i
coming from such a town
& suddenly the sun
declining from the middle
that tree had its leaves
all blown off
ii
it’s the human children i see
& they shine like gangsters
by the bus stop asta said
meanwhile in nazareth a birth
on february third
& other strange plants
iii
you can cover yourself in tender soil
one of two ebullient arm chairs
those lines on faces
that are easy on eyes
iv
you can almost hear me trying to trill from here (that birth)
harder than elliptically the sun again
harder than a lab technician writing
on the face of a vial
the motility of which
the hand that placed the vial
infused with metabolic energy
v
when you strip a thing from a thing
which it covers
when you detail restrictions
limit process
to those with the longer sentences
vi
the outcome is you could say
the wind takes them away
& disperses them in every direction
vii
the lower portion of a seed you could say
adjusts difference
in the longitudinal traces
of that wind in the whiteness of that sky
before that night falling
in a year near a well–known
century & her fingers
draping chains
metal high hung
peals of a prismatic spring
her smile undying
it’s hard not to love how hard she lives
here & you may insert an ampersand
here & later she refuses
the morning birds
rust on hanging chain
timeless mother-in-law
like moon on moss
& all that fine hair
on right arms these
indomitable women
these swings in the middle eastern urban
their waisted skirts run all
below the knees billow
below their perfect eyebrows
such hair as is cropped short
i said it before jackie kennedy
will be as beautiful as my palestinian
mother–in–law
her shirt sleeves short a blue
even dark her mother
hood ahead of her & in her hands
metallic solid
chafed over sky background
she presses her sandal feet into sand
halting before a bad mind
a narrow water hole
the grand six decade span of social structures advancing
dear mother in law
junes ago you smiled into eyes
you swung before the coming invasions
you sang ayn qinya & jerusalem into a coming
son’s ciliary body
watching the bread brown & rise
you worked hard to restore numinous experience
they say working with something received makes it easier
as you know my favorite things are interstitial
inserting something into the middle of some thing
not forgetting where it came from
when you told me about your birth
how to make sure you were alive
your little body was poured
into a bucket of cold water
i will always wrap my arms around you
this is material we say
working with something received
this is a certain apprehension
an immersion this
is emerging chipped
now somewhere midway
it’s the left kidney i think where
the feeling of resisting the life you can have resides
chinese medicine is so specific
yes we still need to talk about births
i can’t unsee you like that
sublime cone of membrane
capillary adhesions retracting
your newly born eyes
you show me
we are all sisters
in this footpath
sometimes you look broken
loose sometimes beautiful with lesions
the parts we don’t understand
take us home
much later elsewhere & recently
i said to my first pretty-fisted child:
i heard your eyelashes grow
i’m not sure what lives in the right kidney
i’m still looking for a map to tell her
where she was born
there are endless combinations of the received
both bellicose & not so bellicose
i will always wrap these arms around you