The wound only shows
when the body is sleeping,
in the mind, in the nightmare
where ink drops from the desk
& splashes across the floor
in the shape of his face
though he's been dead
for years. It's a blow,
a reminder of the grave
in the air: this wound
never closes, there is no scar,
& sometimes no memory
when the nightmare closes
itself as a raven's wing,
more black ink folding in.

The wound only shows
when the body is sleeping,
so coffee is the sword
& the shield.
Keep sleep short,
don't dream,
& don't think about it,
just sit still, read
the newspaper you stole
from the building's front step.
The Dow is down,
but tech stocks are climbing.

The neon vests are huddled
against the white sleek of the van,
crowing cigarette gossips
as they warm up the machine.

The asphalt is plowed away,
churned and melted, black butter
of the earth, pecked to hell
by rapid, merciless steel beaks.

The foreman's memento mori:
tobacco's body returns itself to ash,
a smoked soul rises toward my window,
gray crown cooling and fading.

They strip the street.
Denuded, a dirt stripe stretches
into a water cradle.
They pour tar into a slick shape,

it gleams thousandfold,
accusing insect oil eyes.
Paths can be taken away, remade:
crooked roads straightened.

Two years of grief distilled
in gulped gallons: undone,
undrunk, sweated out
on the cork yoga mat.

New things are placed
beneath the surface,
filling the cavities.
New skin is pressed.

The orange vests disperse
into the rings of evening.
I sit and wait in the new dark:
someone is coming for me, and soon.

My therapist is pregnant,
the same therapist I once appraised
while I sat clinically depressed
on her clean gray couch,
my burnt umber eyes scanning
inappropriately.

As I imagined her
with hand of wine
in a brick wall restaurant,
I justified myself saying
that everyone does this,
looked at their counselor
and imagined closing
that very fragile gap.

But my fantasy was brief,
broken horribly by the things
I had to say about myself.
And now her soft, wide belly
stings accusingly even
as I give my sincere
congratulations.

No wife, no family,
no children here,
just more lithium,
another year down,
another breakup,
and another "fresh start."
Another notch on the mind's cell wall.

Dearest E--,

At your name,
an inner empire went to grass -
there was no saving it.

The aftershocks were felt
for several hours:
wracks, throbs.

The ****** sun wouldn't stop,
bright gristle mounted on acromion,
though the afternoon was finished.

E--, you can't shave me away
with distance; I know it pains you,
so here is a compromise:

you will be adored, but so quietly,
so politely. See, I can be reasonable -
I won't even send this letter,

Though I Remain,
Always Yours,
Evan

A ceremony
of sun in the

admitted eye.
The day drawing

away silently.
You, tempting

me with the
inviting

curve of
your cheek...

The night
closed and
my tears
floated the dark.

My body curled away
in betrayal,
unwilling to meet you,
and I hated it.

Anxiety rose
inside me
like an electric hum.
My face was a shine,
a gloss, a smear
that hovered.

Please,
look past
the beating blood.
This was never me.

There are those children
out your window again,
but I'm trapped over the line
in the seething yellow dusk.

I count the gapped lintels
the next building over,
count to ten, twenty,
it doesn't stand.

I take up post
by the oven to hear
your anger at those children,
those ****** children.

"Sleep: those little slices of death, how I loathe them" -Poe


In my dreams I am always dying -
a Sicilian orange rolls down the walk,
the yellow branch-hand lets go,
& the starlings have all flown.

Why bother? My childhood sweethearts
are all miserable. Their children
have their own children,
terminal sin after terminal sin.

Ambulances go red as they float
slowly down the street. The dream ends
in a strange puff of vapor. Clouds die.
**** bodies move, then stop moving.

Let's face it: little slices of death
bring dark oils to the cheeks
of the depressed canvas. A skull in black
stares at the keys. It's over. Over.

I knew four or five like him,
loping through the flicker
of the motor oil bonfire,
the tainted, boundless promise
of the devil's ďeal as plain
on their faces as the tattoos.

Always bracing and braced,
like quarry-blown stone
that only seems featureless
until you look enough
to see vein after vein
marbling it.

They are memory men,
resurrected by the news
that Lil Peep is gone,
they still stalk the fringes
of the old bonfires,
some of them consigned
to do so forever,
beer can in one hand,
***** in pocket,
the other hand full
of something, anything,
as long as it filled the hand.

The earth is hungry for me.
I feel it in every step,
in the way the green
morning sun grabs
at my sleeve on the platform
when the metro train arrives,
in the gnashing maws
of blooded cloud
that conceal the moon
like a mad aunt.
I've kept it waiting so long,
forty years now;
it caught my father
under the wax-window,
& removed him
to a place in the air.
The lithium salts laughed
& laughed when I found
a shadow at the bottom
of the night-bottle.
I no longer lean out
over the sick, slick hands
of the river when
I go to the waterfront bars.  
I'm still a step or two ahead,
but let's face it -
the tree leers in leaf,
the stones are snide,
& my eye looks so dark
in this whisky reflection.

I. You Will Make A Name For Yourself

She said my name - it stuck there -
a jot of air caught in space between us -
it hung there, it's still hanging there,
moss growing over the truth of it,
rain chipping away at the crags,
my name waiting to be claimed.

II. Success And Wealth Are In Your Fate

There is a hill where I go walking
that is covered in grave slants -
headstones effaced by scraping snows -
money and marble sliding green and down -
so many dead hands bidding to shape
their fate - they're shushed by vines.

III. You Will Receive A Surprising Prize

In an open window across the street -
creamy unlidded eye in beige brick face -
a woman has showered and is toweling off
slowly and deliberately - almost burlesque -
as the sun cuts morning's cusp
in bright-grown slices - coming for her.

Here I am
in the deep curve
of the pavement's push
toward salt-bleached ends.

There is a stillness
within my ear
so that I only hear
my hanging breath,
wreathes of frost
like smoke rings
in the dried sub-zero.

Snow is coming,
probably the usual
Mid-Atlantic dusting,
though it falls fat
like the soap flakes
that I poured
from a box
when I was
a child.

I distrust quiet.
I need noise
& music
& voice
to still my inner self.
It reminds me
over and over
I don't belong,
I don't belong.
Snow dulls the world,
wakens the mind.

The late night thoughts
are far the worst.
They part me out
like a side of meat
under the butcher.
I lay on the bed,
the cat kneading my gut,
& I think yes, go ahead,
turn me inside out.

The snow comes
as an ambush,
though you could almost
sense it, vaguely.  
The traffic slows
until only
the city trucks pass,
with the rattle
of rock salt
which skitters like dice
across the face of the street.

No more passersby
under the yellowed blush
of the streetlight.
Windows of the neighboring
buildings are closed
against the buckling gusts
of wind so cold it hurts.

Nothing left against the snow
except myself.
When the mind begins
its thoughtful treason,
& advances the first pawns
in a despairing game,
I have no good defenses.

Open the window,
catch the scent of snow
over the world,
& feel attuned
to the many pieces
of the clouds,
that fall and fall
until they vanish forever.

I.
Your words
are starry, lush,
crawling over quiet
amaranth pages in the air -
"don't go."

II.
Hundreds
of lights are smeared
like yolk by a long hem
of thunderheads that are hunting
eastward.

III.
I dream,
sometimes, about
the old lawns in Dublin:
the last time I felt clear and free.
What now?

This is life?
Starting the journey
with a rough beginning,
carrying a turning mind
within a sunsetted body,
some kind of a self.

And this is the self?
Carving through life,
carving through the body,
on the streaking journey
into the mind?
It's a beginning.

Or something like a beginning.
I'll pick up this self,
clean out this mind,
baptize a new life.
Go on a long journey,
remodel the body,

the aching body
right as it's beginning
to stray from the journey.
Guard the self
against life.
And the mind,

be careful with the mind,
more than even the body.
Because this wild life
is only the beginning.
The roles of the self
change so much on the journey.

No, plural - the journeys.
Likewise, the minds,
and the many selves
you'll have. The bodies,
the beginnings,
the lives.

Because the body and mind
are always beginning. The self
is a journey. That's life.

The sea slides
away. Fog
banks the high
tide and lakes
wrap the
highway.

You are the
specter in
my mind.
Garnet
laughter
rings out
in the house
of sand -
it's yours.

I stay up
late, branded
with sea.
I think you
are the grace
of the world.
The beach
swerves into
umber mist,
& an absent sun
hums just below
the horizon.

Without you,
the night-walk
is so hollow.
Without you,
the cigarettes
burn in rooms
of rain.
Without you,
the shells
are striped
with longing.
My balcony
heart perches
above the salt
city.

How many
days will
the fog bank
the high tide
& lakes wrap
the highway?
How long
will the sea
slide away?

"Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
          Time held me green and dying
     Though I sang in my chains like the sea."
-Dylan Thomas, Fern Hill

Under the involucres of yard hazel
I stopped your water when I was ten -

bent over the hidden pump stock,
I unscrewed the round rusty skullcap,

& felt the living nests of wire in my fingers.
Your father was patiently furious

in the fresh dooryard of the old farmhouse
where we played the Winnie the Pooh game.

Twenty years later we briefly crossed paths,
but my then-wife hated you -

you were pretty, clever, lustrous,
your hands full of sly flat smiles.

You threw me Belle and Sebastian -
you'll never know they are my favorite,

because you slid onward to Vanderbilt,
god only knows where you are now.

You escaped into a life,
I flattened under one.

Your imagination stuck me like arrows.
Your voice was glossy with cat-dreams.

You are a comet - you visit twice
in a lifetime, and always leave me astonished.

The moon
is an anise thigh,
a frostling,
a silver galleon
with trimmed sail.

You are two hours
farther down the arc,
in a mountain-head,
in a waltz-walk,
in a sunroom
that the moon
has colonized.

Oh, the moon...
anise eye,
snow-wreath,
starched breast
aboard a silver galleon.

I still mark your birthday
on my donation calendars,
you know.

Now I'm publishing
fractions of you
from 21 years ago...

But you moved on.
You drafted another
in my place. That's ok -

I'm here to tell you
that although every angel decays,
you have decayed slowest.

Those first Thursdays you were ringless -
we were cloud-shares with starry bearings,
lakes of mercury eeling under our skins,
small moon-screens in our palms.

And then, on that nervy warm nightwalk
when I was about to ask you to coffee,
you pricked the air and felt me leaning:
Ah... you're married, ten years now.

Flirtations wilt into aches.
Yet even now, as you wing away,
a streetlight's encore sprays pinked spangles,
& storybook trees are shushly budding.

The rain comes and goes.
Ribs and thews pull into a heart,
even as the evening pulls apart
with a bird's telephone step.

In high school
I met you,
you belonged
to my sister's circle

to the fresh night
to the scent of a book
open golden spine
in a vanishing

bookstore.
These impressions
of you were right:
You told me later

of your pride
in breaking
into the play
despite the crossed

arms of the drama
clique, scorning
you, jealous.
& you started

a coffee shop
to fill the gap
& cure the smallness
of a small town

that struggled
to hold you.
You were one
of those I knew

would be leaving
soon. Too clever
by half,
already in the world,

already aching,
a blind seed
in a paper garden.
You got punched

in the gut
by the burned out
girl, initiating you
into something

nameless.
Sliding out
of the house
after hours

to see the boy
under moon -
No, to see
the black days band

& float above
all the hands,
some touch you
as a woman,

& it was in this
awareness
that I met you
in the land

of dust jackets.
My curiosity
was sharp
as a wasp's song:

you were
a walking yes;
you told me
about Anna's

bonfire flicking
your face
as you cross
the quiet fields

littered with love
& you wrapped
in sky until
the girls went hunting.

How you pierced
yourself at
that festival but
I suspect

you pierced yourself
in others ways too -
you were so aware,
looking

for affirmation
for connection,
even with the teal
pager you kept

in pocket and
would then
plug in your
secret phone

just for the call.
You challenged
it all,
rebel

determined
to be yourself,
acute push
against the bonds

of salted adolescence
of a Persian family
of being a woman

in a world
that tried to
fold that
against you.

You told me
all of this.
I met you then
and never

quite let go
even in the years
that moved
like free water

between us.
You came back
& my old
school thoughts

drifted out
of my mouth.
You gave me
memories

that I engrave
here. This is
all you.
It's you.

You are somewhere between
my unhurried steps and
the unhurried stars that
break free and easy from
the branch of rain that
hides half the world.

You are something between
the wild words of Yeats and
the wild words of your own,
handed to me across
the four hour sea,
full of firsts.

You are somewhere between
my awaiting gaze and
the awaiting days that
sit on the tongue's edge
of history, under sun's
streak that hems our world.

You are something between
the wise words of Hikmet and
the wise words of your own,
flown to me from
the Bosphorus,
full of wishes.

You are somewhere between
my coffee eye and
the toffee thighs of
the earth, bunching
into mountains,
scaffold to rivers.

You are something between
the wide words of Andric and
the wide words of your own,
a caravel in
the high tide
of my chest.

You are somewhere between
your yoga mat's page
& the sun-stuttered stage,
balancing geometries,
days rich like honey,
always near to a kiss.

You write poems, and
they stick in the teeth
like sugar and salt.
Your drawings, heavy
with black hatches,
turn the eye over
and over. This,
it's your city now.

You are somewhere between
the track of my gaze and
Dublin's last days,
long with summer
& brittle breeze,
& fickle cloud
that denies a sun.

You are something between
a Daydream Delusion
& the poems I write that
speak your name with
every vocabulary.
"Limousine eyelash."
You are still here, and
you always will be.

You are somewhere between
Istanbul's drum-lined streets
& the streaks of stars,
soft as poached yolk
from the window seat
of the plane that carries
you across half the world.

You are something between
the dreaming green women
of Yeats and the painted
women in long galleries
who patiently wait with me
for your intelligent eye.

Green rapture of human life,
crazy hope, golden frenzy,
intricate unsleeping dream,
like dreams of vain treasure.

Soul of the world, demented lushness,
decrepit imaginary greenery,
the today of joyful expectations
and the unfortunate tomorrows.

Follow your shadow in search of your day,
those who with green glasses for cravings
see everything painted to their desire.

More cautious of my fortune,
I have both eyes, both hands,
and only see what I can touch.

A chance meeting at a bar,
   chatting under pouring pine
& knotted wooden star:
   To new friends and a shared shrine;
   to love aging well, like old port wine.

Once, I thought
I had an empire,
full of ecstasies of grass,
temples to an obese sun,
words signed away
into the last corners
of the brickish night.

I had such grand plans,
to put death to death,
but soon all the heavens
of love coagulated.
Ghosts without eyelids
or lips followed me,
registering each sin.
An owl scratched at the moon.

This was the state you found me in -
I staggered around, alone,
scratching out my brutish art.
For you, though, I combed my soul
& yielded to the burning mercies
you offered among the knees of trees.
You cured me with sugar and patience;
I lived in your eyes.

I am your own poet, now,
lacing you into my middle age,
howling at this strange gamble
that closed a distance,
& falling into your arms
as often as possible.

I'll translate
for you:

"Spring drifts
into me again
tonight, the lush
blossoms skate
up my spine by
the dance hall,
I'm on my
second beer
& I'm all nerves."

means

I am a wreck,
again. Half of me
stumbled
& fell for her
weeks ago,
& half of me
is a ticker tape
repeating
what she told me:
This is right now
This is only now
This is nothing else
This can never be
anything else.

Out at the bar
I meet Sarah
the bartender -
born the day
before me,
small tattoos
across her arms
& going
to Paris soon -
when those
two halves
collide,
thoughts get
messy,
& I am
churning
to pieces
here in the
warm air.

I am available
to anyone
who claims me.
Until then,
I am something else -
something less
than enough
& this eats at me
like an acid.

and

"Even the air
is asleep.
It's one a.m.,
I threaten
the quiet walls
with little music
that I send
towards Ireland.
My heart
is too shy
for night
games."

means

I get home late.
My thoughts
divide
immediately -
between
the faraway girl
across the sea
who speaks
like a shy dream -
and something
else, something
desperate.
I am too
sensitive
for the rough
*******
madness
of love,
but I can't
stand
solitude,
either.
The faraway girl
is right
about me.

Now,
maybe you
understand.

Tree, tree,
dry and green.

The girl with the beautiful face
is picking olives.
The wind, rake of towers,
holds her by the waist.

Four riders passed
on Anadalusian ponies,
with blue and green suits,
and long dark coats.

"Come to Cordoba, girl."
The little girl doesn't listen.

Three bullfighters passed,
thin-waisted,
with orange suits
and swords of ancient silver.

"Come to Seville, girl."
The little girl doesn't listen.

When the afternoon wore
dark purple, and was fading,
a young man passed, who was wearing
roses and moonlight myrtles.

"Come to Grenada, girl."
And the little girl doesn't listen.

The girl with the beautiful face
keeps picking olives,
with the gray arm of the wind
tight around her waist.

Tree, tree,
dry and green.

**

Arbolé, arbolé,
seco y verdí.

La niña del bello rostro
está cogiendo aceituna.
El viento, galán de torres,
la prende por la cintura.
Pasaron cuatro jinetes
sobre jacas andaluzas,
con trajes de azul y verde,
con largas capas oscuras.
"Vente a Córdoba, muchacha."
La niña no los escucha.
Pasaron tres torerillos
delgaditos de cintura,
con trajes color naranja
y espadas de plata antigua.
"Vente a Sevilla, muchacha."
La niña no los escucha.
Cuando la tarde se puso
morada, con lux difusa,
pasó un joven que llevaba
rosas y mirtos de luna.
"Vente a Granada, muchacha."
Y la niña no lo escucha.
La niña del bello rostro
sigue cogiendo aceituna,
con el brazo gris del viento
ceñido por la cintura.
Arbolé, arbolé.
Seco y verdé.

-by Federico Garcia Lorca
translated by Evan Stephens

To Liz Arnold

Her slicing eye carved all
through me as she spoke

stories of marriage, cancer,
poems never to be written,

of garden stones and cocktails,
of **** coffee house parties.

What did she think of me,
more boy than man, sitting

in her worn maroon chair,
telling her of country miles,

of listless marriage, of nights
wide and deep and strange,

of the river bed of the heart,
& poems never to be written?

Liz stared intently, her eyes
dissecting; I never did know.

She walks the city
as it wakes.
Under cloud committee
she walks the city.
The river's pretty
as morning breaks.
She walks the city
as it wakes.

You travel today
to Belgrade:
nightclub-on-quay.
You travel today
on an hour's ray
over green brocade.
You travel today
to Belgrade.

Eight years
is long enough
to let yourself have fears.
Eight years
is long enough for tears,
too. It's tough.
Eight years
is long enough.

Thoughts like fire,
all about you.
Wilding desire,
thoughts like fire
devouring a pyre
to love unsubdued -
thoughts like fire,
all about you.

Fly home, my dear,
and love your life.
Until you're near
fly home, my dear,
don't veer,
but straight as a knife
fly home, my dear,
and love your life.

My darling one,
here is your breeze.
I also send the sun,
my darling one,
and I'm not done:
here, have the Hyades.
My darling one,
here is your breeze.

O grand cru -
full-bodied red.
Here's what I'll do,
O grand cru -
I'll drink you
down, then to bed.
O grand cru -
full-bodied red.

Hold my hand,
and don't let go.
Heart's demand,
hold my hand,
something grand,
sweet hello.
Hold my hand,
and don't let go.

I miss you, dear sweet,
deep in my bones.
In the high city heat
I miss you, dear sweet.
May the hours retreat
when the wild wind moans -
I miss you, dear sweet,
deep in my bones.

Go, visit home -
but come back to me.
To Europe's end you roam:
go, visit home,
my little honeycomb,
and be free.
Go, visit home -
but come back to me.

You love him,
but he doesn't know.
All the stars go dim,
you love him,
with every breath a hymn,
but it doesn't show -
you love him,
but he doesn't know.

On lover's lane
we cancel the rain
with champagne.
On lover's lane
kisses entertain
& endlessly sustain.
On lover's lane
we cancel the rain.

When I'm feeling down,
you speak to me -
I almost drown
when I'm feeling down,
but black and brown
give way to jubilee,
for when I'm feeling down
you speak to me.

The future is ours,
and life is sweet.
Through all the hours
the future is ours,
and all our powers
grow great in May heat...
the future is ours,
and life is sweet.

I love you,
my dear.
I tell it true:
I love you
every day anew.
Let them all hear:
I love you,
my dear.

Never Fear, love, never fear,
although you only know me here.
If the distance feels austere,
never fear, love, never fear.
For when I am at long last near,
touch to touch at our premiere,
you'll never fear, love, never fear,
although you only know me here.

I walk at night
just to walk.
By dim streetlight
I walk at night.
From city's height
to the river dock -
I walk at night
just to walk.

My fingers in yours,
walking so stately.
Cut cloud pours?
My fingers in yours.
Thunderhead roars?
I smile sedately,
my fingers in yours,
walking so stately.