1
The flies
were everywhere, I remember.

We moved away
from the water, which meant

of course
the hotter sand, but even there

in the burning,
a buzzing all around

our ankles, thighs, skimming
our cheeks

which forced us, it seemed, lover
into the sea.

2
As if the sea
were the sun’s own bleeding

—the clean cut
of horizon the wound—

meaning: it was time to go, though
we didn’t move.

More precisely: we were not moved
by any sunset.

3
And then
of a sudden, the rain.

Like frogs
out of nowhere, everywhere

—just
imagine—

hundreds
now leaving the water.

4
We ran down the boardwalk
for rain

as hard
as hail, down

a few blocks
of broken streetlamps

as if
by instinct, as if

we
were guilty from the start.

5
Darker
now

not only
as in nightfall, falling

more
as in permission, judgment

of all
we might do

with each other, or with others
which

of course
was still vague at this point.

6
We slipped
into sheets. We made love.

Later,
a few words

and then the swarm indiscernible haze
of a vicious argument

as in Who,
say it, who else did you fuck?

7
Clichés like
Once the dust settles, if ever it does

or
to dust someone off

or The dust throughout the land became gnats
upon the people

as though
it really mattered how

we put it,
how we feed on each other.

8
The hand of the Lord will bring a terrible plague
on your livestock

as
the story goes, as we are safely

exempt
from this one, maybe.

9
The truth—
if ever clear, if ever

like soot
from somewhere settling

at first
on our faces

then rising
as boils all over our bodies—

would be easier then, wouldn’t it
to admit.

10
I wake
to you, sleeping—

imagine
the face of our firstborn.

1
Where was he exactly? When did he smell a burning
alien to the dream from which he writhed awake
inside a glowing tent, shadows against the walls?

What far city had he entered of praise and love
unimaginably bright, a presence
that would burn and never burn, never topple

like a propane lantern, nor melt the nylon sleeping bag
to the boy’s thigh, nor leave the dreaming others
as they were: young, alive and undisturbed.

2
You didn’t say a word. You didn’t. Next morning
while packing, while pulling up the stakes
you looked at each other like a murderous secret.

He was older. He was young in retrospect, who woke
beside you, who blew and patted out the flames,
who first brought in the light, who saved you nonetheless.

3
Scar on my left thigh barely visible now.
The stars were visible, I remember.
We almost slept outside had it not been

for bears, they told us, to frighten us perhaps,
our food into bags hoisted high into trees,
the incredible moon through those trees.

We wondered, before the moon disappeared,
if we had gathered enough wood, if it were fire
or worship, later on that night, would keep us warm.

And now
the crest and momentum

toward
the shore, the roar and glide

beyond which you cannot
now admit, as

the thinning sprawl of sea
barely visible now

and now receding, leaving only
the sand

slightly darker than the rest, the rest
of the innocent shore.

A train entering a tunnel, and what this
suggests.

Within the train, a man entering
a woman.

Within her, maybe all
ever
the trains she’s been tunneled by

and in
the rocking dark, occasionally

the blur, briefly
of all those illumined faces, combined

resembling no one,
not me, them

not even my own image
of them, or

more simply
put,

Where
in your life, have I lately arrived?

Soon the casket, swung open like a door, and grandma
standing in the light, waving us in for one last meal.

And we, ourselves as usual, though older, grayer now,
no different from when we romped around as kids

while someone, the youngest maybe, counted aloud,
then listened for muffled laughter throughout the house.

No hiding now, no hiddenness. No surprise
as in You? And you’re here too? What do we all do now?

Perhaps no grief is required, not even
the appearance of. Truer, maybe this time

to smile, to know the secret joy of being caught,
a little while longer, with each other.

                                                                                  “I have heard
                                      that guilty creatures sitting at a play
                                      have, by the very cunning of the scene,
                                      been struck so to the soul . . .”
                                                                                    —Hamlet

Guilt in what sense, in which motel, a flight to where
for which a ticket, printed, remains eternal?

Somewhere a file bearing your name
with a list of cities, somewhere

an asshole with a grudge, cunning, maybe
knows of her too, young, barely ready

for cock, the details of which even now
you feel no shame, or the one ripe

on the tongue, but another’s, was never yours
for the tasting. No need now, nor in any version

to be specific. A broader pattern will do, long arc
of all we know we should have done, and

the sharper fall, instead, of what we do. What’s true
will trail us like a rumor, like poison in the ear.

We with our heads nodding off, reading a book
or the paper maybe

or whatever else we do on the train
we wait.

What concerns me is not how
the switches work—

how gas-heating, I’ve read, keeps them free
of snow and ice

how the driver does not turn
a wheel

but knowing where to veer, signals
remotely

for steel to switch, a faith-in-rail
to shift—

toward
a lane we think we’ve chosen.

An ashtray resembling
a pile
of fingers

or,
come to think
of it

heaped up bodies
with
identical

brown-
orange prison-issued
pants

and white shirts
all facing
the same direction, because

well,
because
I’m right-handed.

And ash,
and
smoke, everywhere.

Step out your door
into a tree’s invisible burning.

Feel the rush
from your back porch. Behold

the oak in the yard. Hear the wind
as fire through which

a bird flies, then another,
then hundreds of black darts

into the writhing limbs.
Close your eyes in proper fear.

Sound of someone approaching,
that is, my own thumping-at-the-ground

in the falling acorn, the hail over rooftops
bouncing off, a hard tap

on your shoulder, another hitting your arm.
Watch how I skip off into a bush.

The rain is not, as
is often in literature, renewal.

No initiation, no death
of some former, more depraved version

of you, no.
This time it’s pure judgment, frozen, grainy

like sand,
like no mercy from anywhere

as in
pelt me hard, and again, harder

until
your face burns, impossibly, into ice

for what
you did, for what you failed to do

and
in between these, October.