Go to the desert for half your life

then see if God doesn’t find the time.

Elsewhere, Mon Amour

Leaning from the platform, waiting for a glimmer

to braid the rails

the eyes of the action hero cut from the poster

all that concrete pressing down

A fine edge gleams around your body

as if it could be contained

The way each finger is licked, dipped in &

rubbed across the gums

until the teeth go away

Even my hands kiss you

A night broken down into grains

If you find yourself lost, dig

a cave in the snow, quickly

you need shelter against the night

A candle could keep you alive

the engine of your lungs

will heat the air around you, someone will

miss you, they will send out dogs

You must be somewhere, right?

IV

Ether

It is a very beautiful world.

I never noticed before.

—John Brown, on his way to the scaffold

Cartoon Physics, part 2

Years ago, alone in her room, my mother cut

a hole in the air

& vanished into it. The report hung &

deafened, followed closely by an over-

whelming silence, a ringing

in the ears. Today I take a piece of chalk

& sketch a door in a wall. By the rules

of cartoon physics only I

can open this door. I want her

to come with me, like in a dream of being dead,

the mansion filled with cots,

one for everyone I’ve ever known. This desire

can be a cage, a dream that spills

into waking, until I wander this city

as a rose-strewn funeral. Once

upon a time, let’s say, my mother stepped

inside herself & no one

could follow. More than once

I traded on this, until it transmuted into a story,

the transubstantiation of desire,

I’d recite it as if I’d never told anyone,

& it felt that way,

because I’d try not to cry yet always

would, & the listener

would always hold me. Upstairs the water

channels off you, back

into the earth, or to the river, through pipes

hidden deep in these walls. I told you the story

of first learning to write my own name, chalk

scrawl across our garage door,

so that when my mother pulled it down I’d

appear, like a movie.

The cellar a machine whirring through the night

Hovering near the ceiling, turning off

& on, & on & off, my body filling

a hundred boxes below me, I watch as we

make love. We seem good at it.

You still here? you ask,

stopping.

come into focus

I came into focus in an alley in Morocco

the moment Muhammad turned the opium knife

on me.

What was it my mother told me?

I don’t care what they teach you at school

I want you to bicycle into the flow

of oncoming traffic

so you’ll see the eyes of the man

about to run you down. The phone rings

infused with grace, my own voice

floods the darkness.