sounds of birds

No other sound reminds me that I’m alive

my uncle steps into my mind

I see his thick gray hair, his white linen shirt

catching light     wolf teeth

small birds

were always jumping around his dusty backyard

I wonder if my gender is wrapped by his tragic death

I wonder if he visits me, and if its him that’s shining out my eyes now.

the land of us

The land of us is so much bigger than our frames

but we all already know this

we can feel our size

but we do not know his ecology

You are a mountain

made with the two palms of earth.

I am wheat whistling

the wind filling over my desire

a mother’s hand through the hair

a sun not afraid to vanish.

always suffering time and body and music

*


Over and over I keep hearing myself say

I am a song I am song

I am language and not language

The fracture inside myself is enduring

loyal and unconditional

Is this not love

my devil is the next moment

it hangs me with rope of blue sky

I am always swallowing a bat of light

and everything smells like silver inside dirt

when I introduce my children

to our separateness.

No matter how loving the delivery,


it breaks their tiny hearts.

If the heart is a succession of opening and closing, then the heart sings.

mine is singing and weeping and choking