Aleatory:

as in aleatory

dance moves,

For Darrel Alejandro Holnes

The motorcycle I ride only turns left
When you go west I have to bear right
Such balance is not my forte
I’d rather bait

I don’t know why I close my eyes and lace

my fingers like the seam of a baseball just

to whisper between dark palms what I have

Waterhouse, 1903

Don’t you know it’s useless, dipping your head in

greed like the blonde daffodils, a cluster

of eager, yellow tongues? I thought you

better than base desires; like you, I dreamt

who knows what makes

me who knows

if that makes me anything

but I know

Forbidden the shotgun, my father

tried to kill the wounded deer with a crossbow,

and then the shovel he asked me to fetch

from the shed. Grass stiffened to spikes

Her name has the sea in it.

And the word for sailor.

It could’ve been a cloud, a precious stone,

the chaotic skywriting of the flock.

First I pass the man having a morning smoke,

his cart filled with ripe melons.

Then a woman with her pyramids

of summer peaches.

When winter mornings stay darker

longer and the avenues

are still empty. Where the traffic lights

dangle like emeralds and rubies

for someone who squints.

Coatlicue, c. 1500, Mexica (Aztec), found on the SE edge of Plaza mayor/Zocalo: basalt, 257 cm high (National Museum of Anthropology, Mexico City)

I take Coatlicue with me to market,
her rattlesnakes striking each
other beneath her skirt, zoomorphized

We regret to inform you of your grief.

We apologize for the delay

in the processing of your grief.

We thank you for your patience.

Boy, born covered in blood—

(Boy because phallus, bullet holes

for eyes; the color of target practice silhouettes: boy. Between his

parents’ complexions: boy. Boy beneath Bible’s thumb. Boy baby-

For Florida

I got myself a cup. It was the end of water
and I was the last to drink. I was

a revolver at the bed of the dead woman.
It was the cruel month and I was

Sounds muted in life are raucous in memory. The

nun with the clapper

at St. Joe's prepared me

for the hut-horp of the Army

the prophets are alive but unrecognizable to us
as calligraphy to a mouse for a time they dragged

In a vacuum a bird and a feather fall

at the same speed, though this hardly seems

relevant as no one lives in a vacuum. Here

birds drop from the sky all the time (unsinging,

February, I am an open wound—woman discarded

and woman emerging. Scars devising scars.

To live here we know precisely how to be haunted.

Love carved me in stained glass
like a new tattoo. Call me a curio, one Hottentot show. Ask
how I learnt to admire the prettiest bruise. Or how a body
can be sold into anything. O what soiled words I could fit my