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& I said let there be dark pouring from your mouth at daybreak

He could see I was American, but I thought he was unlikely to harm me.

Laurie Saurborn Young

The hut was cluttered with the skulls and bones of small animals.

As a shadow I arouse you will you believe the truth of my mouth.

“Jesus Christ,” Dad said, after the counselor spelled it out for him.

I have many dreams, I say. In my dreams I am better than myself.

The woman who raised the woman who raised me was a mistress.

The Bengalis negotiate their space with corrupt politicians and landsharks.

The stories of terror continued well after the tsunami had passed.

When we wake up, the five windows and the French door are full of light.

For years I thought this light was love, or God, but now I know it’s fear.

My daughter swallows arrows of sunlight on her way to the grave.

The beasts and fowl and all manner of slithery thing can love like us.

The last thing one settles in writing a book is what one should put in first.

This belief. This clinging-to. Vanity. Like painting the wind’s back.

I see the garden far away in itself reflected in the polished spade.

The church was clearly the work of a madman driven crazy by the wind.

In my eyes is the flame of the adolescent he wants to hire.

I received a surprise invitation to a tryout camp at Ebbets Field.

I didn’t want to start a poem with night where there should be a name.

Loving you is every bit as fine as coming over a hill into the sun.

Under Saint Peter’s Gate, I put good foot after bad, and derided, I chased.

I lean I stumble toward you hoping you’ve not turned away yet.

I’m tired of the song the rain sings in June, the chorus of hope.

The windshield’s dirty, the squirter stuff’s all gone, so we drive on.

Maybe it’s a Thursday, & I’m coming home to make you dinner.

Show me your darkness, your nothing-to-see and everything to touch.

Forgive me, please, for continuing to believe that roses are beautiful.

All of this leaves me floating in seas of prehistory and indeterminacy.