup cold, everything falling into

place, slotting together like geometry,

a line down the middle of eternity, or just my own portion of it,

down the middle of my good intentions,

my bitter fruit,

the sunshine and my golden skin, numb the body the phantom limb-

mouths and geometry again, fitting and parting and fitting,

a sky overhead, a forest deep and black at my back always,

the undergrowth teeming with heedless eyes and lungs and

coiling plans, cunning tongues. I saw an osprey once, slicing

across the field of my vision, right to left, like an arrow bisecting

sight; my head remained fixed, did not turn to follow its flight,

and my lashes came together like the church and its people

and I slept in pale arms.

Shedding time, like skin, skin is time, our cells are increments of

existence. A needle, a thread to stitch them back,

the gears of a watch spread out on a tabletop, swept into the palm

of my hand, tossed into my mouth like pills,

washed down with cold tea.

Thunder frightens the crows away, dropping the bone to the street below.

It falls and never hits the ground, the distance constantly

halved, until there is no space no falling thing no ground

only mathematics, only a music made of numbers and the absence of

sound, of long flatboats carrying wine-filled amphorae

and papyrus scrolls. Skin floating on water, water sloughing into ears,

mouth, nose, pulling, the faint resistance, the sense that the sea

is filled with a greater gravity than the land;

stepping onto the beach, tall grass, dolmen, a gleaming white

superstructure, endless the things I do not know,

but there is time, still time left, still

time left to learn all the things I should have known all along,

like the calls of the birds,

or the names of the flowers outside my window.

Someone

painted the mirror black, pulled the curtain over

and unplugged the lamp on the nightstand.

The bed is empty, the sheets rucked and twisted,

the shadowed dents in the pillow

little points of annihilation I am unable to look away from.

The sound of water in the pipes; I close my eyes and it becomes

a stream, the creek down the small hill in the backyard,

past the briar and fern, the muddy bank we used to

slide down on bare bottoms into the shocking chill

of the water, then run back up it slipping and stumbling,

grabbing at each other's ankles and waists to pull

ourselves down into the mud again, to slide again

into the creek and clean ourselves only to race up again;

at the top of the bank, we could see the top of this house

over the arches of blackberry, far at the other end of the lawn,

fading yellow paint and white trim, a Mansard roof,

the oriel window behind which is this bed.

Once, a strangling vine was looped around my ankle;

we were laughing too hard, I couldn't stand up for the mud,

for the trapping tug of the green grip, our bodies naked and

filthy (I had mud in my hair, my mother's chagrin crashed against

her light heart and shattered; she laughed as she drew the bath for us)

writhing, not even trying to stand, now just seeing how absolutely

dirty we could make ourselves. Finally the vine snapped and we both

tumbled, arms grasping each other like trying to embrace a pillar

of oil, head over hip straight into the water, plunging beneath

the surface, the shock we should have expected forcing our mouths

open, the creek flowing straight into us, over us, tearing the mud

from our skin and sloughing it away downstream,

scouring our throats and then each of us pulling the other up

to the daylight, to air, laughing and coughing the creek back

into itself. We helped each other up the slick bank this time,

still falling but no longer wallowing, my hands pushing the

small of your back, your hands pulling my wrists, finally to the top

of the bank; we looked back at the creek, then at the house ahead,

walked forward through the brambles, thorns pricking our

gooseflesh like a slavecatcher's goad. We ran, barefeet crushing

the dead grass underfoot, little blades of tan straw sticking

to our shins and heels, beneath the scalding sun that baked

the mud to our bodies like armor, to the porch and into the kitchen,

where my mother turned from the stove to see two naked, muddy

boys and wrung her hands as her eyes slid up to the ceiling.

Don't move, you two, she mock-scolded and went to the cellar,

dragging up the stairs a large zinc tub, filling the whole house

with an unholy clatter. But we've spent all day in the water,

I had tried telling her, but you two laughed against me and she filled

the tub and shooed us in. The brambles scratches stung in the hot water,

I saw you wince; our bodies disappeared in the water, our legs slithering

against each other like eels. Later, sitting on the edge of this bed,

looking at our reflection in the now-black mirror, watching me watch myself

and you laying on your back reading a book, I felt a small stab and lifting

my shirt found a thorn in my side, just above my hipbone, and instead

of pulling it out, I pushed it in deeper and watched the scarlet trickle of blood

run down to the waistband of my underwear; I looked up and saw you

watching me and I was suddenly very ashamed and I stood to leave.

You reached out and said my name and I turned back, and

this empty bed yawned and the blackness between stars swallowed us both.

Teeth,

teeth like snow, wet in the light.

Haven't you heard it's bad luck to see someone

smile in the dark? Or hearing bells

underwater? Lights and music in a forest?

I fell asleep on the bus to Newburyport,

where I was going to have sex for money,

my backpack wedged between my shins,

my head on the shoulder of a woman

who looked like my aunt, lolling and bouncing

as the road rucked and thumped beneath us.

The bus slowed and stopped and I lurched forward,

awake. I got up, got off, no idea where I was.

A little town, brick main street, war memorial park,

a diner- my back hurt, my shoulders ached, my neck

throbbed from sleeping on a stranger's shoulder.

The bus drove by, chugging, black exhaust a hot cloud

around me, the woman who looked like my aunt

waving. I waved back, the bus made a right and drove on.

The diner was almost empty, and three old men at the counter

looked up as I came in, gave me the once over, and went back

to talking about the government.

I sat at at table by the window and ordered coffee and drank it,

spending my last $5 and asking the waitress if I could wash dishes

or clean the storeroom for her, and so for the next six hours I worked

in the diner and talked to the old men who came and went and

waitress split her tips with me and as I was leaving I asked

Which way is Newburyport? and she pointed one way

and I walked the other.

(In a small room, she says, You're a good thing gone awry,

and instead of answering I kiss the outline of her mouth that I can see

vaguely in the darkness beside me, a small oval in the pale round of her face.

I feel her smile against my lips, and I pull away, shutting my eyes, because

I am nervous of happy things I cannot see. I roll over, her arms snake around me,

her breath on my back, her lips on the nape of my neck. I lie still, waiting

for my luck to change.)

Hours later, sore, standing in a scalding hot shower,

pink swirling down the drain,

I remind myself I need to call my aunt,

to say hello,

to say how, sweet lord, have you been?

i'm trying to get a check cashed;

for fuck's sake all I want is this $27 and jesus god why

is everything hard the line is not moving, i feel like i've

been standing in the same place, growing roots, for days

i feel a tingle in my fingertips am i going to sprout a leaf

i almost say to the man in front of me but i don't because

i have a great fear of speaking to strangers, are we not all strangers, do we any of us know ourselves much less another

the man behind me wanting his $27 or whatever the hell

anyone wants

didn't you used to be, aren't you-

well in another life maybe yes, yeah i thought that was you, i thought i

recognized you, whatever happened to-

jesus christ when will this line move, i've got to get this money to Reseda

before three look at that security guard, do you think if i emptied my account

and gave it to him he'd shoot everyone but me so i can get to the counter

sweet fucking god it's hot too, i'm not looking forward to the drive

maybe i can - no i cannot

sweat slides down between my shoulder blades down the trench of my spine

deep breath hold hold hold

what sorry i wasn't listening

{Listening is an act of love. Who do you love, who loves you?

The street comes up to meet you, asphalt kiss on your whiskey lips.

How many times have you said, I'm doing the best I can- screamed it

wept it, vomited it - always knowing you're not even close to doing your best?

A bus stop bench, sitting beside a veteran who sleeps there most nights; we are sharing

a bottle of something, talking

They're trying to kill me, he whispered between chugs,

Yes, but they're trying to kill all of us, don't think you're special.

I fell asleep beside him, waking when the 122 pulled up and the driver opened the

door to yell at us.

I walk into the soft moon white the hard hot black of the ground the warm blade of the night's breath the sparkle of lights the blankness between, one shoe clomp one foot bare This is going to be my year, again, my hair is in my eyes the median strip is a jungle so I lay down again this oasis this emerald surrounds enfolds where am i going to get what i need, where am i going to get such simple love

where did i get the idea that love is simple that love is listening that love is a green

embrace as cars race past on either side, hurtling through the midnight the one a.m.

the predawn everyone going home to loving arms and loving beds or pretending

just as well pretending love is love and it is all we need

the 122 goes right to Reseda, the stars in their courses swirl overhead, i pull grass up

with my knuckles, by the time i sit up there is a baseball sized divot beside me, the traffic

is dead i can taste the sea in my lungs i will lie here and wait to be killed i will lie here

and wait to be raped i will lie here and listen because i love

a car goes by a song pulsing from the open window i know this one, i know this one, it goes like this-}

i was distracted could you repeat that

one step two almost there the grille the marble counter the date on little black tiles

the check balled up in my sweating palm

the date on little black tiles this is going to be my year

the hum in my chest the sweat the brightness at the edge of my vision

everything is bright and glorious me most of all

it is just money it is just $27 why can't it just be the song from the window of

a passing car, why can't, why

always why and never how or who

already always walking away passing the guard

already always almost lunging

already always almost grasping almost on the ground now almost looking up

but what is there to see please just take it please just do what i cannot do

please just

make this my year