On the Spectrum of Possible Deaths Read Online Free Page A

the woods
    and its nettles and the nickel in my pocket, which they paid

    for bee balm I tore out of their yard and sold
    back to them, the dirt-wads dangling.
    â€œDon’t let the birds out,” muttered while I slipped
    into the room with its stone walls, the backdrop

    for a wounded jay who lived in a tin tub rattling with seeds.
    Birdfeed, newspapers, feathers, guano— I saw
    one substance splattering into the next in the life undivided,
    windows open, birds flying in and out.

    They worked their conjurations by feeding chopped meat
    through a dropper, and wiped their hands
    onto their jeans so you could see their long black fingers
    streaking up the whole length of their thighs.

Freak-Out

    Mine have occurred in empty houses
    down whose dark paneling I dragged my fingernails—

    though big-box stores have also played their parts,
    as well as entrances to indistinct commercial buildings,

    cubes of space between glass yellowing like onion skin,
    making my freak-out obscure.

    Suddenly the head is being held between the hands
    arranged in one of the conventional configurations:

    hands on ears or hands on eyes
    or both stacked on the forehead

    as if to squeeze the wailing out,
    as if the head were being juiced.

    The freak-out wants wide open space,
    though the rules call for containment—

    there are the genuine police to be considered,
    which is why I recommend the empty vestibule

    though there is something to be said for freaking-out
    if the meadow is willing to have you

    facedown in it,
    mouth open to the dry summer dirt.

    When my friend was freaking-out inside my car, I said
    she was sitting in the freak-out’s throne,

    which is love’s throne, too, so many fluids
    from within the body on display

    outside the body until the chin gleams
    like the extended shy head of a snail! Even

    without streetlamps, even in the purplish
    penumbra of the candelabra of the firs.

    My friend was freaking-out about her freak-outs,
    which happened in the produce aisle;

    I said: oh yeah at night, it’s very
    freak-inducing when the fluorescent lights

    arrest you to make their interrogation! Asking
    why you can’t be more like the cabbages,

    stacked precariously
    yet so cool and self-contained,

    or like the peppers who go through life
    untroubled by their freaky whorls.

    What passes through the distillery of anguish
    is the tear without the sting of salt— dripping

    to fill the test tube of the body
    not with monster potion but the H Two… oh, forget it…

    that comes when the self is spent.
    How many battles would remain

    in the fetal pose if the men who rule would rip
    their wool suits from their chests like girls

    in olden Greece? If the bomberesses
    stopped to lay their brows down on a melon.

    If the torturer would only
    beat the dashboard with his fists.

Maypole

    Now the tanagers have returned to my dead plum tree—
    they sip the pond through narrow beaks.
    Orange and yellow, this recurrence
    that comes with each year’s baby leaves.
    And if the tree is a church and spring is Sunday,
    then the birds are fancy hats of women breaking into song.

    Or say the tree is an old car whose tank is full,
    then the birds are the girls on a joyride
    crammed in its seats. Or if the tree is the carnival
    lighting the tarmac of the abandoned mall by the freeway,
    then the birds are the men with pocketknives
    who erect its Ferris wheel.

    Or say the tree is the boat that chugs into port
    to fill its hold and deck with logs,
    then the birds are the Russian sailors who
    rise in the morning in the streets where they’ve slept,
    rubbing their heads and muttering
    these words that no one understands.

Matins

    Every morning I put on my father’s shirt
    whose sleeves have come unraveled—
    the tag inside the collar though
    is strangely unabraded, it says
    Traditionalist
    one hundred per cent cotton
    made in Mauritius

    Which suddenly I see is a haiku
    containing the