The Terrible Years
January wears two faces—
you will call one future, the other
history, both are elsewhere:
there is the elsewhere of photographs,
in which memory turns angular, deckle edged,
as here in the gold-film-light of Baghdad,
1976, my father, younger, ambitious, “political”
on his way to a meeting with Saddam,
or the elsewhere of an orchard growing quince,
the elsewhere of your birth event,
of your dying, its marble hours,
the nothing gentle elsewhere of dashcam footage,
the elsewhere in the street-view of the former lover’s
new address aglow in the palm,
the elsewhere of Peter Jennings’ voice reporting
from Baghdad, that Round City
of Baghdad with its mechanical birds & their wind-
powered notes from a tree made entirely of gold—
is another elsewhere, another history.
Put your ear to this window, like listening
into a chest, deep breath in, hold
All the horrible days arriving—listen—
the children stretch their spans
before tombstones practicing fame
pretending corpse-life
which autocorrects to copse life
an elsewhere where corpses begin to flower
For a decade my father shouted in his sleep—
words like darts nicking the velvet
dark around the ears, an elsewhere
took up its red residence in his head—
Throw open now a dream-
brain up on the screen, see how it dims
& shimmers—a city of quadrants &
zones—it thinks it is awake. The dream
autocorrected by daylight.
Night Became a Long Volta
a turn
of the
weather
turn of
the head,
nighttime
will last
fourteen
hours
fourteen
flashlights
descending
the hill,
the devil,
lived, the
livid devil,
flesh & flash
of animal,
(un velo) bridal
shroud, a vail
(para velar)
burial shroud
to surveil,
grave place
revolving
glass for
this radix
& event
this trans
lucent
grievability,
like looking
through molt-
en earth molten
orange, livid
& at last glass
entrance, come
back, come
back the way
you came––
no eye-wit-
ness to the
havoc,
(del cielo,
mi lucero,
cómo has
caído) flesh,
watch me
bring about
this hidden
holy flash,
no eye-
witness,
(ya no hay
más)
to wake,
to over-
take, to
make a
graven
thing,
(cómo
caíste,
mi cielo,
al suelo)
