CLOSING IN

Out on the hammock
In the sun reading
James Schuyler, his
Last Poems, the past
Overwhelms like air
From a sauna, the way
One bare leg smothers
Another with its mute
Flesh and I can’t help
Cheating backwards
Until I reach The Bluet
Which is really Eleni
Reading to us on
The still wet grass
A cigarette dangling
From her wide mouth
The river closing in
So very unlike this
Desert city, a coyote
Fence encircling the
Yard, hummingbirds
Drunk on sugar water
And a tiny breeze
Shuffling through
The tall Cottonwood
Trees, my eyebrows
Have gone blond once
Again under summer’s
Generous sun, beard
Red as blood oranges
Which wait inside
As does my family
All of them reading
And my years-gone
Grandmother’s clock
Which makes itself
Known every hour
Just in case we forget

THE INTERIOR OF THINGS after Bei Dao

A friend’s hand
was making me nervous
moon underwater

who mourns things
at knock deep
in the otherwise
mute rotunda
of a frozen city?

an infant cannot be saved
by applause, just
as the fluttering mouth
of a door is not a periscope
into the lock

these vows go uninvited
a dark pit sitting
in the heart of a reservoir

and yet I still delight
in the implications born
of my friend’s hand

it must be saved

O’CONNER’S

Friday Night Baseball
I’d rather be reading
The label on my beer
Or the lull of conversation
Disparately plunging about
The bar’s arduous clinks
Glass sweating, summer
Stalling but proximate
Wilco then Silver Jews
Bud then Pilsner Urquell
As a muted relief moves
Across the countenance
While across the continents
War breeds like a wound
Pounded by parasites
The undead traipsing
Through sun-baked dunes
At least in my imagination
My eyes having only
Seen the deserts of Egypt
And New Mexico, just
Thinking of it makes me
Perspire, as my retiring
Eyes alight to the sight
Of friends fresh off
The fifth avenue bus
The night having only
Just begun, Silver Jews
Giving way to the Rolling
Stones, a table opens up
Things get jugular in
A congenial way, more
Beers are bought, I bring
Up Bush’s latest binary
Reduction cum cowboy
Shit-talking speech, which
Brings up our collective
Volume, each voice warring
With the jukebox, sparing
No ear its Friday din
Which seems to have no end
As the beers keep coming
And we take turns slumming
With the clientele for cigarettes
Everyone having run out
As the television has finally
And we won’t give up
Until everyone’s pockets
Are empty too

JULY 28TH

Past Harlem, tracks
Glazed with rain, majestic
Buildings boarded-up
Like kings deposed
Blindfolded, forgotten
I am remembering
The various violence
That has saddled us
Unseen, the unseemly
Business in which
We find ourselves
Interminably implicated
I am remembering
The pestilence of the soul
Its fingernails violet
With mishandled wine
A woman on the subway
Who dragged her kid
Smack into a pole
Not pausing to flinch
I am remembering
The whole of my
Youth like a suitcase
That won’t shut
The way my eyes
Won’t stay closed
But rather close
Like the enormity
Of this purple rose
Wilting imperceptibly
Behind my nose
I am remembering
A woman I once loved
The length of her limbs
The weight of her skull
All that it contained
Against my thighs
There is a desert city
I long to return to
Where my family waits
As veins of light freeze
Against the horizon
And a diminutive blue
Car stalls in the middle
Of the Triborough bridge