I came home with a terror on my back. It was the will to have words grow, where roses are feathers and feathers are pens, where snow is black, like ink, like skin. “My name is a way to become what you are,” breathed some voice into my lips. I was scared but happy.









Like danger, I run around the house like a mouse. Like a piece of red cheese, I wag my arms, I pump my heart, I leave crumbs everywhere. My hair is my name, for it is red and beautiful. My skin is dark, like tiger’s eye. My windows are onto the soul.









When I grow up, will I be valiant and bold like towers of old? Will I gleam with thick carpets and torches? Will I be a blessing to my friends? What will I be when I grow old? Will I be suffering, strange, many-candled, or gold?









I want to be brave. I go where the water is practically dust. I bring my hands. I bring my love, a riot of pink bubbles bubbling up from waters that see. Sea, can’t you see me? My hands gleam like eyes. Dad calls me a lyre when I lie. O to be born again to harmonies ribboning like the red ribbons in our hair that slice the air . . .









Unruly, I seek the sun. Look at my scabbed knees, the pink-and-red laces flowering on my shoes. I am the size of the sun, little hymn clipped from the big hymn kingdom. I smile like the lacquer on a pink guitar.









Sun says I see all my seeds stranded in the grass, dotted with wet, set to become strings of pinkish-red hearts twinkling like parties in the dark . . .



















A girl with a heart that dances. A girl with a face like a red candle melted down and erased. No one can see me. I am a friend to those who love. A surfboard, a necklace at the heart of a wave, a star in the palm of the hand. I say yes to both my enemies and friends.









When I grow up, I want to die gloriously in battle, like Achilles. I want to live a long life, watching kids sprout like vegetables in the yard. When I grow old, I want to be as clear as glass. Sweep me up, sweep up my smiles into a pan like fans grumbling pleats, whistling hymns.









Each story’s a fable, each fable’s a cut, each cut’s a tongue, and each tongue’s a form. What form am I, little sword? When the day is not my own, and my life is just tricycle and sky, what form am I? Where will I be when the sun calls my name? Will my face be the same? Will I stand in my gray hair like a huge steel bucket? Will I be free?









Or will I be like Cleopatra and ride a jackal down polished steps? Will I be lost or found or founding I’s and lies in loss? Whom will I love? Will I be Romeo or Juliet, and will I crack the net that binds hardened hearts in hate?



















It was my heart you sought, my lisp like a corsage emitting dreams from my lapel. It was the air and earth we bathed in. You, who visit from some strange place, listen: I was of mouth, of eyes, of feet, bare; I was of will, of vine, of walk, shaking like a shell anklet as we walked down to the beach; I was of earth, of sky, of flames drinking air, braided into celery crowns to be passed down and worn sputtering in the dark.









To live you need: sun, water, food, touch, talk, strife, song—song that draws up life the way roots draw water from the ground.









An inflatable tube-man (the poet T.S. Eliot) dances in an empty parking lot, slits an eye at you, and says: Oh, what are the roots that clutch, what branches grow / Out of this stony rubbish?



















She swarms around on a tricycle, screeches and yelps, leveling soft indictments at herself like “Ogre!” and “Maldito!” The crows stretch, thin black drums in the trees. The moon glows in the twilight, a shred of cotton candy.









“My home is nowhere,” she says. But that is a lie. You were cast into darkness so you could find me. I set you moving, got you close, then said: “You’re mine!” and laughed madly all the way to the beach. I said: “Come align!” like a thunderstorm emptying out its backpack, and scared you half to death. Think, seed, what else, what else but this is there to do?









Some days, I remember I am free, obediently free like water, which goes where it is called. I had a memory of a tree like a diamond stuffed with ravens. They beat their wings and fanned gauzy water from the branches, pure song.









Often I thought I knew best. Dad couldn’t bear me. Mom was all control. My teachers tried to tell me exactly where I fit. My friends laughed and screamed “Vainglorious!” and “Liar!” “Who was I?” I said to the girl who played dead but built a kingdom in her ear of sheer listening.



















I woke and heard voices, then saw, in the distance, what looked like Ferris-wheel lights twisting their spindly, cold greens. There is some comfort in my dreams. All that we see or seem / Is but a dream within a dream, said the poet Edgar Allan Poe. But not when you’re dead. Not when you’re waking from a dream that makes it seem that you are dead.









If you’re cast into darkness and have no place to lay your head, if your eyes, in another air, see only the air once there, then know that that air is really gone, and that you see only echoes of an absent air, pure terror.









Mourn the dragon air like mourning a boulder dislodged and heaved off the road, its totalizing form so real, it’s like a Russian doll, a dream nested within a dream.









If there is only this air, and I am not there, where am I?









O Boulder, you are now part of a process that inevitably casts you from harrowing significance to just-another-big-rock. Boulder taps the back of your hand and says: We become what we are when we approach the impossible.









Soldiers and kids know that being born and growing up, growing tall, means learning to break and fall. Oh seed, awash in dread, the pain is just the labor of ejecting shoots.









It’s hard, in the dark, before the light rubs its stringy teeth against you, to think there could be any other air than the air that’s there.



















I asked for friends, and, like mushrooms, magically they appeared. We whispered songs, reminding each other not to be, never, no, afraid. We sat down by the water and wept, and, singing, began to see again the place we were and are.









We remembered to ask for help. We remembered to call out loud. We remembered that even if we got sad, we shouldn’t stop. We remembered and tied, like a gold bracelet around our hearts, the words of Bob Marley:

Sun is shining
Sun is shining
Sun is shining
Sun is shining



















We sang incessantly, as if chewing bubbles. And moved our dancing feet, remembering that others had come before us in a long line of strife and life like a giant, glittering dreadlock.









They may be air-conditioned; they may be sweaty; they may sweep chimneys; they may be fine; they may be bent; they may be brilliant; they may be strange . . .



















Your best friend is hilarious. She makes you laugh so hard you feel like a prophet, body gripping on some truth like an oyster trying to expel a pearl.









Some things want to stay concealed; still others stand, doors open, stoked that we’ve arrived.









All the kids got together at the pool. It was 97 degrees out. Most of the kids were in the pool. Your favorite music was bumping on the speakers. The top of the sky was like the eye of a peacock’s feather, vivid blue encircling black.









After countless hours eating the pavement, breaking and scratching yourself up, all your love and skill align in a line of raw exigency (a total “must”) that shuttles you into a new reality where what couldn’t be, before, now can, and is.









Poets, lovers, singers, fighters, trumpeters, mothers, orphans, hobos, window washers, Walt Whitmans . . . Onward they rush, life’s laundresses ceaselessly wringing stars from towers of wet underwear and jeans.









I would like to turn my face to the sky. Yes. I would like to grow faster. No. I would like to see my friends.









What is moon, sea, sky? Sing, see, I. What is sun? Speaker thumping. What is I? Some lye, some lie or lyre. What is life? Kingdom or hymn. Little set of wings in the heart.