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to my door disguised
as a thirsty biblical angel
I’d buy all your hairbrushes and magazines!
I’d be more hospitable
than any ancient king.
    Â 
I’d personally carry your luggage in.
Your monsoons. Your squadrons of bugs.
Your plums and lovely melons.
Let the rose let out its long long sigh.
And Desire return to the hapless rabbit.
    Â 
This request is also in my own behalf.
Inside my head it is always snowing,
even when I sleep. When I wake up,
and still you have not arrived,
I curl back into my blizzard of linens.
    Â 
Not like winter’s buckets of whitewash.
Please wallpaper my bedroom
with leafy vegetables and farms.
If you knocked right now,
I would not interfere.
Start near the window.
Start right here.

Noon
Along the creek girls are lifting
their thin skirts and as they bend
low, under their loose scoop-neck
blouses the pale flesh shows.
They notice you and wave, turn back
again laughing, dipping their feet
into the cool water. Now scarves go;
they unpin their hair. On the banks
the grass turns down like sheets
and the sun is big and close.
You can barely see them through
the heat as they peel and peel away
their clothes. And when they open
their slender arms to you, thinking
they are doing this because they
want to, thinking there is a choice,
who can blame them for giving in
this easily, or you, nearer now
to yourself than ever as they pull
you with them, sister, down.

Home Movies: 1949
Woozy from death they hog the camera
that revives them, blinking like children
we shook awake. Intensities of plaid
coagulate on screen. One distant cousin.
Above the picnic baskets, bobbing
like icebergs they investigate the silence
each time we run them through the same
embarrassing routines. I am swimming.
In the river my father’s trousers cling,
two drooping cylinders. He stumbles
toward us, digs deep, retrieves a cow bone.
Thrusts it like a barbell above his head.
Soloing, my uncle handles his trombone
careful as dentures. Next to me his widow
stiffens. An aunt glides by with a thermos.
We are kept always out of earshot,
safe. Clutching their trophies they wave
us off. I forget how cold the water was.

Fortunes Pantoum
You will go on a long journey
You will have a happy and healthy life
You will recover valuables thought lost
You will marry and have many children
    Â 
You will have a happy and healthy life
Your sweetheart will always be faithful
You will marry and have many children
You will have many friends when you need them
    Â 
Your sweetheart will always be faithful
Soon you will come into a large inheritance
You will have many friends when you need them
You will succeed in your line of work
    Â 
Soon you will come into a large inheritance
You will travel to many new places
You will succeed in your line of work
Be suspicious of well-meaning strangers
    Â 
You will travel to many new places
A message from a distance is soon to be received
Be suspicious of well-meaning strangers
Important news from an unexpected source!
    Â 
A message from a distance is soon to be received
You will meet a dark and handsome foreigner
Important news from an unexpected source!
Do not take unnecessary chances
    Â 
You will meet a dark and handsome foreigner
You have a fear of visiting high places
Do not take unnecessary chances
Your misunderstanding will be cleared up in time
    Â 
You have a fear of visiting high places
Grasp at the shadow and lose the substance
Your misunderstanding will be cleared up in time
Sometimes you worry too much about death
    Â 
Grasp at the shadow and lose the substance
You will recover valuables thought lost
Sometimes you worry too much about death
You will go on a long journey

The Lifeguard
The children vault the giant carpet roll
of waves, with sharp cries swing legs
wide over water. A garden of umbrellas
blooms down the stretch of beach. Far
offshore always I can spot that same
pale thumbprint of a face going under,
grown bigger as I approach, the one arm circling,
locking rigid