I keep returning to what seems to be the same place but isn’t, the interior concave or
curved inward, curved in on itself—at first I thought it was an accident, but it happens
every time. When I mention this, people are embarrassed and turn away. Lit with tubes
and globes, not expanding like the vagrant universe on the periphery or shrinking, as
from modesty—it’s difficult to watch the minutes and seconds and also to keep an eye on
the hours. I’m trying not to hurry, I don’t want to get ahead of myself—waiting rooms,

Nine dollars for a quarter pound of smoked salmon, you got to be kidding me.
What’s a poor Jew to do?
Become a brown bear in Alaska
who has mastered the art of curing the fish, wears a kippa on Saturdays
no matter what the other grizzlies think?
Naw. I don’t think so.

I mean, how do you say Baruch Atah Adonai in grizzly language?
It’s too difficult for a dumb schmuck like me to figure out.
Even if I did,
what would my God think?

Diffused like the blur of sun through clouds, you’re
dazzling but indeterminate.

You imbue the place. On the ash-
colored slats that side the abandoned
shed, you sprawl. In the spell
of maple limbs, sky writing
V’s and bent T’s,
in the tattered leaves,
out at the tooth, holdovers from the fall,
you’re suspended like weather.

How the girl vanished from her bed,
the trashed clothes spread on the floor,
left you emptied
like the flaccid wind-sock of soul.

I say lift me:

I am a motherfucking load.

The more people come to understand

the more
they love
my sister.

A grey
kind of family
this is:

flush like ancient
Rome.

Level with the
hyper kids.

Please.

Can you spell love
when love hops
gladly?

When love
moves?

Can you tell me
what an arcade
means?

No meaning
is patient
with me.

Each gift
I bring with me

floods
overnight.

               But the iron thing they carried, I will not carry.
               —Mary Oliver

I.
On the flight from Mexico City to Chicago, carry
your love’s birth certificate and the necessary divorce decree

II.
(he was not always your love).

III.
It will read diferencias irreconciliables.

IV.
Stuff your suitcase with standard issue souvenirs—
bottles of mezcal, rebozos, talavera mugs.

V.
In the customs line, flash your American passport
and a partisan smile.

VI.
A certain nervousness is normal. At such time, you may wish
to recall an image from your trip to the capital—

                    "I wanted to hang myself. Of course it's impossible
                    because of the weightlessness." 
                    —Alexandr Laveikin

On a log, two birds face each other. With their beaks, they cross one another, pecking to the right and left. They look like Frenchmen caught in a loop of greeting, but they don’t touch, and their rhythm is too syncopated for a loop. Here and there, they pluck a beat from the air that twists like a worm. We watch from the car and laugh. Our dog in the backseat pushes in between us to look at the birds. Quickly, she turns toward the barn on the other side of the dirt road. She barks at the big, white barn.

The birds fly off.

Pretty good work if you can get it, making paradises in abandoned banks

Stony exterior, marble interior,

The registers like a failed carillon (toneless) striking all hours at all hours.

Every noon the ghost attendants ghost-walk up to the kiosk,

Throw down nobody’s money

(The two days you are proud of a boat are the day you buy it and the day you sell it)

Trading in the heart for the farm, buying the farm,

Selling the bucket to kick

The can, selling the farm when you kick the bucket.

From captor to native and cradle to eve,

                        waking and waving ourselves, our sleeves

in the cosmic breeze that ships us

                        to shape. O! harness, O! dumb dorsal purpose—

bluesmocking Alice alone in her palace, which happens

                        to be a hole—to be is to drop & grab

the bottle off the shelf to have something

                        to peruse along the fall. O! All the world’s a stage

in dishevelment. We bust each increment