a better poet / could get that one down, don’t you think, Placido? Could you / sing it for me, omitting the bit on “stillness”? Yes, I want // to vanish only under the weight of silly things.

along the fields of cotton / your sense of ghost is in the mesquite, live / oak, and huisache. your entrance to all this / is membrane to every person that’s purpose is // now horizon.

it’s midnight: / I can see it in the living // room: it’s clear, I’m standing in / the image, distant: here // I hear, so let’s begin: //

You send the breath through the valves / over obscured waters, toward / the north of a second sight.

since that day, i’ve never had a beautiful sentence to construct / for the world. my dreams, since the tulle and the guns, have been misty.

In my blood, a continent. All the warring countries—almost reconciled. They breathe together as they weave through the marbleized muscle of my heart, taking their communion of oxygen, amen.

I’m so well recovered I dream of cramming teeth into my gums. Smile like an alley of garbage cans, a pane of bowling pins. Give me metal, I’ll gift you a turkey. And now the poem turns to …

If I show you an image of a bird flying, you might think freedom, or graceful, or wings. You might remember your mother pointing to the sky, naming the bird starling, heron, crow. But all of that is …

we take turns / taking pains / on the days we stomach together. / you’re in / prime / puking condition / after a bloody-nippled marathon. / idols are made / in amniotic fluid, clay / and tough …

The air - was Close - the Pane - slid High - / The Sill Imbued with Dust - Gave Up / A Maple Wing - of Brussels Lace - / A Tachnid or a Horse - Fly -

A LINE BREAK IS A LOVELY THING SEE IT'S NOT EXACTLY A PERIOD OR A COMMA IT'S KIND OF LIKE A HALF-BREATH OR A MOMENTARY PAUSE OR THE "MA" BETWEEN YOUR CLAPS OR A KNEE LENGTH DRESS I MEAN A LINE BREAK …

When my mind plucked me / abruptly from earth and gently // laid me in abstraction, time went and saw / the world.

My sons are already / crawling, crawling / over the rug where / we used to lie / talking, talking / about our days / and day in the ab- / stract—

THE FIGHTING CONTINUES // as daily 30 corpses / continue life performing the same / highwire act // Long-established toponymy / today it’s known by heart / that Tecoluca and San José las Flores / …

Though I’m precious not all my thoughts are // of my own hand. So with my father’s hand / writing I acquired imagination in small caps. // My letters bubbled up the page in many large // …

& then the erotic self begun. The pink parts shut-up in the eternal & the jealous. Obsidian unfurls its wet petals. Composure divine, as a crown of snakes’ synchronized uncoiling witnesses the male …

One after another, they descend a jacob's ladder rising from the smoke machine smog holding banana-gold pythons draped over their shoulders. They hold these slaves like an atlas. Men are held down …

I don't want to go home. / Crumbled bricks, pamphlets // stained with salt. Mother's / street, black-tarred, whistling, // whistling.

Riverweeds trace our elemental body / while the ones we love, the faultless ones, spin records in the warehouse / where we sleep. I ring my bell in darkness—

what kind of intervention / is a twist in the sensate body? // at the botanical gardens, one cactus leaned on another / which is one way a landscape can be compelling