f r o m t h e b o o k o f g i a n t s

P H O E N I XP O E T S

F rom the Bookof G iant s

j o s h u a w e i n e r

T h e U n i v e r s i T y o f C h i C a g o P r e s s

C h i c a g o a n d L o n d o n

j o s h u a w e i n e r is the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ award and the rome Prize from the american academy of arts and Letters. he is the author of The World’s Room, published by the University of Chicago Press. he lives in Washington, D.C.

the University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637

the University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London

© 2006 by the University of Chicago

all rights reserved. Published 2006

Printed in the United states of america

15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 1 2 3 4 5

isbn-13: 978-0-226-89045-6 (cloth)

isbn-13: 978-0-226-89046-3 (paper)

isbn-10: 0-226-89045-7 (cloth)

isbn-10: 0-226-89046-5 (paper)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Weiner, Joshua.

from the book of giants / Joshua Weiner.

p. cm.—(Phoenix poets)

isbn 0-226-89045-7 (cloth : alk. paper)—isbn 0-226-89046-5

(pbk : alk. paper)

i. title. ii. series.

Ps3573 .e3937f76 2006

877'.6—dc22 2006006188

∞ the paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the american national standard for information sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library materials, ansi z39.48-1992.

for eli & gus

and to sarah—

Di pensier in pensier, di monte in monte Mi guida Amor . . . (Petrarch)

American jump, American jump,

One—two—three.

Under the water, under the sea,

Catching fishes for my tea,

—Dead,

Or, Alive,

Or, Round the world?

• ix •

C o n t e n t s

Acknowledgments • xi

IBocca della Verità • 3Dante: To Guido Cavalcanti • 5Twister • 6Elegy: Reading Dugan in Rome • 10Hanging Mobile • 12National Pastime • 142004 • 17Postcard to Thom • 20Found Letter • 21Tempo • 22Trampoline • 25Cloak • 26

IIVita Nuova • 31

IIIWeegee: Coney Island Beach after Midnight • 41In the Country • 43Games for Someone • 46The Bed • 48Quilt • 50Song for Staying • 52Out of Range • 54Cricket • 56

• x •

Mosaic • 58Departure • 62Net • 63Song • 65Searchlight • 66Lament from the Book of Giants • 68

Notes • 73

• xi •

A c k n o w l e d g m e n t s

thanks to the editors of the following magazines and journals in which these poems first appeared, some in different versions:

Agni: “in the Country,” “twister”Beltway: “national Pastime”Cincinnati Review: “tempo”Colorado Review: “Postcard to thom”Faculty Voice (University of Maryland): “Cloak”Index (American Academy in Rome): “elegy: reading Dugan in rome”New York Review of Books: “Dante: to guido Cavalcanti” (reprinted with per-

mission. Copyright © nyrev, inc.)Pequod: “Lament from the book of giants”Poetry: “Departure,” “searchlight”Provincetown Arts: “found Letter”Slate: “trampoline”Southwest Review: “song for staying”Threepenny Review: “the bed”Tigertail: “2004”TriQuarterly: “Cricket,” “hanging mobile,” “mosaic,” “out of range,” “song”Yale Review: “Weegee: Coney island beach after midnight”

many thanks to the mrs. giles Whiting foundation, the american academy in rome, the american academy of arts and Letters, and the University of maryland for their support.

I

• 3 •

B o c c a d e l l a Ve r i t à

see that crack at the corner of my eye?—a track running like a tear blown backby an unforgiving windgathering force from the mind’sblack accumulations. it’s for you, that crack,those jealousies and false heroics made meaningless in the face of certainties; my face, you see itemerging from the stone, your vain denials, the theatrics of home, the opera for which you’ve trained your voice,its capriciousness, its talent for carryingopportunity’s tune; it’s for giving into anger, the pleasure you feeldrawing bristles over a rash,for your cheapest satisfactions—when you cutsomeone off, miss another call,forget yourself; when you hold back from an easy true compliment and jumpto take offense; all the smallest murdersyou commit when you close the door,turn away, draw shades against the sun;for not quite hearing or remembering; for your thoughtfulnesspointing to another’s lack;for making the right point

• 4 •

at the wrong time, for falling out of touch, touching what would rather be left alone; for leaving well enough alonethat calls for your intervention—

so the single tear digsits groove, knowing, dispassionate,running from the corner of my eyeto the rim of my perfect radius,a medallion, a coinyou cannot spend, bank, or wear around your neck.

once a mere drain cover, i’ve risen up—your applause is not a factor—my mouth opening for your hand, that takes what isnot given, that gives when it should graspand drops what it must carry. billions served, but it is yoursi hunger for. Place it inside and seeif i don’t return some nightto chew it off with incisors hidden from the casual glance into such caverns of insignificance; how you file them so keenlyi can taste it even now, the plumlie inside your pie.

• 5 •

D a n t e : To G u i d o C a v a l c a n t i

guido, how i wish that Lapo, you, and iCould speed away in a speed boatWithout a care for wind or waveor the Dramamine you know i have to have.

Clear skies, clear tempers; luck’s barometerPointing to fair; nothing in the wayof jealousy, no rocks unseen in the narrows, hidden by a sudden glare;

but we, awakened by the force of friendshipshould still hope to be friends.and Lady Joan and Lady Lagiaand my most beloved only-one-for-me

should set out for the desired ends of easy conversation journeying to love:the three of them would be laughing, happy to have each other, eating each other’s food,

as we should, too, if only we could.

• 6 •

Tw i s t e r

A Letter

after a long silence another letter asking my help while insinuating my quisling guilt for having secured a positionfrom which i could aid you. through such twistingif i succeed in opening your way the folded arms of sponsorshipi will have testified against myself upon your urging.is this what you really want, more than whatever you thinki can do for you, this evidence that i can do it, and am thereby not to be trusted? so call your first witness.

You see high fences everywhereyou once envisioned access, and gates locked with combinationsyou cannot learn: ingratiation (two turns left), subservience (one turn right), satisfaction with mediocrity (stop at zero), and smug indifference toward true work (yank hard).

• 7 •

such is the system that makes the system to run the system through the system for the system . . .

Where are we free of systems?

Pessoa, who worked in a factory office, had a friend, a partner in a firm doing very well because of all the business it does with the government, who said to him

“You’re being exploited.” “that reminded methat i am,” he writes, “but since in life we all have to be exploited i wonder if it would be less worthwhile to be exploited by Vasques with his textiles than exploited by vanity, glory, spite, envy, or impossibilities.”

. . . adjustment, accommodation, collaboration . . .

Perhaps he broke into piecesto short-circuit his indifference, split wires spitting beneath black tape, while we just wrap around each other in confusion spiraling into my dismay. may i quote you, then,as when you rhymed clarity with charity, and made a roomfor all of us in correspondence?

• 8 •

all of us a year together in the designated room,a hive thick with the page’s pollen as we argued for poetry’s complex of complaint and praise . . . if knowledge ungrounded by charity is the power of demons outside the City of god (by which they occupy the air, and torment us) then we fought such demons late into the afternoon, losing what we won to win again before losing, the east bay light smearing the single pane as knowing burnished into a givingwe each received from each, and tried to realize more firmly in our forms (by which we reached to know each other, even as we failed).

has it all turned to mind-smoke, blearing memory—its cycling recycling—and blacking out the bulb? i remember the augustine as i doyour epigram about the knives growing sharper as the pie grows smaller. Who are you now? —no doubt you’ll cut me for this ink i spill as you’d cut a weed caught coiling for some purchase in your garden.

but here’s my son, six years old and strong as a vine climbing up the oak out back.

• � •

he loves to wrestle, to test himselfagainst my natural advantage and make safe full contact with his father’s body.i’ve been teaching him some moves, classics of the mat, how to swingthe legs out and contort himself beneath me to gain some leverage and squirm his way on top where his corkscrew locks stick damp to the browinviting me to dive there like a mound of loose hay. someday he’ll be far from me, that’s for sure, maybe even at school somewhere, hard at study,and he’ll write of all he’s learning now, his mind a kind of instrument picking out the best songs; and some there are that thrill him, that seem to choose him,rather, as he reads them to friends and to himself again, late at night or on the el alone, that ease his worry, enfolding him with a rush sweetsound tangling the ear, warming it in a plush insinuation of spirit curving round conventional goods, to bend and send him, fill him up and empty him so he never feels too full enough, by a poet he thinks i know, that i must know, who in truth i never knew.

• 10 •

E l e g y : R e a d i n g D u g a n i n R o m e

alone in the garden perilous,the sun so mellow, the air so still inside and outsideseem indistinguishable,

i hope to hear your certain swingbetween two words, two linesthat drive the meaning homeand double back to surprise

when a fly touches down to disturb my hair. What peril hereyou felt yourself, far fromthe empire you knew best (american),

the dominion of all your experienceand most meaningful action of your tongue. but, Dugan, no matter where you were

you had swing enough and in it found the sting. these flies don’t sting. they smear me with shit, satisfied somewhat with my salted skin.

• 11 •

so this is rome and rome is anywhere that history is forgotten, and not lamented by the whip of motorini.

Death to the pedestrian! criesthe marinetti of the mindrushing to its future. even nowProfessor Lyttleton is lecturing

inside and i’m missing it, the unification of the nation state, to skim above the academic ear and lift from air

the Punch-and-Judy strains floating down from the Villa Pamphili puppet show that hardly costs a euro. Dugan, you share your death month

with Charles bronson and elia kazan.some win awards for complexityor wit, some make the surface shimmer. but surface is our mythology.

“What wins?” you ask, alluding to the future in lesson sixlike an italian teacher of italian. “the river” is your answer.

• 12 •

H a n g i n g M o b i l e

the parrot’s eyespeaks to the sun,my son coos backon his back, on the run.

mosquito in the shade,the night crows green.Who rings the bellwhere you’ve never been?

baby gus, asparagus,tips make a fistto knock back the sun.

the parrot’s eyegrows with the moon,my son sings a bubblein the bubble of his room.

rubies in the griddle,the cake falls down,the knife runs for president,the parrot runs the sun.

• 13 •

baby gus, asparagus,who rings the bellwhen you ring the bell?

smoke across the bridgeplunders the eyes,the wind speaks backwhat you recognize.

Jimmies rain downthe frozen zone,the drops drop green,who dropped the sun?

• 14 •

N a t i o n a l P a s t i m e

(Washington, D.C., 2002)

Late spring evenings at the neighborhood diamond,the light a mellow custard before the bugs come out,extra dads walk the outfield spotting for glass and dog shit,anticipating season’s end with each spill of gatorade.When the league director shows up with a surprise invitation, who can believe it: eli’s team to play the south Lawn, inexplicably, with the worst record in the league—until a parent points out later, “he’s courting the spanish vote,” the District’s one bilingual school, pitching logic into relief.the parents mostly Democrats, labor lawyers, journalists,the coach a mid-east peace negotiator, explicably out of work—should we boycott, or protest somehowthe children’s fairy tale finale? should our censure ruin the six-year olds’ requested appearance at the White house?—Conviction competing with conviction, we hear our cameras calling to be fingered from their sleep. game day, fresh Cardinal duds throw glow on expectant faces, the new world order here a batting roster.Players take positions, charmed by the announcer’s melody massaging the mind as if in Camden Yards.bush sweats with pleasure, big kid among the kids, with tom ridge coaching first, homeland securityradio curling like an ear inside his ear;mayor Williams coaches third, his bemused stoic posture

• 15 •

resigned to the symbolic placement; and the orioles mascot works the parents in the stand, the staffers, and special invites—families of the most recent publicly acknowledged Pentagon dead.

mercifully, one inning, two photo ops, and a picnic.a White house reporter approaches eli for an interview;the tape recorder insinuating official history, the boy’s back straightens as if tied to puppet strings.“if you were putting together a teamand you had to choose between President bush and Cal ripken, who would you choose?” eli thinks a moment, shrugging off expectations. “Cal ripken,” he throws back. “and why is that?”—the newsman’s glove is ready.

“he’s a real baseball player.” (Pitching logic into relief.)

Laid out under shade, on grass plush as any carpet,i watch the team of marksmen camouflaged in foliage along the fence,binoculars searching the streets while the house music spins—is this possible?—Wild Cherry, 1976:

“i tried to understand this /i thought they were out of their minds /how could i be so foolish / to not seei was the one behind”—behind the fence, inside the game, america’s national pastime, america’s number one show, streaming back through

the bicentennial tomahawk testing Legionnaire’s disease,israel to ford: send in the Clowns saul bellow rocky all

• 16 •

the President’s men, as the new York Yankees take entebbe, Pol Pot makes use of the steadicamand the supreme Court, after great deliberation, rules that robert Lowell’s Selected Poems is neither inherently cruel nor unusual, though richard Leakey’s discovery falls outside their jurisdiction: a skull of homo erectus from 1.5 million years ago;and when he lifts it to his ear like a transistor radioit sings him the song i hear “losing every step by the way,” snaking through tom ridge’s wire, the soundtrack to Colin Powell’s tears, “burnin’ down the night stands” of President bush’s brain—

“and just when / it hit me / somebody turned aroundand shouted / ‘Play that funky music, white boy, /Play that funky music right / Play that funky music,white boy / Lay down that boogie, and playthat funky music till you die / till you die / oh, till you die’”

—deciduous giants of the south Lawn stretching out their arms,leaves whispering frantically to an empty blue sky . . .

• 17 •

2 0 0 4

how was it i felt nothingthat last ides of marchin the busy downtown squareof Largo argentina,where Caesar felt the determined point of conspirators?all across europe,the morning papers read,five minutes of silenceheld for the spanish dead:that noon the buses shifteddown and motorini slowed,trailing fashionable scarvesflapping like standards on a field.Why was it not quiet enoughfor a personal public grief,though rome stood dutifullyobserving more than itself? the handsome senegalesestopped selling for the momenttheir poetry against apartheid,while carabinieri hovered byPompey’s portico latrineused exclusively by wild catsthat spray the travertine. goddess of fortune of the Present Day,

• 18 •

your temple is the rubble venerated by il Duce; and the tired Communist Party still prints the most colorful posterscompeting with the Lotto signyellowing berlusconi’s eye.a gypsy family that sleepsthree generations outsidesplit sandwiches, played cards,and waited to ask for change;and the bengal tiger stitchedon the father’s leather backstared down the promising awningof the Chinese restaurant.the warm sun reached us faithfullythrough oceans of cool air,the war had never ceased,and all the art of the renaissanceseemed part of this being fucked. then five minutes were upand we heard the children shoutfrom across the ancient squareand release their bright balloonsinto the afternoon air—red and blue and gold,they rose above all thingsruined and not yet ruined,perfected in themselvesdisappearing from the world,manmade yet natural shapes, fresh as the painted birds

• 1� •

fading from etruscan tombsescaping the hunter’s netalso depicted therein the living necropolis.

• 20 •

P o s t c a r d t o T h o m

addressed, it lately sits propped on my deskwith no reason now to go—you’re gone, somewherebehind the snow screen, though i think you’d laughat this lucky charm from herculaneumsuspended by a chain in opened doorseven the bravest might have fled through—a gladiator, and in both raised fistsa knife to strike himself, his own huge leapingcock curving up with a snarling panther’s headto savage the source of its awakening:the mind, alarm of want ringing the bloodas appetite grows to feel itself grow longer,twisting back on the hot stone of the heart.and dangling down from panther cock, each foot,the muscled back and swollen scrotal sac—a little bell provoked by the cooling wind.

• 21 •

F o u n d L e t t e r

What makes for a happier life, Josh, comes to this:gifts freely given, that you never earned;open affection with your wife and kids;Clear pipes in winter, in summer screens that fit;few days in court, with little consequence;a quiet mind, a strong body, short hoursin the office; close friends who speak the truth;good food, cooked simply; a memory that’s richenough to build the future with; a bedin which to love, read, dream, and re-imagine love;a warm, dry field for laying down in sleep,and sleep to trim the long night coming;knowledge of who you are, the wish to benone other; freedom to forget the time;to know the soul exceeds where it’s confinedYet does not seek the terms of its release,Like a child’s kite catching at the windthat flies because the hand holds tight the line.

• 22 •

Te m p o

the cardinal’s red plume works sex-magic on the boy

in the classroom, stuck at his desk; but eyes seek beyond

the pane for imagination’s mate, the phenomenal world. the white

paper invites him to the wide-ruled field with wood chips still

visible, where pinched lead will scratch the composition

in the compost. Like the bird,the boy can sing, though words come slowly

• 23 •

when they come, to make the tune that keeps the cardinal there

in view. a storyof red: ripe cherry, poppy flame

and fox fur lit by sun, as when the sun rises red

expect wind and rain, red earth releasing vapors to make

red gold for great fingers, iron hotin red cinder,

red with guilt and temperedointments, red gills pulsing in sudden

air, garibaldi’s shirt billowingin red sea fog, red

on red, the butcher’s hand holding a rose,a bow, a burn,

• 24 •

a trove. stay, bird! who would sooner bend to a beetle’s promise

than play the role pathetic, or startle on your perch by the lunch

truck’s silver hood, radiant and humming hoarsely—

i love this boy, off-tempo, who keeps the pencil to the page,

drilling through dream to the brightest realest red he has ever seen.

• 25 •

Tr a m p o l i n e

the kids next door who bought it for their mom on mother’s Day—a joke?—play it like palms on a marching drum, a rhythmic coital creak that carries clear across the open yardto call my son like a barnum top-hat bard.

he runs out in his socks, my turn my turn! they haul him up so hemight bounce and stamp and lift his legs to learn how little one can weigh up there, the moment when the body peaksand hangs, becoming what the body seeks:

weightlessness and weight; self launching beyond self; before the theory, fact.Yet as he flies he drops down like a leaf the earth tries to give back. he tumbles, caught at last in the canvas sheet,then feels again through socks the warm concrete.

• 26 •

C l o a k

Late may, skin tingled true with riot, the screen door clapping shut behind meon the final days of school. beneath the dogwood’s white explosion, fragranceof milk floated down and floated up,each petal a portal, a pure cup and sweet pill to cure us of winterand call back the birds. the body dies but today i am taller, i can tell time (but what will i tell him?) i’m not good at reading . . . running then not to be late, the dogwood casting one beam like a full daytime moon over shortcuts, bamboo, bulldog, and quiet creek water. a waking bulldozer: who are the sleepless, who do they carry?nights i felt plagued by my body’s heati’d strip and climb the dogwood branches.Who wears the final cloak of summer?the son of an ancient seed–caster,i was searching for a gate. i worked hard but remained lost among fasternumerals interacting through blizzards of feeling. i would not pick my scab

• 27 •

to speed the healing. one day, every year, i’d return to find the dogwood blossoms fallen like a great snow cape silencing capacities of green.

I I

• 31 •

V i t a N u o v a

they called him the Polka Dot man—so i also picked up the custom—but what did he call himself?

this was berkeley, the early nineties; the movement hadn’t completely died,though threatened by tides of cappuccino foam and hair conditioner.there were still protests, of course—communist, animal rights,anti-apartheid, pro-Palestinian rallies, and rallies against the gulf War— as before, as now.

but the merchants wanted telegraph avenue—“the interface of town and gown”—cleaned up, however not too clean:property should be safe; customers should notfeel threatened—though a certain amountof general non-standard behavior was good for business—historical, identifying, in its own wayconsumable. the avenue felt the pressure,social programs giving way to corporate crackdowns,as UC executed its plan to retake People’s Parkby planting flowers and volleyball nets:with their jockstrap arsenal, frat boys would flush out the undesirables;the police would intensify a routine

• 32 •

of breaking down the “free” binsin which people left discarded clothes for the people in the park;people would then rebuild the bins (though that wasn’t part of the plan) and the police would tear them downto find them later rebuilt. the situation, as they say, escalated.and people—especially the people in the park—eventually felt called to actionas if on a grid of legendary actions, where all the moveswere known, yet given life in the new patterns unfolding.

a woman with a machete and a knife, an anarchist,even broke into the chancellor’s mansion with a blowtorchand a questionable cop shot her in the back and in the heart.this was 1992; people gathered for that one,even some poets, and rioted (but withoutlooting: it was a protest). and People’s Park—where she shared food and shelterand fought the University—was renamed after her. but it never stuck; it’s stillPeople’s Park, the people named it and custom kept it.

her name was rosebud abigail Denovo;her parents named her Laura, but she brokethat custom, renamed herself, and fledthe institution. the cops thought she wascrazy. they knew she had a history,or they didn’t know, that’s why they shot her,or why they didn’t not shoot her. (“there was no opportunityto utilize the dog.”) her friends didn’t think so,

• 33 •

(“Why didn’t they flush her out with gas?”)that she was on the edge, though one friend found her eating pieces of glass for breakfast, upset he no longer wishedto make bombs. but the best poet—he said, “if she had broken into my home with a machetei’d have shot her too.” he knewbetter than anyonehow to make a rhyme sound wholly natural, and he kept the hell away from graduate students.

in the end, her “excessive force”lost to the cop’s, the confusionof what happened now part of the public record:Denovo, rosebud. of the new, soon to flower—in her desperation and despair, her anger, her desire to belong somewhere, her sense of being with others, of belonging to her commitment, her steadyPepsi-and-candy-bar diet, sleep deprivedand constantly harassed by the law, by the streets she fled to and that led herto the Park she fought for,where she lived at the centerof a web, the strands of a practical ideal (let people bein the Park) dissolving in the heat of her senseless martyrdomas though a rose should shut and be a bud again—

• 34 •

but this isn’ta political poem, nor a romantic dream. because the Polka Dot manpaid no attention, as before, as then, in 1992; he was a life-artist, or something, and his name—the name that custom gave him—was not a mystery, nor an allegory, though he wore his originslike a coat of arms: sweat suits with perfectpolka dots painted on them, upper body and lower, polka dots of every color, every size.he was lean, roughly handsome, with a squintlike Clint eastwood; and he wore a sun visorlike Clint eastwood on the golfing green, and sometimeseven carried an umbrella open against the sun, its indisputable midday authority.

if it rained, he kept the umbrella closedand stayed home, wherever that was. Under the sun, though,he would sometimes sleep in the plaza between Wheeler hall and Dwinelle,his body laid out in the warmth, on the hot stones,with his head cool enough under the umbrellahe opened on the ground. awake, he’d pace

the square patterns of the inlaid plaza brickwork,careful to keep on a course of straight linesand ninety-degree angles, which he otherwiseimprovised on the legendary grid—where to turn, whento continue on the straight pathuntil it was time to turn. so that his work, you could say,

• 35 •

was to wear a suit of circles and trace a path of squares.

he carried himself erect, his dignified gaitcrisp, militant even, expressing delineated intention, but visibly opento possibility as well. he had styleand something like a subject, a commitment, his mode; yet one was never quite sure how he would do it, what path he would choose,as he chose it, for he did not know himself. that was his pleasureat the center of repose. he was neverseen anywhere other than the plaza, at work in the web of his tracings, or asleep. he wouldn’t talk to anyone, except girls; but from a distancehe appeared capable of great charm,i could see he possessed what you’d calla winning smile, of welcoming white teeth.his program was working, no question,but what was it?

this went on for years.

in the meantimei was studying, trying to learn how to write a line and how to makea turn, when to circle back, and allthe girls i talked to wore blackand understood the paradigm

• 36 •

of the political unconscious,and i was getting nowhere.

i was reading robert Duncanto open the chain of rhymein search of new structures, a new correspondence for ancient responsibilities;

but i was like an open sheetin a closed book, a human faculty without sufficient will . . .

at some point i noticed his polka dots were changing, opening upfrom the center, as if from a graduallyincreasing centrifugal forcefelt within each dot, as if some kind of internal revolution were gaining speed.each week, a new suit, with a new set of dotsopening further, swirling, spiraling, as he edged week by week from the center of sproul Plazatowards the busy sidewalk crowded with hungrystudents forming lines in front of food stalls,circling around themselves, negotiating the crowdthey were a part of: as if he toowere at the center of a world representedby a dot, and by virtue of some force, pulledto the perimeter and yearningbeyond it: till the circles undidthemselves entirely, becoming sets of lines, some even parallel lineslike equal signsbetween shapes, or stories, the present

• 37 •

in correspondence with a future he was working out, from the center, where he remainedisolated and in control, to the margin,where people lived more fullyengaged with each other in the customary happiness of eating modestly and joking around,the bright colors and patterns of their clothes all mixing together in the loose weave of the sidewalk.

(this must be a political poem.)

thenone day, he appeared in a blank suit,white, without dots or swirls or lines, completelyerased of its former signs; he seemed tenuousat first, confronting the open sheet of his own being; then his posturetook the shape of interest, enjoyment, as he spent the afternoon mingling in the crowded streetbordering the campus; and the next dayhe disappeared, as if the roseshould pluck herself and float away on the current.

no public record of such an act exists,this private integration, a re-seeding into the public campo we call the city, in which he calls himselfby the name he’s now known, though none of usknew it, who saw him each week on his invented stage—

the new life, in flower, having turned with the existential seasons . . .

• 38 •

Until a few months lateri ran into him working downtown at the recycling center: from the outside,looking through the glass door,i caught his eye, and he shot back a look of aloof amusement: it was no big deal, the new life here, returning redemptions to a point of origin. he seemed decked out in a suitof modest defiance, I refúseyour réfuse, though he leisurely made for the door.as if i stood in a crowd, waiting to throw it all away in the right colored bins, my courtesy and patiencerendered me absurd, out of line. it was my turnto move, but timemoved instead; and i was still standing therewhen, with a curt nod, he opened the door and said,“Whose permission are you waiting for?”

I I I

• 41 •

W e e g e e : C o n e y I s l a n d B e a c h

a f t e r M i d n i g h t

no moon is good. i take off my shoesand go silently so as not to losethe shot i know is lurking there— american made is my stock-in-trade,as whatever’s in the frame i choose,i chose, though it’s like i wasn’t there.

What’s out there? Why, sweethearts in lovemaking love out where it’s dark enough.i wouldn’t disturb them for the world. each kiss, what’s left between each breath—hard work, but the kind that makes you laugh.there goes a match. What’s that i heard?

there, in the lifeguard station lookout,Lovers exhausting each other’s doubt.i’ll catch them fast without a flash: to make it clear how they appearLike drags inhaling their way to ash,or a mouth getting ready to shout . . .

too dark to have used the range finder there,it’s like scooping yourself, your feeling, where

• 42 •

trying to find the way, you’re caught (the frame in which Your subjects twitch)alive, exposed, and as if too near:the lens opens and you take the shot.

Why they were up there near the skyi thought i’d see as the fluid primedthe image into a final shape; but all i found Was a kind of sound,a woman up there like a lie,alone and bewildered after the rape.

You can read the “Lifeguard only” signshe leans against. there’s no clear linebetween her hair and where the night begins to fan out in a planexpanding further than stars can shine,and outside my frame to make it right.

What did she choose, which choice was deferredas she waited for the bus without a wordno matter where she sat to wait? all that is there: the apparent stareout to the wave that can’t be heardthat she readies herself to contemplate.

• 43 •

I n t h e C o u n t r y

We made love twiceon the way to your funeral,the two boys in the other bedbundled in the heat they made themselves, dreaming, not dreaming, ever so slowly rising to a surface they would not break,not yet, just stirring beneath it.We could hear the sheets ruffle, as of a birdnearby, unseen, preparing its feathers.awake, the elder’s curiosity about his uncle dying

was turning into a feeling he practiced on the way there:“are you sad? it’s sad; isn’t it sad? that he’s dead. is he dead? Will i remember him?” What answers we hadonly led to more questions, each answera soft release that bound us to the nextwithout constraint, as when pulling back from water that is too hot,and then less hot,yields slowly to a sinking down, a succumbing

• 44 •

that becomes relief, as knowing, not knowing turns to grief.

so, what all practice, none perfect.

the younger, he toowas practicing that day, crawling to a cord’s inserted plug to announce his only word, hot, that he repeated to the steaming bowland the watchful tub of water, hot, its tense permeable surface inviting his hand as if to pet a cat.

Clean for church, he spent his last hour lining up little horses on the floorand marching them marching theminto the house of blocks his brother built,empty and waiting for whatever might arrive (horses, not-horses).the house was many hues of one color, like a tree

in autumn. it was autumn, and we could smellthe wine of apples rotting into the ground.

We saw the horse in the fieldbefore feeling your absenceinside, and walked the hill down to see. but it saw us first and waited at the fencepatronizing as a physician behind a desk.

• 45 •

a kind of welcome, perfected without practice.the younger in my arms reaching out a hand smaller than an apple . . .the horse stretching his neck across the fence . . .We were close, closer, too closewhen he asked “hot? hot?”“Very hot”—but i did notpull him back.

• 46 •

G a m e s f o r S o m e o n e

someone is a peachsomeone is a mouththe peach runs norththe peach runs south

the mouth is openits teeth are sharpit need not runto taste you on its tongue

the peach is fleshits heart is a stoneit shines with spitlike a medal or a bone

someone is a vinesomeone is a bladethe blade trains the vineto grow its own shade

inside the shadesomeone is a nestinside the nestsomeone is afraid

• 47 •

someone is a locksomeone is a keysomeone is a rhymefor liberty

someone is a breathsomeone a balloona third one knows a knotbut cannot find their room

• 48 •

T h e B e d

outside the house, the field stretches out fully,dark and inviting, it opens to the night rain. it rainson the houses, it rains on the boycoming home late, after supper’s been served.his brother’s asleep in his own room, he orbitsin sleep the other rooms of the house. the boy hasn’t eaten,it feels good to feel empty; he’s hungry but empty.he hears the rain hit the field. he listensfor the mother, but he hears nothing. he climbs to his room,the second floor, next to his brother’s.the father works late now; now it is night,now time for bed. he opens the doorand discovers a secret. What is the secret?he doesn’t know, he doesn’t know. his motherlies there asleep on his bed, laid out in a field. the boy is tired,why is she there? he touches her shoulder, shakes her gentlyand calls her. her face is relaxed, the shut eyes have grown younger.her hand curls around nothing, nesting the ghost of an egg.she is tired and spent by the day. she is utterly spent,hair undone, shirt loose; but she is dressed as she wasthat very morning, as the sun warmed the kitchenand the father walked out. the sunlight was silent.two white cups rested on the counter, still full of coffee,a lactate skin slowly sealing the surface. the dry toast stiffened.all the colors outside, the morning air rinsed by the light,nourished the boy’s hunger to be out in the world.

• 4� •

now his mother dreams of walkingout in the world, she walks past her high school and sees her old friends.she sits down to eat at her mother’s kitchen table stretching out fully,blueberries stewed, topped with sour cream. the bowl istoo small for so many berries, so much sour cream.the sunlight rains down, it pours into the room.she lowers her head and begins to eat like a cat.her mama’s favorite cat, she feels herselfpetted, she likes it like that.

the boy triesto wake her, why won’t she wake up?she shouldn’t sleep here, this isn’t her bed.he can see the large bed she shares with his father,the sheets would be taut, the bedspread smoothed out,tucked neatly under pillows white as two eggs.the bed is made in its hunger; it’s empty but hungry.in her dream her legs feel like springs, they’re tanas if made of copper, she could walk foreveraway from the house to have her adventure.

Why is she so tired, so alive and so still?the mother is not a child to be sleeping in his bed.this is his bed, where he dreams of adventure.he is not the parent. Doesn’t she knowit’s his bedtime now? of course, she must know.his hand on her shoulder looks like a starfish.her body gathers breath, as if greedy for air.even her shoes wish to rouse her, still on her feet.time to wake up, he sings in her tune. You have towake up. the tree outside the window awakens in the rain, the rain is a whisper, the boy is grown up.time to wake (time to sleep). the mother’s in love.

• 50 •

Q u i l t

ancient, hand-stitched, faded. beneath it, floatingin late afternoon maine shadow,you sense the warm press of elder sloughkindled brighter by your body’s heat.

Wet breeze teases the flag outside, its flaplapping the house like a swatheor tide of air lacing the screen,playing frayed embroidered thread and fresher skin, scabby bitten summer skin of children

tumbling downhill, loose steamroller drums, runaway timber racing for the water, their aggressive pleasure a bragging solicitation the air stream folds into silence. Your silence. Unroused idle vessel caught under

gulfweed without purchase, your voicelessnessis hidden by clapping flag cord

• 51 •

ringing alloy music from the pole,a nearby boat’s wake rocking the dock, the children’s shouts like warning bells disguised as delight.

Unlifted, inside, still. You can movebut when, but how, hanging like pine scent,the osprey calling as if to each fallingdeepening hue of the bay’s blue becoming black— They’re not coming backand you’ll never know what you cannot know:

some melody, with the words flown off;but can you see yourself just passing through,a spore floating free and sinking down with the coming evening’s drop to settle on a kid’s blond strand and cling to it? Without a doubt.

and the quilt having beenremoved at last, it wags forgottenon the line, a ululating tongueeven the children refuse to hide behind as they improvise the early dark and seek each other out.

• 52 •

S o n g f o r S t a y i n g

how can i call you, god of the sky, deities of night, of rain, of rivers, most worthyto be worshipped even now in our disbelief; so distant, how we seek you in our sleep,

Diana, kind goddess of birthing who brings us our kind, how can you come back againto watch over the mother of my brother’s boy, only two, and the scalpel in the surgeon’s hand;

how the inner-eye feels the cold spectral light striking the blade as if cutting the bevel—how can you dull that fear now, how can i call you?

and my brother, having taken hippocrates’ oath, reticent by nature, keen of eye, keen of mind,

whose knowledge is both salt and salve on the incision, the body an envelope

holding notice from the fates; can you dull his vision tonight sharpened by all he’s learned from long study? some apertures must close for each body to rest.

• 53 •

and the boy, who lies waiting for one more moonlit night, catch him falling as you caught hippolytus before he dropped to the kingdom of shadows.

goddess of the crossroads, you are lore to me, old science; but do you still live outside of our systems, principles, departments, methods, breakdowns; even as fear turns to fear?

• 54 •

O u t o f R a n g e

between one screenbehind your dream

another screenthe broken lamp

beside her lipinside the needle

the whistle-stopWhen you wake up

between your planand how it ends

behind the lockthe mis-cut key

an opened doorbeneath the field

the ruddock drillsWith hidden skill

between two noonsone grip one strap

• 55 •

You’ll hear the speechof speech unheard

before the stormabove the hawk

You’ll feel the rainit will not slake

• 56 •

C r i c k e t

Cricket saysyou know cricket by my rubbing and cricket knows you by a like tune,

vain lovers, playing gamesof sweet moan to seal the hour. Watch cricket

leap across your ugly tile floorand play to your boot as it misses once again.

i’m cricket, blacker than coffeeand tobacco juice, my song more bitter, more buzz

if you’d only quit your typingand shut up a minute. Cricket says

your lips confuse the issue,cricket’s long antennae pick it all up, cricket knows where cricket is.

• 57 •

Cricket burrows with forelegs,chews your paper. Cricket says stop straining for effect.

Cricket loves a napper in the grass.Cricket is never wretched. in a room of smoke

cricket can breathe.Cricket sings outside your sealed room of stone.

• 58 •

M o s a i c

Will we remember you, child we never knew, never saw,never touched, infant we never touched though flesh of our flesh, whose skin

we never smelled with a cutting inarticulate animal lovemade of our one love formed from dream shards and diverging strands, the splits we sequenced to envision you, now without a name . . . (the name we would have called out to the living, or the dead; but if the dead never lived outside another body in this world?).

so i seek my shelves, my selves, to find there fate and character inscribed as one action, in time, blind; still, we are assured of striding

• 5� •

the right path to experience; thus pathos, to learn to know through pain.

Do we need to entertain that character can be remade, and fate made plastic by true intentions’ heat? (and if one is hardly one, a cipher, unbegun?) such is pride, scratching figments of pliability, false characters.

Proud parents, we say . . .

Yet when i say “you,”the peak of energy in utterance spikes to question elements of who— who died by this mosaic of a gene, (mosaicism, pathogen’s crooked path to crippling deviation) who did we burn to ash, whose ashes did we carry to the coast,whose ashes did we set down on that rock above a sea repetitive as a lullaby, it was that quiet, barelya breeze to carry further the remains . . .

so i had to lean into the small heap of ash to make from my breath a single strong current and send the ashes

over—;

• 60 •

yet when i breathed in, my nose inches from them, (i could make out, i thought, the larger chips of bone) particles of ash lifted to my throat and stuck there. i coughed,

swallowed some ashes, my face close enough to the ground, i recognized like a wordan ant—with effort, with continually renewed determination and its famous instinct for logistics—carrying as if along a legendary route

another ant, dead, its own ant,

across the cliff . . . pathetic

chimera of grief, earth-dweller gathering beyond reason in an awkward script of movement

this improbable coincidence, chancestrand in the ninth position, the body’s winter deformation.

a mosaic now of unborn possibility: the future had breathed like a muslin veil we peered through

to see ourselves with you

in another life (in the nucleus), nucellus

• 61 •

of the new, nut meat hungered for as we prepared to pass through curtains puffed with beckoning

(chance currents lapsing to fainter cadence) . . .

—yet when i breathed in—

We see ourselves there still, where we cannot pass through to, disappearing avenue, mosaic of promise, musaicum, music, museum . . .

broken code, unwritten book we cannot open. You wereour girl we never held that memory wishes it could read.

• 62 •

D e p a r t u r e

open the door and let me through to make my own first daywhere green turns gray into a blueyou’ve never seen, because it’s you: you could not stay.

i could not stay. but the blue turns gray and returns, though new,and becomes my now; and this now burnscompletely physical, which bones do, too.

am i far enough from you as from a rhyme? –i hearthe world rush in, as though out flewa sparrow, panicked by what it knew, (its nest of fear)

with bones hollow as a piccolo piping its bright flight highabove tree, town, and radio,to find the climate clean, to not know the rhyme for die.

• 63 •

N e t

You live with it, your restlessness,

pacing the rooms where no comfort lies.

(grief. grave. a falling pitch, an openness.)

What is your work? Where can you learn

to spread your net on the face of water?

born in the world, we live together.

and if not together, what is a world?

necessity. Choice: hope. Constraint.

• 64 •

those that are gone, they’re part of the figure.braid makes the rope;

lake waits for sun thaw.

• 65 •

S o n g

for Thom Gunn

there is no east or westin the wood you fear and seek,stumbling past a gate of mossand what you would not take.

and what you thought you had(the here that is no rest)you make from it an aidto form no east, no west.

no east. no west. no needfor given map or bell,vehicle, screen, or speed.forget the house, forget the hill.

• 66 •

S e a r c h l i g h t

eye turned to see you, mind-star, ancient beam sharpened to a bladeby memory cutting a path through many years’ midnight.

tormentor, nurse,imp flouting a floral print;would that i could ignore you, rank delighted heckler—

Hey Fuckhead, remember when . . .

like a lighthouse blinkingopen forgottenregrets; each lucent snake hunts the weedfloor of a neglected garden.

alsomy singing council, my

• 67 •

circling titan daughter, defender againstmemory’s noisy magpie—

serve your dry lick to the inner ear;

clear my way for the finding, cut through all the lies.

sever the sutures:reveal me

as the same, falseraveller

who cherishes the chiding (the chiming) he knows will heal himto conceal him.

• 68 •

L a m e n t f r o m t h e B o o k o f G i a n t s

i

. . . and remember that you are poor,you live in

a tent of skin,

and if you taste sweetness, bitternessmust follow.

and if you delight

in truth it will pass you like a golden Perch to

new waters,

your ears plugged against the breath

of forms. the children

of righteousness torment you with their dancing.You have

forgotten your mother’s

face, and your father’s, their voicesremain

unburned. You seek

• 6� •

comfort in carnival, you honor false

boundaries; you speak

into the wind and lecture those who are sleeping.

seeking purchase

in the city of night, you find refuge in

facsimiles of gardens

and depictions of night. You fight by proxy,

you accept judgments

as lullabies. radio too weak for the innermost

stations, lips too

dry to sound the horn—sprinkle

dust on your meat:

the hand you seek has been withdrawn; you have succumbed

to the lure of nations . . .

ii

so i tried to shut the book of giants from my mind: i didn’t care

• 70 •

to read it, i was already dumb and my heart distressed. i sought council in a covenant of my own makingas i perceived my nature a strong tower built from bricks baked in the backyard kilnand supported by improvised ramparts.

of course, i was a fool. Pleased with the work of my own hands,

still i sought shelter amongst the men of marvel and their marvelous mighty powers, the great goodness of their actions shining like a seven-fold light upon foreign fields shredded to chaff and the beautiful deserts ruined.

i had cast my lot in the congregation of Vanity and Cunning.i conjured beds of cypress and cinnamon on a plantation fed by a hidden watercourse.

but i knew no joy. When i laughed or opened my mouth, i barked as though welcoming a pox. When i bathed, a new film covered my limbs and torso such that dancing became impossible, treacherous. Conversation melted into discourse which slowed to a phatic trickle and froze, finally, into shackles.

• 71 •

from the book of giants grew the frond of an old understanding; its claim rooted in my soil gathered strength there—

then why did i resist? Didn’t i belong to my neighbors; were their fears and desires not mine? the book of giants stayed shut, though i dreamed of withered grapevines mired in salt, shadowed by a glory branch reaching past the past.

iii

thus the giants shut their book with sadness.they searched for one to explain to them the dream.the interpreter-scribe confessed his ignorance.the giants fell asleep in the midday heatand sleep on, with faces to the sun.

• 73 •

N o t e s

the epigraph is found under the heading “games for small toughs” in The Oxford Nursery Rhyme Book, assembled by iona and Peter opie (oxford University Press, 1955, 1960). instructions for the game are as follows: “the child holds the grown-up’s hands and is jumped up and down to the first two lines. at ‘three’ the child has an extra big jump and twists his legs around the adult’s waist. the child’s body is then allowed to fall backwards until his head nearly touches the floor. he is asked ‘Dead or alive or round the world’. if he chooses ‘Dead’ he is dropped on to the floor; if ‘alive’ he is pulled upright; if, as usual, he chooses ‘round the world’, he is whirled round and round for as long as possible.”

“bocca della Verità” puts words in the mouth of truth, in this case an ancient roman drain cover in the shape of a marble disc and representing a human face. it was believed the open mouth would close on the hand of any perjurer who placed it inside. it now hangs on an exterior wall of the santa maria in Cosmedin church in rome, a popular tourist stop.

“Dante: to guido Cavalcanti” is an imitation of Dante’s untitled sonnet.

“twister” quotes from Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet, trans. alfred macadams (1991; exact Change, 1998).

“elegy: reading Dugan in rome” quotes from his poem “advertising in Paris.”

“national Pastime” quotes from “Play that funky music (White boy),” lyrics by Wild Cherry (1976).

• 74 •

“found Letter” is an imitation of martial, epigram XLVii, book X.

“Vita nuova” draws from What Really Killed Rosebud? by Claire burch (regent Press, 2001), an account of the life and death of rosebud abigail Denovo, a nineteen-year-old radical activist killed by the oakland police in 1992; and Berkeley: A City in History, by Charles Wollenberg (berkeley Public Library, 2002).

“Weegee: Coney island beach after midnight” is based on a photograph and prose that appear in Weegee’s book, Naked City (1945; reprinted by Da Capo, 2002).