Farid says he wants to be a family,
he adds, by which I mean I don’t want you to die.
How did the fall begin? With touch? With naming? You were guidebook, misstep. You were hiking in Japan.
I do not mean to lose the coast. But the fragrant wood of the skiff, shore whining with current, as though I could hear the coil of electric lines humming with speech, the slur of ordering—and in overhearing seek to follow, or move away from, bow knifing the water and splaying it from its back, sound retreating fathoms down from the oar’s dip and dip.
Lucas had to work late, or else.
When he left the office
The stars were open
And the bars were closing.
Lucas took one of those trips
That Americans of a certain rage
Must take—to find themselves. In Utah
Lucas found himself marooned
In the wilderness
How can the one-man band disband?
They say scads of folks cried at his
Scattering
Beyond Furniture & Fixtures,
Fixed Assets incl of Plant
& Machinery, Goodwill incl
Of Green Donation & Tree
Trimming Vehicle
You will only be heard
When the noise
Has died down
And the air so clear
You can hear
The soundless
Soundtrack of bats
from The Ridiculous American
Julie stands alone looking at a cornucopia of flowers. She is quite a bit shorter than one would imagine, and younger looking too, very fit, with dark brown bangs, tastefully blonde-streaked, fringing her sunglasses. She wears old green cotton pants (cargo pants?) and looks nothing like a movie star.
Jock: Are you Julie?
(She doesn’t turn. Should I leave this person who might not be Julie alone-— and who also may be Julie and is not turning around because she just wants to look at flowers? Probably. But I did bike all the way into town to talk to her. A few moments of courage-gathering. A trifle louder.)
In this island human corpses are not buried and do not putrify,
but are placed in the open and remain without corruption.
Here men see with some wonder and recognize their grandfathers,
great-grandfathers, great-great-grandfathers,
and a long line of ancestors.
—Topographia Hiberniae, Giraldus Cambrensis (1220)
I have seen them in other guises, in dreams or along wind-blown streets here and across the sea
where they go by with a nod or sometimes not, benign or monstrous, familiar passers-by
and now it is I who pass before them where they recline, still upon the rain-polished limestone,
each in his own bed
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