His mind kept the airspace but sold the sun.
At night, he ordered his own sun, which was
Supposedly arriving soon, they said,
In entourages of azures and clouds.

A state had been charged with charging him,
Then a state was charged for charging him.
The absence of exposition hit home
And so, like a chord that needs resolving

he saw my mother in the scar-city—

brown hair and yellow dusted-down dress

with lips too cracked to hold down a language

a ghost is hanging
from the doorpost
of our past—

can you see it?
it has wounds—it’s bleeding
years from its mouth

When I look at myself I see a stranger.
So obsessed am I with feeling
That I sometimes lose my way when I step free
From all the sensations I receive.

for “the maiden in her dark, pale meadow”

Twilight through the roof of a rain forest
                shatters like a chandelier of green glass,
the shrillness strafed by keening cicadas
                and unseen flocks of cockatoos that caw
their catcalls at the meltdown of the sun.

Dimming of the day bronzes a pathway
                that we follow under vaults of booyong
down a terraced stairway to this canyon
                of warm mist, where a waterfall loiters,
draped in a grotto, like a soaked sarong.

We’d arranged to meet under the High Line,
Outside the Whitney; I was running down from
This photo shoot in Chelsea so I had
My clothes stuffed into a hiking backpack
And I was naked except for stilettos.
Felix was coming from choir practice.
He was tall, very thin, ginger-nut hair,
A two-vest situation, naked below the knees.
Hi, I said, glistening from the running;
You must be J.’s friend. Shall we fuck?

It doesn’t smell here.  
I can be whoever I want to be.
I can leave my dull citizen-life behind,
but have you ever walked around
looking for what was already
in your hands? Standing upright,

Often I have knelt beside her as she lay on the white leather sofa,
repeating to herself, Maybe one day I die soon. All my life, I’ve heard this

and watched her continue living. She is here now, with a cleaver,
tenderizing meat. She squats on the kitchen floor and pounds the flesh.

I remember when the lights cut out in Prek Eng
the women kept cooking

Three whole tomatoes fried in the dark

I.
Imagine an abandoned labyrinth, bisected, shimmering with lesions. Muddy.

Imagine a photograph pressed into a wet wall. An image develops for about two seconds before someone throws it in the trash, mistaking it (the weak photograph) for packaging.

The photograph blanches then recedes then fizzes, like soda on a stain.