U.S.

A father tells his son the thing he regrets most about his life is the amount of time he has spent worrying about it.
Worry 1. A dog’ s action of biting and shaking an animal so as to injure or kill it, spec., a hound’ s worrying of its quarry; an instance of this. 2. A state or feeling of mental unease or anxiety regarding or arising from one’ s cares or responsibilities, uncertainty about the future, fear of failure, etc.; anxious concern, anxiety. Also, an instance or cause of this.

I only recognized your hair: short,
neatly combed. Our mother

would’ ve been proud.
In the Sonoran desert
your body became a slaughter-

house where faith and want were stunned,
hung upside down, gutted. We

were taught

to bring roses, to aim for the bush. Remember?
You tried to pork

a girl’ s armpit. In Border Patrol
jargon, the word

.......................    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  

Schliemann is outside, digging. He’ s not
not calling a spade a spade.
The stadium where the Greeks once played
used to stand on this very spot.

Each night, Penelope, operating
in mythical time, unspools the light
gray orb Schliemann has just unearthed. Come daylight,
her hands will restitch it. The suitors sigh, waiting.

And each night I’ d watch as my hero curled
himself round home plate, as if he were going
to bat for me. And I’ d hold my breath, knowing
a strong enough shot might be heard round the world.

The skin of sleep
is thin. It will not hold.
Its contents stumble out.
A nub of bone
lodged in earth
at the bottom of a pit.
A stranger staring
down from the rim.
The skin of sleep is thin.
It cannot hold.
Lost names spill out.
Children engraved
in ash. A sea of blood.
Only you, tenderness,
stillborn, beneath
the skin of sleep.

Brailed up from birth, these obdurate, obituary corners
of second life the hospital light ravened solstice

blessed with a caesarean and now we have a republic,
the bread under arm, water-bearer of the sea: Cetus, Christ.

After the blackbird I put on my herringbone jacket,
the feather hummed gargoyles bearing down buildings,

rain scowled down, Vallejo and Vallejo as I hurried
up Eager Street; Thursday, I remember the white stone

Exuberance sips bootleg gin from a garter flask
with a ruby monogram “E.”

She wears a red dress one size too small,
eyes wide, she flirts with everyone, dares

Lincoln Beachey to fly until he runs out of gas,
rides a dead engine all the way down.

She watches Ormer Locklear climb
out of the cockpit two hundred feet up,

tap dance on his upper wing
as the houses of  honest families

with their square-fenced yards
slide below his shuffle. An oval pond

winks in the sun, like a zero.
Exuberance challenges pilots

Tightened jaw, I did not love.
Flashback of myself  jerked about,
legs high above my head, men
laughing, I came to sea drifts,
movement and crashing. I found I am
not so far from God exploding.
Gifting, a friend once said, is why we live.
Seven storks still and white on a gold lake.
My lazy eye glances back to that original
split, myself  high above myself.
Whiplashed into forgetting, I didn’ t know
hours from minutes. I was hypervigilant for
catastrophes. My head raging then numb.

Despite that you
wrote your name
and number
on its fuselage
in magic marker

neither your quiet
hours at the kitchen
table assembling
it with glue

nor your choice of
paint and lacquer

nor your seemingly
equally perfect
choice of a seemingly
breezeless day
for the launch of
your ambition

nor the thrill
of its swift ignition

nor the heights
it streaks

nor the dancing
way you chase
beneath its

dot

O little-know facts — how Robinson attracts them!

Pilgrims rocked ashore here, before Plymouth Rock.

The word scrimshaw is of unknown origin.

The stock name of the archaic two-lane main road? Route 6A. Really
it’ s Old King’ s Highway.

Some facts are useless: the paper bag was invented in Dennis.

Some facts are not: Wellfleet’ s town clock sings out ship’ s time.

19th century Americans observed only three holidays. The Fourth of
July was one.

O witty aperçus — how Robinson accrues them!