Trump & A Syllabus of Goals
To gift you the stink of goats.
To gift you bright whey.
To neon-bright your mouth
with sorrel & rind
& mouth for you
some many hums.
To hood you for bees. See:
apiary. See: proper dress
for a choir loud glade. You
with your choir loud rage.
I’ll call you by name: I’ll
eye you easy as sky.
There’s a world & much
to know of it, & aren’t you
a connoisseur? Consider
the oboe. Consider
my cousin teaching oboe
in Kabul, all night carving reeds
for the mouths of huge eyed
babes. Such babes. I used to
lose her in the grainy alley
of my ass-wrong thoughts,
used to find her burnt &
bombed, but she’s eating
pomegranates.
She’s listening to List.
I take this
to mean: we own
no truths at all.
I know an old, old
stead. Down a road,
through trees, & days
go like there’s no
switch, there’s only sun
& a slow curl away
from sun. Lay down
your beastly head.
Some Grand-one
In the nightboards
will tell you the kindest
tale: the bone & shit
tale: the worms with their
dark & ardent maps
of earth. We’re dying,
fast as red-tails, so
go ahead & call me
love, & call the boy
lipping the reed
all to shreds
your face in my mirror,
where I’m holding
the sight: O you
kicked hive- alive
as all us living.
I Am Telling You Stories
Believe me. We’re in your home, in the kitchen
of your home. A stove full of logs & a story: Once
there was a woman whose belly curved like the long
horizon, & she fell from the sky & gave birth
to land. Once, we were dirt. Once, salt of sea.
Does this help your heart? Do you fear like me
for your children? When no one knows we’re land.
When no one knows we’re that sky woman, fierce
with seed. I’m telling you stories: The sky woman died
& her heart became berries. Someday you’ll be
so old: your hands a cross between roots & sparrows.
You’ll have enough wood, or you will not. Your children
will grow, or they will not. Here: a story where they
are men with hands in loam. Bluestem & dock. Here
is a story: you are a prairie where your children
stand, rowdy for the sun. You were old & they
lay you down. Your ribs petal open on the prairie
& where once was your heart there’s a bird
telling stories: Children, there once was a woman.
Children, there is earth here that made you.