this room and everything in it

Too bad I'm not an ocelot. Too bad I cannot be a warbler or a lorikeet. A shame I woke up human again this morning—dry-mouthed, sullen, reading cruelties we have done now to our own. By nature, it seems. A shame I cannot be a glasswing butterfly hidden in the world. Too bad I've got these mosquito bites—ankles, arms, one prickling my forehead. Too bad I'm stuck inside this body, too bad I'm numb, good thing I'm alive to cleave each bump with a fingernail, I guess. Leave small engraved Xs, I guess. A shame I'm not a colt. A shame we still kill each other over land, beliefs, nothing. The story I read that haunts me happened last century, the one I'm struggling to tell you now: a father, a meat grinder, a heavy bag, the drive, the drop-off—Here's your missing husband. A shame, a shame. In time they'll vanish, all these crosses I scored into my flesh. In time I might say yes.

Now we will count to twelve and we will all keep still for once on the face of the earth, let's not speak in any language; let's stop for a second, and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment without rush, without engines; we would all be together in a sudden strangeness.

Fishermen in the cold sea would not harm whales and the man gathering salt would not look at his hurt hands.

Those who prepare green wars, wars with gas, wars with fire, victories with no survivors, would put on clean clothes and walk about with their brothers in the shade, doing nothing.

What I want should not be confused with total inactivity.

Life is what it is about...

If we were not so single-minded about keeping our lives moving, and for once could do nothing, perhaps a huge silence might interrupt this sadness of never understanding ourselves and of threatening ourselves with death.

Now I'll count up to twelve and you keep quiet and I will go.

There's a danger in comparing her to things. Her prayer, a stall of horses. Her anger, the beak of a bird. Her sleep, a sun-bleached fence. Her sadness, a yard pile of firewood.

A patch of pines is all I remember of a field. Quiet, she says. Her stick-shift sedan, her trouble with mathematics, her car radio turned up all the way. I write her questions

on a sheet of paper so no one can hear. Late at night in my blue car, we drive back roads, the only place we speak openly. The field's full enough tonight, I think, to break into a thousand wings.

O morning earthsmell like small bent basil, a child blinking open

wet with thanksgiving a sky we lay under talking over

birdchatter we spoke the bee tumble gradually an understanding our

lungs became pockets handing out the days

saying here take it just take it in your hand who knew you would

be so good at ax throwing what aim I love the arc of arm

the fog of morning with my teeth on your ear, the morning come

through the windows like children awake now It's Christmas

all the lights your hand couldn't we be opening each other

We knew they were out there at dusk, all that bamboo for cover, to say nothing of the thick forsythia, distracting the eye with its yellow flags. You know they're there when the owls come out, telling each other across the yards, and when the dogs come slithering through their hatch door, heads down and quiet. It's then I head for the cabin.                                I suspect they slip in through the side window. I turn on the lamps, not the overhead light, and say, "Welcome," I don't want to scare them. My "Spirit House" Mary called it, and I take it on trust. Whatever animal comes unbidden and invisible must have something to tell or something to ask. I wait for the words that can't be spoken.

I wish I were in Chernobyl today. The streets are peaceful there.

No cars or bicycles rush by, no one is late for work. No children are crying on the playground or getting into trouble.

The file cabinets in the police department are full of mice, and the outcome of the important vote at the General Assembly doesn't matter.

There are plenty of vacancies in the brand-new state prison, and for once, no one is talking in the library. Not even a dog is out today, pursuing mysterious errands.

Life in my city is tiring. Deadlines and unread books. Making love, or dinner. So many people to disappoint, so much to buy in the supermarket. Almost unbearable, this city.

But today in Chernobyl the clocks have given up. No one is tapping the phones, and every night the movie theater shows the same old silent film.

Does anyone have a question? No.

The houses of Chernobyl tend their silences and on the dinner table two gray sandwiches are waiting with such quiet patience. Like an old married couple.

We need to begin by shooting                people, leaders who lead                by a leash the property

they call theirs, a friend says. My son                wants me to carry a little                pistol because men still

haven't learned that I am my own                smoking embers to tend.                At this table with a burger

& a beer I am more still than I've been                in months, even when I wonder                which of the sadfaced boys

passing in their hunt for Pokémon                might be the one to hold                a jagged blade to my throat.

I'm trying to remember how it felt                to walk so close beside someone                you let a bit of your weight fall

to them. Alone, you always listen                to the new couple or old friends                & feel them lie to each other,

performing themselves. I still hear                the scream from the woman                in the front row wearing the

president's brains after the sound                the gun makes saves the silence                from itself. We are all worried

we've forgotten something. One man                leaves his drink at the bar & never                wonders when he comes back if

someone drugged him while he pissed.                Our hearts beating, our lungs                pumping—we think of them as

often as we think how miles of asphalt                might feel like duct tape                over your gagged mouth.

On this birthday I wish to be invisible                & to make this row full of men                own my body, make them feel

living with a leash no one sees, tethered                to threat. I don't want to forget                my mother died on a bathroom

floor or to pretend our Earth is not                in a constant state of ache—                a body in pain being a body

under control. The gunshot echoes again.                Who would we shoot first? What                happens to a face the bullet owns?

How can a woman drink so much                vodka her daughter could pass                her on the street & never know?

Body of our bodies, we are becoming                strangers. We each live at the edge                of a wall we should never look over.

my body dies the more I use it so I use it often / there a tender

death wish / terrifying entrance / when I panic it's from choking

on three separate tongues / mine my lover's & a tired history

of loss / what I use my body for today is running & a mediocre poem

which I use for therapy / it works temporarily / any small re-entrance

is a sign of progress / writing down the trauma for the first time is still

trauma / writing down the trauma for the fifth time is still trauma but

at least I have a poem in my hands / my lover is resilient / peeling back

a sleeve she shows me ghost incisions / slice your skin & you're no longer

in a poem or a metaphor / you are here with a paperclip inside your wrist /

does the past decay the more I use it in a poem / can I out-poem the past

from churning in my belly-pit / yes the future is an enzyme & a catalyst

or a burp that smells like hotdogs & a little like my grief / I hate that

stupid constant place which refuses tense / longing too / greedily I suck

my lover's upper lip looking for a poem or I lick the balmy archive of my gut

with all three tongues / one says loss one says loss one says I am not your tongue

after Rae Armantrout

The light of a thing        can't account        for why it wobbles      or wilts—

when the doctor        steps into the room        I can't tell        whether she knows

my life or just        suspects        that I've been        going about it wrong.

I think it's "energy adjacent"        that one end        might be the result

of a formula        while another        just happens to be        what's going on:

unaccountable,        imprecise like        the faux-primrose        by the sink.

Plastic colors        beneath the overhead        florescent, nothing        for us to trim.

"A photograph," you once said, "is a secret about a secret." So you've spectered yourself just so—somewhere beyond the bedstead where he stands, body in perfect profile to your camera's

eye. His nose and chin jut west, feet due east behind him, trench-coat obscuring his silhouette's sleight of hand. Two hangers, the Mommy Dearest kind, dangle one atop the other against the closet

door. He looms, a slender Z, above the double fringes of a folded rug. A paper window shade occults the light. Or is it night? Who folded the rug? Then pulled tight the shade? A naked

bulb hangs just beyond his gaze. One click of your ghostly finger sets it all ablaze.

That year the world handbasketed to hell,                        To bind our busted              Loves to something guileless and frail

We brought a rabbit home. We bought the cage,                        The sweetest timothy,              The pellets and the pine. We rearranged

The house to make him room. We couldn't wait                        To rest his softness              In our laps, to feel him soften

To our touch, to touch the tender of his head                        All undefended.              But he flinched from every gentle,

Every gesture in his presence, trembled                        When we tendrilled              Green shoots to his feeding,

Hunched for cover at our coming. Every evening's                        New endeavor              To lure him into his enclosure

He fled, and ended hackled in a corner                        Heartbeating              Like we were predators.

The more he ran, the more we had to chase.                        Anon, apace,              We each fulfilled the other's fears.

Leave the dishes.

Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator

and an earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor.

Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster.

Throw the cracked bowl out and don’t patch the cup.

Don’t patch anything. Don’t mend. Buy safety pins.

Don’t even sew on a button.

Let the wind have its way, then the earth

that invades as dust and then the dead

foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch.

Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome.

Don’t keep all the pieces of the puzzles

or the doll’s tiny shoes in pairs, don’t worry

who uses whose toothbrush or if anything

matches, at all.

Except one word to another. Or a thought.

Pursue the authentic-decide first

what is authentic,

then go after it with all your heart.

Your heart, that place

you don’t even think of cleaning out.

That closet stuffed with savage mementos.

Don’t sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth

or worry if we’re all eating cereal for dinner

again. Don’t answer the telephone, ever,

or weep over anything at all that breaks.

Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons

in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life

and talk to the dead

who drift in through the screened windows, who collect

patiently on the tops of food jars and books.

Recycle the mail, don’t read it, don’t read anything

except what destroys

the insulation between yourself and your experience

or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters

this ruse you call necessity.

Tools of antiquity—the compass, the straight edge—could not square the circle, couldn’t tame its numberless sides. Arcs, curves, chords of circles remain, tracing hollows of shells, clawed waves, parabolas of sand. See how matter curves around the emptiness, how it cups and gently holds the space where things are absent. Matter buckles and spirals around it, proving what is missing is more potent than what isn’t.

Matter aches to escape the discipline of being. Creation longs to possess the freedom from being a thing begotten. Even babies in their mothers’ wombs lie curled, crouched around the swell of the primordial. Straight or curved, tools cannot measure what it means to be, after all this time, still nascent, beholden to what you can never know. Armless, legless, a seahorse unrolls his tail, reels it in endlessly bobbing and straining in the tides.

Love will be activated when birch tree (A)grows to a height where, when leaf (B)releases in fall and wafts down to porch (C),crow (D) is inspired to caw and to take the leaf in beak (E) back to nest (F) where the leaf ages and withers into heart's shape (G)until person (H) discovers the leaf and retrieves it,taking it to lover (I) who carries the leaf to lamp (J)and they study the leaf's details together (K)until they press it between the pages of dictionary (L)and return the dictionary to shelf (M) in bedroom (N)where, inspired by shadows (O) cast by the birch tree on blinds (P), they will pull quilt (Q) from bed (R)and lift sheet (S) until there is enough air (T) beneath that they can lie down and embrace (U) until the sheet drifts down over them (V) and they become secluded in their own world of diffused light (W),while outside (X) two bees (Y)hover over peach tree flowers (Z).