—love is dead. The slow

red rush, & in the absence of love we

raise steel walls

& castanet airs to dance

by. Love is gone

& all tenderness faded,

& in its place castles of knowing

in which we

pass our time from

hand to hand.

Hands which once pressed

earth into the shape of men & earth

into bowls for holding

nothing but sound, between sound

silence, melodic, & if dissonance

then beauty in dissonance as well, but always

the bowl,

shaped by hands,

made of earth & music

for lovers to dance by, & when the age

of dancing passed, to mourn by, & the when the age

of mourning passed, to burn

& lie in death.

if i begin to say i want this

to be the part of my body that touches

yours and i want the music in the next room

to stop

outside u-hauls move lives

the exact science of this is the science of moving whole

lives from one point to another as if life is a heavy shell on your back as if the only

point of my body is the one it makes when it shuts you in a dark room

called sex

is it your eyes i ask is it your eyes

things that are born and live in darkness (sea caves)

going to the next room and hoping you follow i say don’t fuck with the kid

who brought a gun back from easter holidays

don’t fuck

around i sleep but i only sleep around you

your body caught inside the curl of mine like a whisper as the sun waxes and wanes

late afternoon (we have come so far)

the sanctity fuck it the sanctity of life although i do not sanction

life i broke that fence but on this side of the century there are no sacred places

left there is no sanctity

no one listens to the music in the next room as i struggle to stay awake

clean thru to sunrise to see the new light examining the plane and scape of your face or as

i wait sober at the bar to know if it is me you think of home with

mostly or if night by night you carry your life with you as turtles do

(without asking i want nothing more than this)

as a turtle you do you are a bright thing born to darkness you are like birds’ nests thrashed

from trees in a hard rain or turtles’ eggs washed out to sea

if i begin to say but do not say that i will miss you do you hear it

do you listen in your sleep as i brush the light back from your face (your face)

bright thing as hard to look upon as the sun

as hard to leave as time behind

as hard to go as hard to go

in the west covina walmart / the city

dimming dark as blackberries / your voice

sweat-damp / in the shimmer

of the frozen foods aisle / i am still

happy / i have been writing

and the sound of the gulls / melancholy

in the harbor / does not enter me

i do not / have friends

who hanged themselves / i do not

have notes / i tell you this because there is

a funeral tomorrow / and all my clothes

have turned to paper / so i am

writing you (i hope) / for polyester

on my knees beneath / a streetlight

the sun a memory / as thin as white sand

i sell it by the handful / here is

august in a saltshaker / will you taste it

here is / last summer if you

remember it at all / i remember

it was my hand with roses / it was my hand

these were the roses / your eyes in the sun

drawn soft as petals / your lashes

brushing the curve of your cheek / my hand

with roses / inside your hair

i buy a truckful of august / to give you

in bursts / until your mouth tastes of salt

your skin when i kiss you / even

the skin where your legs meet / where i

find my hand with / roses

in the marina i am haunted / i am

haunted by the darkness / of stormwater

of rain / of your breath on

the side of my neck / and if it hardens

into snow / if i harden it is for you

when you fall sublime as snow / i am

still happy / i fill your face in blue

even if it is / only a shadow i see

only the vague / outline of a woman

i capture / instead of you

and again it is later / again i do not see you

again your number goes / to voicemail

and again i know where you are / bird-soft

your voice / the sun setting

in the window / of your half-bath

the privacy of a tub / filled not with water

but with cleaning supplies / i hold you

you hold / the shower curtains shut

the music dimming / dark as blackberries

dark as your eyes in the / part-light

slow-crawling across the tile / near flight

LAX in the moonlight / grounded

at midnight / you kick snow

from where the streetcars / used to run

and i touch your face / in the haunting dark

as if it is strange / as if you are a stranger

there is a funeral tomorrow / do you

remember / it is yours

i will wear my big white plastic suit / i will

write to you / would you like that

the streets are moving / they turn to water

here is the moon and here is a river / remember

how the river rings / remember to ask for

your mail / before you go home

remember i know / how your ears fold

back against your head / and i have kissed you

there / (am i the only one)

the surface of the snow / black as carbon

in your hair / i am still happy

to be in love with you / though i love

an ever-girl / and i am still writing

as if you’ll hear it / as if your ears are deep

and i am diving / headfirst through cold water

the bay high-tiding / after the storm

your voice haunting in the dark / the narrow

dark / i am void of starlight

i will wear my big white plastic suit / lie in

bed for days / as the gulls begin

to congregate around me / i tell them that

the funeral is not here / california

does not see the rain / instead the storms

pour out a haunting dark / over santiago, santiago

all your white shirts grey with rain / where

the canyons split / the soft earth

to show skin / pale as spring leaves

pale as the stars in their sky-quiver / the night

june-soft and trembling / a summer

not yet drained of salt / and so i kiss it

from your neck / or so i say

for valentina, 1999-2020.

& even in the motion

of moonlight on the reservoir, even

reflection, the sink mirror

showing half of someone else's

face, even in the scree

that tumbles down from off

the freeway, even running, even

in stars, even in adelaide

& even in december, with this

summer sun as thin as dust, the air so

heavy with the smell of stars, but

even in stars, even in writing,

even in the tide rolling facedown

past the bait shop, even

your mother, framed grey in the

doorway of your childhood

bedroom, even floodwater, even

in stars, even at home

& even in dusk, when i am

looking in your window again, even

in the glare of headlights, once, twice,

the bottle shop eight blocks away,

even hesitation, the smell of

smirnoff on your breath, the smell

of stars, even then, even i flower

in amber tones, copper plate camera,

the white creek running through

your backyard, even in drought, even

in stars, even in storm

& even in the warm light

of your eyes, caught in amber (god)

if caught in amber, then even

your eyes, green eyes, the warm sigh

of your hands, even ash, even in

the mausoleum, even seven years, you

start the music playing, unfold

the corner of the duvet, even in stars,

a memory of your smile, a small

reminder of your shoulder, shoulder,

i chase you on & off the freeway,

listen to the music, even your laugh,

even in stars, even the amber

moon as it writes love songs on

the reservoir, even in darkness, even

in suburbia, even the shape you

left on the fold-out mattress, even

the smell of stars tumbling in

floodwaters from your skin, all of you

caught in amber, even this

half-bath, even your arms.

listen to the way the sky moves:

a girl, bent half-spread over lilies

where the moon waxes & wanes,

gives voice to the sea as it

peers with longing

from stage left, reaching

thin fingers of salt into her body.

if the water moves then it is

asking you to come home, holding

an armful of lily-blossoms,

faces white as fear, white as the field

of skin where you find her thighs.

she shows you. she stupefies

even the moonlight as it passes in

& out of disguise: so here is august,

here is her body, & the shape

it makes on the fold-out mattress,

the heat it is against you,

& how soft they are (the sounds

it makes) if you touch her, if you

watch her like the sea does, quietly,

its salt like so much gasoline,

drawing sun into the night.

& thru the world, fire

fire, fire; &

with a breath, your body births

a miracle

that is the music. if i shut

the door between the back porch &

the sun

room where

you had your first kiss

then it is the space between

your hand

& the white snake of the garden hose

the wild

flowers that fill the front yard

in summer; in summer’s gaping mouth

you blossom like wildflowers

wild

flowers in the valley your spine makes

thru your waist, your entire

body wet with summer as it

breathes you into miracle

this is the music

the sun makes in the

wild dark

the wild flowers filling the valley with

a smell like summer, hot as

fire, fire

& the sun in this room is

fire, fire

& the breathing of the garden hose

& the shape of my body filling yours

& the white snake of the saline drip

then it is your hand filling mine

& the heat of you there is

fire, fire

& the heat of your mouth is

fire, fire

at the moment your skin ends

in time, the stars begin to open. i run to where the sand is and you blind my son. i come close to epiphany: some broken strain of music that starts to play in an empty room, and as you open doors it becomes louder. you, the stars that are your eyes, the sea lifting against you so in the sun you break, just slightly. you were a young girl. the smell of blood in your hair, your body innumerating in reflection as light grows inside the belly of darkness, light that comes between buildings and i decide how far to love you, if i can sleep tonight.

[let us go then, you & i when the evening is spread out against the sky] & in the stars you see

over duomo di milano (hanging, hanging) you, naked, walk to the clothes rack

in the dark after we close out the spagnoli show & under the stars

you are fluid

[in the room the women come & go] for once i see the east market diner with its

doors shut & you call tesoro allora

i look south to find the city sinking in the sea

in twenty years amsterdam will be underwater; you & i

hold hands for the crosswalk & let go

[the yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes] & in backdoor 43 we breathe

summer coming warm against the back of your neck

you run round the traffic circle once

your red hair in the traffic lights

if i cried on the aeroplane then i call you

a ghost of a woman already & not a woman

[& indeed there will be time] for the shores of hard islands called lovers

to soften, & more than that there will be time

for the autumn to grow sun-scarred

nothing in us is bright as the devil in his

big white plastic suit

attending the funeral of a close friend

[in the room the women come & go] if only my heart were not so loud so when you

carry my camera on the train to lake como & i am a feral warm thing

it is the wind, a little shame; you turning over in bed & calling cucciolo

min kjæreste i answer

i call my close friend jannik & he tells me about early hours in nictheroy

he shows me all the sun where i have moon

i have moon & you sleep through it all

[& indeed there will be time] for us to return to the east market diner & find

the sign which says torno subito you laugh

i mistook you for the kind of light that comes between buildings when

i settle back into a corner chair

listening to the girls in the street singing

& i sing som hærsker og rår

[for i have known them all already, known them all] where you, so whole, laid naked

on an empty pillowcase & i struggled to remember

there was once a girl inside your body

som hærsker og rår & if i held it in my mouth, would it melt? i would like to

leave a small warmth where your body was; if i could, i would like to

eat pancetta out of plastic wrap &

i would like to see your body sometime

[& i have known the eyes already, known them all] there are places where rain does not

feel cold, even in the shade beneath a store awning

on via lodovico muratori while

the stars, low & luminous, thin into darkness

[shall i say, i have gone at dusk] after the beccaria show & felt the fear of entering

your body—it is too dark for me; i whisper elskede skatten min when it is

so late at night the night is just

somewhere the moon does not shine & not the moon

[i should have been a pair of ragged claws

scuttling across the floors of silent seas

& the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully] we creep into the bomb shelters

(no one is there) you say isaaco (not my name)

i love you elskede even in the dark of the bomb shelters

i am this shape of hummingbird

watching you from a telephone wire as you bathe

[& would it have been worth it, after all] if the rivers had drained when you said they would

& in the dazzle of sunlight off the reservoir

the city lay flat as a peppermint leaf

in the canals you point out reflections of the clouds & i tell you to walk

faster if the rain falls harder i say (the hummingbirds are dripping from the clouds)

walk faster because the bells are ringing over porta venezia; it is late in the morning &

this crowd stirs around us

& even if i stand here through the rain, is it my shadow in the streetlights

in the yellow fog of the streetlights?

[no! i am not prince hamlet, nor was meant to be]

[i grow old... i grow old…] you turn over in my bed & my forearm grows cold

[shall i part my hair behind? do i dare to eat a peach?] not even your eyes brighten

if the train is leaving jattavagen

& again i hear the street girls singing [i do not think that they will sing to me]

i have seen them riding seaward on the waves

maybe next year i call you up & say i am on my way

you will see me riding seaward on the waves

my clothes soaked through—

i remember leaving the nakashima show & you stood in my way (this last day)

you said daje daje isaaco my god elskede

om æ kunne skrive på himmel

så skreiv æ dit navn

musikken begynn for alvor nu

eg veit den vil forstå meg hvis du går

when hyundai released the first elantra (code name J1) in october 1990 germany had just pieced herself back together and the literate world was reeling from an ice age so epic there was still the taste of frost left in american diners. my sister was writing her first diary entry sitting cross legged in the sand where the lighthouse rose like roses above the salt cliffs. the sea breaking white against stone shores, the sky thinning so when the church bells pealed over heimøya we could see them swing. how warm the sun when march ends and sun rises, and how warm it was when i laid back flat to black gravel, listening to the vibrations of the stars.

somehow i remember you dancing fisted into a summer dark, the grass blown so high around you your body is swallowed again and again in shadow as the night passes, mouthful by mouthful. in contrast, our father’s eyes are colorless in my memory. i dream a dream where you shatter under him in ripples, your body floating outwards, the tide cresting higher and higher, soaking the dew-soaked petal drops of your shoulders. in 1990 mandela emerged sightless from twenty-seven years of sightlessness, the cold tightened so firmly around his neck he wore it out for months. a girl in black leather stood at the brandenburg gate and craned her neck back for cranes. for the birds that flew south three decades before and were cresting the horizon like tide, incandescent. each feathered crest swallowing little mouthfuls of the sun and letting it seep out in droplets. i count them. i sit in an empty room and make music with my own tongue, wet and warm. wet and warm like a summer dark where you take my hand. you pull me back in through the front door and say our father is asleep and you are ready.

in 1990 it was the year of the horse and a woman forded the qianshanhong canal where twenty years later i knelt with my body half submerged. where blindness revealed itself hour by hour, and i slipped up and down the stairs in a stretched dark for water, the stars facing upwards in the cupped bowl of my hands. powdered glass spilling through my fingers as they opened. the sky, a mason jar, directing light through the open doorway where i pulled aside the curtain and came in with the sun. to a room empty of music, where i was the lighthouse and an ocean away you woke into the midnight, blinded by the suggestion of my face inside the blueness.

she only said, softly, that the train was coming in to jattavagen, and three streets down my mother gave birth. she only said, softly, that the moon was crushing whitecaps to sand, and where its mast broke the clouds it fell norwegian rain. she only said, softly, that the cold was someone looking who loved you, and if love existed once it never ceased. she only said, softly, that the stars were where she had scraped out the sky, so if she heard my voice echo where i stood between the bluff islands, she could peer through them, one eye at a time, and see the shape her brother made against the sand, his face emerging from suggestion into evidence, trembling with cold.

what shape do i make now with my hands while the light passes into lateness. can i jack it in the backseat listening to bowie and licking the taste of summer salt back into my lower lip. thinking maybe these are your hands and the sun is opening the day after we stayed out all night to fuck and in the dimness of the motel parking garage dawn steals in on its toes. so lightly that when you breathe you drown it out more certainly than if you held its head underwater and called my name. said to come see the ocean because it was half past three and something more than sea came in from sea. put your hand around the back of my neck and held it even as you leaned closer and your chin dug like a fish hook in the curve of my shoulder. do you remember the time i got the key stuck in the front door and you were bleeding where i bit you and somehow the shore beat harder than the heart we had so it was only the shape of your hand in my mouth not your hand. one hand and i was saltwater all over burned all the way through. not just my throat but i offered up a whole body through the stars as they diffused into white glass as windscreen streaked with fireflies where your hand drew rivers. what shape do i make now with my feet against the headrest that will remind you of the summer and how it left me empty left me aching. i ask where is your body and the shape of it filling mine and if the sky was any farther from my hands then i would fill myself with it. i would pull it rough with cirrus between my legs and tell it to rain harder than before. rain harder harder harder harder.