I

a vanishing byline cites in magic ink all that
        old-timey disappearing acts, the way we would have
wanted them to have been —

                                                vanishing skies haunted by lines
                                                by what isn’t seen
                                        from the center of an apple’s rot

            mapped to not a turn in the timeline nor
            an ever-ever land all sticky with bright
            chance, an animated elephant on a screen reflected
            in a child’s eyes shining

                        before and after a hum
                        beyond logic, beyond eyesight’s
                        reach —

                        a hum for being outside with you
                        all broken-shadowed and snappily done-up
                        knackered at the end of the weather — a hum

angling along the california coast, a shadow
shattered, echo of a missile’s
yawn in straitened daylight

                in the hungering holes of our masquerade
                        of mythlessness, our
                groping around in the grass, in the sand
                            in the stunned light
                      for an our
                                  or an oar
                                        and making like a moth
                                        a shroud of emptiness
                            for lunch

and the hum renders the names of the dead
and the hum reads the names of the dead
                     in a lawnmower voice that echoes sense sent less    
                            echoes earth’s sorrows


II

                  the voices on the stones, the fog
                            over the bridge of the built
                     (at land’s edge) and billed to
                                “And Brooklyn of
                                        Ample hills
                                                Was mine”

                                      Built to that old body voice musing
                                                        and grasping

                                at the center of any silence — that hum
                                of our and the inconsolable
                                each wail and tear and dried spout
                                taken to give the clock its time, calendar’s march

                        every name in history, every abscess

                        and gleaming streams of light ride along the
                        engine’s smooth and silver surface — old Hollywood
                        numbers — forgettings made of mineral and
                        bone translated indefensibly beneath blue plastic tarp

beyond a rushing object’s howl, beyond a shadow

                                banana peel in wait, snake-like
                                at the foot of a black hole

        nestled close beneath all is the hum


III

        enclosed between all is the hum

                a hum, a black river, a return
                collapse of a margin where a center
                would claim its flow

                                                    its black river burdened with birth
                                                    with birds and friends of the unnamed air and
                                                    earth and water —
                                                                                a hum, a black river flows
                                                                                through the grooved earth
                                                                                through a curved finger’s beckon
                                                                                through the heart of the heard
                                                                                the space of the spine

                                    a hum, a black river flows
                                    from who knows where — a silence made of shrugs
                                    a hum of question born

                    how it slithers in the grass, poison tongue
                    poised tongue, poisoned taste, slick and several

                    a hum, a tongue, a snake in every road
                    as if the rationale were your bitter b(s)alm’s moan
                    walking with my mother through concrete wilds

                    a whistle burnt in the already-archive, infinity from
                    another time — a hum, a tongue
                    its road a river, a rose, a descent


IV

austere screams along the highway
scare coyotes toward the shore

snowy white egrets mind the mudflats
dart their bills ‘neath the surface for a bite

over a little hill we strut and watch
sanity shrug toward the bay

where all of accident congeals in a whimper
with a voice like a bench on which a crow sits for a minute

while Death swims off to open seas
with each premature name in its teeth

every tooth in history, every [in] heaven
the poet itself like there’s a snake in the road

wind in the treetops makes
the leaves bend and sing


V
                        the nose an upturned handle, waiting to be grasped

                                like a translation
                                like a humming stone

        the curl and the turn and the flare
        and the whole and the bulb of the flesh

                                        the mask the human makes of the world’s
                                        grasp on the flesh is its own food, more or less, leathery
                                        human-shaped worms wriggle over heart’s compress

                        you give your shadow company by walking beneath the trees

                                                        from anytime ‘til infinity

                                the hum, the static

you’d think sense would collapse before
nearly anything at all, maybe two three
tillaquils or an empty sash, scrubjay’s
line of flight or squawk, whatever’s left of
yesterday’s talk