from Here in My Body it Feels Crowded

Not having the book not remembering what it said

stunned awake into sheets like tissue wrapping of the old dress

dank from years’ saving

dusty gritty cement floor little windowless room who knew

what children could get up to

from Here in My Body it Feels Crowded

Morning spills from the bulk of a small house its quiet hour

unyoked to must

the shaggy elms raining green benediction

the arbutus with its red fruit a baretrunked palm’s spreading crest

dear to the mother of the gods

from Here in My Body it Feels Crowded

Look quickly at a speedometer see 90 the how can my body move at such speed

right foot slipping out then back into a sandal the high desert’s graysprigged pale silk dress

you would wear though it meant death

from Quivira

A funerary tower halfway climbed

the Bedouin on a little motorbike always ahead at the next site

necklaces looped on his arm swinging

the teenaged executioners parading in front of bound prisoners

from Quivira

The daytime moon brighter than smooth horses

in the field on Kit Carson

a mudbricked house bracketed by thin limbs

of almost bare aspens one called weeping

from Quivira

Dust fine as talc unfragranced and pale, a road

eerily untrafficked though now and then

disordered by cars, overhead the cold pearl of the moon

and thudding film memory

from Quivira

Pressed against a porch wall to keep out of busy gray rain

although bare armed and bare legged not shy of it

prismatically shifting tissue thin wet hydrangeas

clumped compactly as brains

oh beautiful ditherer drenched and feeling changed

from Quivira

The overland trail lined with graves

a dying daughter begging the men to dig

down 6 feet so the wolves

would not find her

the tired men

reaching 4 feet that’s enough

from Lizard Dream

Not a language of grief

the well rehearsed green chorus

bends to one side. A sleek blackbird erupts,

somewhere

a chainsaw. Somewhere

from Lizard Dream

I was not listening I was remembering small lights strung in the dark

by a narrow river

reflections like fireflies ricocheting off smooth water that was both

brown and green

like a mirror in a dark room that headlights of turning cars

ply with light

from Lizard Dream

He was watching The Battle of Algiers, which he said

was just like today. An Algerian angry with the French joined a group,

then the French burned down a building, many dying.

The end showing a general like Rumsfield saying

it was finished now and

someone else saying no it wasn’t.

She told him how she felt, which wasn’t purposeful

from Lizard Dream

Put down the heavy kettle I was not

a good mother I was a

good mother a little bit

pequeño pequeñito

from White Stucco Black Wing

What kind of life is this

this ripe this

smooth this unhurrying

ascent and descent

from White Stucco Black Wing

Once I was in Wyoming

Wind at night

Tiny toenails of mice in the walls

Liquid graffiti

from White Stucco Black Wing

Here is a story: A teacher invites students to his house where his wife lies in bed in the front room, paralyzed, He never mentions her, and neither do the students as they step quietly near the body. Following a dusty yellow path

downhill past a water tank and its obsidian surface, a rat-rattling barn, and all the high pale gras with its dry rasp that may be lizard or wind yet all walk faster