They sway within you in steady wind of your breath. You are forever swinging between this being and another, one being and another. There is a word for it crawling in your mouth each night. Speak it.
Ancapagari has circled, returned to these highlands. The yellow pines deathless, the sparrow hawks scull, the waters are going numb. Ancapagari longs to be spoken in each tongue. It is the name of the god who has come from among us.
I roll up my pants, I scraped off the hairon my legs with a knife, getting white.My hair is the color of chopped maples.My eyes dark as beans cooked in the south.(Coal fields in the moon on torn-up hills)Skin polished as a Ming bowlshowing its blood cracks, its age, I have hundredsof names for the…
By boat to Seurasaari wherethe small fish were called vendace.A man blew a horn of birchwoodtoward the nightless sea.Still voice. Fire that is no fire.Ahead years unknown to be lived—Bells from the tower in the all-at-once, thenone by one, hours. Outside(so fleetingly) ourselves—In a still mirror, in a blue withinwhere this earthly journey dreamingitself begins,thought…
Think you can put yourself in the groundLike plain potatoes and grow in Ohio?I am damn sick of getting fat like youThink you can lie through your Slovak?Tell filthy stories about the blood sausage?Pish-pish nights at the virgin in Detroit?I blame your raising me up for my Slav tongueYou beat me up out back, taught…
daughter filed her nails, his son went out for thenight. There were daily papers, pet dogs, a pistolon the cushion beside him. The moon swung bare onits black cord over the house. On the televisionwas a cop show. It was in English. Broken bottleswere embedded in the walls around the house toscoop the kneecaps from…
fire in a fenced clearing.The posts’ blunt stubs sank down,they circled and were roofed by milledlumber dragged at one time to the coast.We slept there.Each morning the minus tide—weeds flowed it like hair swimming.The starfish gripped rock, pastel,rough. Fish bones lay in sun.Each noon the milk fog sankfrom cloud cover, came inour clothes and held…
for whom we searchedthrough here, or there, amidstbones still sleeved and trousered,a spine picked clean, a paint can,a skull with hairSewn into the hem of memory:Fire.God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob,God notof philosophers or scholars. God not of poets.Night to night:child walking toward me through burning maizeover the clean bones of those…
