There are parts of you I’ve never seen. I

never want to see them. I want to touch

smell taste the mouth a big O to orbit

feel the shape of the sound as we fall out

the parts creak as sea moves beneath us I

don’t want to see but one day rush into

the hollow where it bends a swirl of snow

a gust we lean further and down beyond

a sense of language no tongue can stick to

we can smile and make our eyes do that thing

as we look down and feel our bodies un

folding we can burn but we can’t burn up

the alarm sounds we shatter against dawn

feeling ourselves open up into day

How old are you? I want to ask each soul

I meet – my son, though only five is old

beyond his years – an old, old man sometimes

it seems, bent over, hollow-cheeked, owl-eyed,

my wife a girl giggling behind her hands—

and me – and you – who’ll play this part – the voice

low and husky – I am every age I’ll

ever be, I could lie down right here and

begin again to babble, to gurgle

out my dying breath with a hand on my

shoulder that is my dad’s, the weird high keen

of my mom gleaming inside me and all we

contain of each other in each other

rippling inwards and outwards

for Cormac McCarthy

The curtain rises on an inchoate mass

collapsing in on itself the arms (are

those arms?) reach from the void a voice intones

the liturgy heads bow gestures are made

we could this way feel back into mother

who welcomed us into the void as if

one day as a child having reversed the

flow she snapped and declared victory for

having smacked bellies together making

the baby fall onto the floor in a heap

and having begun that way something

made him turn around but all of that had

disappeared and with respect the only

thing left to do was lie down on the sand

I could clench my teeth and try to squeeze

something out something good this time I say

won’t be like that other time when we lost

a bet under the bridge by the

freeway and a goon shoved a knife to my

throat look out for Button Joe they’d say we’re

almost home there was this girl used to have

a lazy eye and some kind of tattoo

if I could just squeeze it out the right way

instead of this thick grinding feeling

unless it would’ve been better to just

quietly kind of roll over and sigh

to Button Joe or whoever what if

we formed a circle and joined hands

What happened next was we worried the boy

wasn’t too smart e.g. couldn’t think of

the word for apples in Spanish he said

naranja which as we know means orange

kept losing count of his fingers and toes

wouldn’t try new food even when threatened

or bribed knowing the threats wouldn’t work

and that he’d eventually get whatever

we tried to bribe him with good at rhyming

sure could remember all sorts of expressions

like dang it and for pete’s sake but could he

did he really understand the idiom

but he could but he did refuse the words

he never or only once tasted