four years
to the day
yesterday

				so open
					we all were such lilting

						young lungs  that tattered

guitar twangy strings
hunched over in constant

				tuning how is it
				that I can see you

							cradled over acoustic
							body going back & forth

hands up
& down
all along
fret board 
a chord			a series of notes 	curls unfolding in a sway  of 

         afternoon light


certainly 
your voice          yet  now   
                    when I see 			an old photo


							of you 
                                                        there is 
                                                                hush

	as if replaying memory on mute


four years since
you died almost		30 years 		since we lived in 

			the same house

		dogwoods in bloom
		like we used to see				in Jersey


the cherry blossoms
in a day or so
will be mostly 
leaves

				but today is 
				not Jersey
				not Eugene			just me


sun obscured by apartment buildings

					but the light still floods,


with an open window
on a spring morning


				setting your ghost    free to breathe

(fragment)

since when since ever relenting
for no memory contains then
dissolves labyrinthian grooves ate
through drift wood after world more world
granular & shitty   where else 

I gave Kate and Max a copy of my yearly mix, which was still a burned CD at that time, and Kate loved “Palmyra” the best, which is still one of my most favorite songs, tuned precisely to my particular sadness. For my 30th birthday they gave me a collection of 45s. The kind of friends where you gave them a gift and they gave you an even bigger gift back, even if you hardly knew them. But always something made or found, not shiny and new. On Brevoort Place I told Kate she could grab a wine glass from the shelf, and she took one down and held it out to me without a word. Inside lay a dead daddy long-legs in a bed of dust. I laughed and washed it in the sink right behind her. The kitchen was the hallway between the bedroom and the living room. It was never totally clear which room should be which, so we went back and forth, or I did. One day my friends came over and took apart and reassembled the bed in the other room. It was good not to have it in the room where I’d sat up on it and cried till I lost my voice. Even to myself I act like it’s a mystery, why I lost my voice when he left or I told him to leave, but the answer is no one’s ever cried so hard. That particular sadness.

I never intended to marry imagined I’d have books too many records whose length if played one after the other would last longer than the life I’d have left I suppose there would be friends thrill of morning coffee scent moving in & out of rooms occasional late afternoon tea the quiet of green pearls opening in hot water or maybe I’d only be able to afford a single room, still it’d be enough sun in backyard filled with poets all summer long fancy adult drinks with garnishes & beers aplenty once Nerissa sang while Des plucked an upright bass I still have photo of Ken with Ted whose holding a large flip phone 

the interior mostly subterrain (what they refer to in Boston as a garden apartment) but this was Brooklyn & it was simply called lucky lucky that is to live alone the place inhabited by two poets prior: first Amy & then Sommer that place got condemned the garden boxes dispersed ladybugs found new homes—such a delicate wind from their wings

lightning horizon   night ocean
prism cloud privately abyss
hours render eyeless & soft
from the sky to the gutter to
the fissure  like air between lungs 

I wanted to know about the bright star
in the southwest
so I took out my Night Sky app
and held it up to the heavens

“Are you Sirius”
in the constellation Canis Major
a ghastly dog
in the Night Sky?
yes you are

I pointed my phone at the ground
and gasped
to see Saturn, Neptune, and Mars
way down & out
through the earth
not up in the heavens at all

I tried to show you but
you said
“You’re going to give me
vertigo”

Up ahead
a car was blocking the sidewalk

Then you said
“I’m afraid I might run
straight into that car up there
and roll over”

And I said
“You’re not afraid—
you want to roll over that car!
Did you know vertigo
is caused not by the fear of falling
but the desire to fall?”

And you called this poetry
not science

And I admitted
I probably learned it
from the poets

whose utterances
are always true

A translation of a poem by Yen Ai-lin.

*

Summer Rain

*

It slowly collects milk

until it looks ready to burst.

*

Suddenly, the sky’s become a huge breast,

copious mother love

nourishing every creature crying to be fed.

That rush of milk

like a hoard of snakes

surging into the city’s invisible arteries,

mixing with the mess of junk food already already there,

heading straight for the stomach.

*

Look up;

the sky’s already got that after-a-feeding look.

A shriveled blue pasted overhead.

*

**

*

暑雨

*

它滿滿地蘊飽了奶汁

像是突然會噴灑出來。

*

倏然間，天空變成一只大乳房

豐沛的母愛

滋潤了每個嗷嗷待哺的生靈。

那過剩的乳汁

彷彿蛇群一般地

竄入這城市的隱形血管，

混雜著原本攝取過多的垃圾食物

直通賁門。

*

抬頭一看；

天空已是哺育過後的樣子。

藍，乾乾癟癟地貼在上面。

in Eugene feet thru high 
grass already going 
yellow even though Autumn 
is months away 
abandoned field rumored 
once to be hippie commune floppy 
frisbee slits thru still 
air Elizabeth’s arm reaches 
ever upward Tamara 
with a bag of books college 
blues on weekday afternoon 
how many days of rain 
did we wait out 
the sun a few sun-
flowers stranded 
here & there our final 
summer unknown 
to any of us a season 
later as pumpkins were carved 
imagination remade by sewing 
needle’s rhythm a bus back 
to Philly broken-
hearted listening 
to some mopey Sunday’s 
song on repeat Utah 
one stunning plateau 
after the next road 
stretching further emptiness 
the boy next 
to me from Alaska 
living out his cracked 
Kerouac visions how many 
versions of ourselves enter 
& exit periphery hacky sacks  
hippies given way to hip 
hop & graffiti bottom 
of my jean pocket 
lint of what 
was left behind

underworlded    where messages
relay decay  cooperate 
late to the roots lattice later 
to listening without hot needs
moon birthed moon lulled   what can depth know 

but weight equal on either side
of a membrane   rupture conveys
cease & suddenly another 
death biz    each end high fives begin
erupt   Chernobyl  fungi go

towards radiation   passages 
of not only time   hark bullate
heartened harmscape   black frogs acres
learned else  said nah on went fatigued 
soiled like rich   soil as home