Arts & Sciences

That she was not pretty she knew.

The flowers delivered into her hands post-concert by the young girl, pretty, would be acknowledged only. To display was to invite comparison.

Skilled at withholding, she withheld; it was a kind of giving. As when meditation is a kind of action,

a way of leaning into music the way one leans into winter wind, the way a mule leans into a harness,

the way a lover leans into the point of deepest penetration.

After a ship’ s prow cuts the water, the water rushes back twice as hard.

7-Eleven’ s a misnomer, like “mind-
body” problem. They never close. The hyphen’ s

a dash of form. Sure, this mind-body’ s
a machine, if you want, plowing across town

to the steak house. American Spirit. Give us
the yellow pack. No matches? This dollar

fifty-nine Santa lighter, too. Big Grab bag
of Doritos. No, the “engine” is not

separate — it’ s part of the machine. Sure, paper’ s
good, container for recycling. Rain’ s no problem.

I eat the Doritos, smoke up — one for you?
The chips are part of my machine —

It’ s a little-known fact that God’ s headgear —
A magician’ s collapsible silk top hat,
When viewed from Earth, from the bottom up —
Is, sub specie aeternitatis,

A pluperfect halo, both circle and square,
And a premonition of this truth
Spurred on an ancient philosopher,
Anaxagoras, to make numerous vain

Attempts to approximate the circle
Of his concerns with the square of the cell
He was jailed in for impiety.
Doomed calculations which God acknowledged

All their fences
All their prisons
All their exercises
All their agendas
All their stanzas look alike
All their metaphors
All their bookstores
All their plantations
All their assassinations
All their stanzas look alike
All their rejection letters
All their letters to the editor
All their arts and letters

.......................    hello hello hello   ...    Weiwei   ...    where have you been?   ...    I see you in dreams   ...    bleeding   ...    in the darkness of the sun   ...    81 spots in the flame   ...    each a nightmare one cannot wake up from   ...    Weiwei   ...    the last son   ...    you told me as we said goodbye   ...    your last night on the Lower East Side   ...    未未   ...    the last child of your Mother and Father   ...    born in the labor camp   ...    exiled from Beijing to the far desert   ...    watching your Father clean public latrines for singing the truth  

I’ ve come to this one grassy hill
in Ramallah, off Tokyo Street,
to place a few red anemones
& a sheaf of wheat on Darwish’ s grave.
A borrowed line transported me beneath
a Babylonian moon & I found myself
lucky to have the shadow of a coat
as warmth, listening to a poet’ s song
of Jerusalem, the hum of a red string
Caesar stole off Gilgamesh’ s lute.
I know a prison of sunlight on the skin.
The land I come from they also dreamt
before they arrived in towering ships

One stood among the violets
listening to a bird. One went to the toilet
and was struck by the moon. One felt hopeless
until a trumpet crash, and then lo,
he became a diamond. I have a shovel.
Can I turn it into a poem? On my stove
I’ m boiling some milk thistle.
I hope it will turn into a winged thesis
before you stop reading. Look, I’ m topless!
Listen: approaching hooves!
One drowned in a swimming pool.
One removed his shoes
and yearned off a bridge. One lives
with Alzheimer’ s in a state facility, spittle

Lucretius grabbed my arm and led me
to the spot where he went nuts. I watered little
drums right away and entangled the Sava River
with knitting needles. I putrefied a small soup,
dismembered seven towels. There, He — The
Terrible — burnt on the stake, squatted, too.
My god, I beat him up his ass. Puff, puff, but
no one had heard a thing. Now here, I’ m flooded
with flowers by cumin. Even Tarkovsky appears.
Now I will suck you with my thumbs, mold
you like clay with my horns, till he’ d vaporize and

A bride and a groom sitting in an open buggy
in the rain, holding hands but not looking
at each other, waiting for the rain to stop,
waiting for the marriage to begin, embarrassed
by the rain, the effect of the rain on the bridal
veil, the wet horse with his mane in his eyes,
the rain cold as the sea, the sea deep as love,
big drops of rain falling on the leather seat,
the rain beaded on a rose pinned to the groom’ s
lapel, the rain on the bride’ s bouquet,
on the baby’ s breath there, the sound of the rain