ALL I KNOW
The Statue of Liberty was packed in crates of lentilsand there is a species of catfish with scalesso tough that piranhas can’t chew throughto red softness. I’m thinking of what is vital,today. The willow tree in my dreams that swaysand a little girl singing quiet approximations of hymns.To the night. To the flames which aretragic and kinetic and aren’t ever receding.I was the other day looking out overwhat I believe is a river—forgive mefor not knowing the vague taxonomies of water—and it was all noise, which is goodfor some who struggle to sleepor forget or change or learn or have any timethat isn’t quilted by pain.I was attempting to memorize the wet folds going by,imagining the smoothness of rockthat was hidden beneath it all,and composing another version of this poem.One which has no complaintinside its sour heart. No unanswered questions.No bitterness for how it’s turned out,this life. My own. In the news this morning:the death of a very great baseball playerand I shouldn’t be so sad, I know.Not when I’m agreeing with the girl in the elevatorthat we have decades left, maybe,before the world becomes even more of an irredeemable hellscape.Before we’re nostalgic for the Kardashians.Before it wasn’t so bad, then,when nobody was heaving upthe bloody rags of their lungsand nobody had figured out how to clone Henry Kissinger.I have never figured outwhat happiness isor how to be in it. Never learned what is behinddoor number three, if I wanta better life. If at this point one is even possible.If this desperation is viral. If my name is good before any door.I don’t think so, not tonight, whenI’m trying to pretend that winter isn’t realand there are trees which glowin the night and insects that sing beneath the bone lightof the moon. O alternate heart:who could I be in another life,and upon whom could I visit harmlike a storm? To dream of potencyis to write this poem and feel no pain whatsoever.Remember me, I’m always sayingto the air as if it were listening,sympathetic, capable of the idea of mercy.One summer I taught myselfhow to announce in Latinto the world that I wanted nothing at allwhen, in truth, I was desperateto be heard, understood, loved, my name a warm memory.There was the wind and the oceanand in it there were whalesthat lowed in the darkness like the onset of collapse.There was this dark willand what could I say but my name and what hurt?
