ABSTRACT Title of thesis: MISSING YOU Connor Watkins, Master of Fine Arts, 2022 Thesis directed by: Professor Joshua Weiner Department of English Missing You is a collection of poems that moves through simultaneous narratives of familial longing and grief, wrestling with God, searching for self-stasis and love, and living with depression??which covers the speaker?s world with an unsettled layer of dust. The poems are childhood stories, prayers, wishes, memories that can?t be forgiven. They often appear in contained forms of couplets or quatrains, other times the sonnet or the ghazal, setting boundaries for their shifting subjects. These poems exist in the curve of questions, looking out at what?s been lost and found, hoping to find somewhere, however unstable, to rest. MISSING YOU by Connor Watkins Thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts 2022 Advisory Committee: Professor Joshua Weiner, Chair Professor Elizabeth Arnold Ms. Lindsay Bernal Emeritus Professor Michael Collier ii Table of Contents TABLE OF CONTENTS _______________________________________________________________ II I. __________________________________________________________________________________ 1 INVOCATION _______________________________________________________________________ 2 MICKLER?S LANDING _________________________________________________________________ 3 ANOTHER MORNING _________________________________________________________________ 4 ROOM ____________________________________________________________________________ 5 FIRST ALL-NIGHTER _________________________________________________________________ 7 DEPRESSION _______________________________________________________________________ 8 QUALITY TIME ______________________________________________________________________ 9 NORMAL _________________________________________________________________________ 10 SELF-PORTRAIT WITH NISSAN AND FAILED ROMANCE ________________________________________ 11 RESPONSE _______________________________________________________________________ 12 IMAGINE YOUR MOTHER _____________________________________________________________ 13 HOME ___________________________________________________________________________ 14 II. ________________________________________________________________________________ 15 TRIBULATION______________________________________________________________________ 16 BIRD PSALM ______________________________________________________________________ 17 SUMMER OF ?09 ____________________________________________________________________ 18 WINTER APERTURE _________________________________________________________________ 19 SESTETS FOR THE DEVIL _____________________________________________________________ 20 A SMALL ANNIVERSARY _____________________________________________________________ 21 FOR STEPHANIE ___________________________________________________________________ 22 ST. CHRISTOPHER AND THE CHRIST CHILD ________________________________________________ 25 OUTSIDE WORLD ___________________________________________________________________ 26 SEASONING _______________________________________________________________________ 27 ONE-SIDED CONVERSATION___________________________________________________________ 28 III. ________________________________________________________________________________ 30 WHO YOU LOVE ___________________________________________________________________ 31 ??????(WHAT DO YOU WANT?) ___________________________________________________ 33 NEW YEAR'S DAY __________________________________________________________________ 34 EASTER WITHOUT THE MAGIC _________________________________________________________ 35 PROTECTION ______________________________________________________________________ 36 PSALM FOR THE GOD OF JUDAS ________________________________________________________ 37 CLEAN SHAVE _____________________________________________________________________ 38 TANGLES ________________________________________________________________________ 39 IF I COULD SEE YOU IN MIAMI _________________________________________________________ 40 MISSING YOU _____________________________________________________________________ 41 NOTES ___________________________________________________________________________ 42 1 I. But ask the animals, and they will teach you; the birds of the air, and they will tell you; ask the plants of the earth, and they will teach you; and the fish of the sea will declare to you. Who among all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this? Job 12:7-9 2 Invocation All I can offer is this heart beat staccato, dying man?s bravado, mucus spit on blind eyes, spiraled dance of a house fly. Glossolalia feet in dry shore, the last of life poured to steam, pirouette in water until all is gone, the self, all breath and calamity. The earth (out of love, hate, wisdom?) wants to keep me forever. Jesus, rip me from the hands of ash. Spirit, let your truth be a Bristlecone Pine; my pinprick blood, wishing music. And God, if you want my life to be poetry, please, let me be a sonnet, and your love, a villanelle. 3 Mickler?s Landing Put it on record that the Holy Spirit speaks primarily through gravity. The birds know this; I forget when my body stifles its own existence. Walking the East Coast, the breakers linger at my ankles, yearning to pull me into their order. Beyond their touch, a berm of a billion shells piled like reverie dust. God surveys behind a cracked firmament of violet. I wonder how I?ve become alone in so few steps. I see a woman combing for shark fangs, a clumsy terrier chasing a ball in quick bounds. A sailboat shines like Soria Moria at the scene?s edge. God, why are you out there? Here, where grief and earth fill my ears, I hear the ocean?s proverb: Frail men trust we will never forget the sand. When I stand again: the muddy surge, shoreline stretching to the arctic, if I could so far. The rain comes quick. Sandpipers flee their hunting grounds as I approach. God is painting something arcane up above. Retracing the miles I?ve walked, I search for shells and think of their lives before they washed up. I lift my head to the downpour. The star returns. I could be joy or suicide, grains stuck to my skin, but no one?s around to say. 4 Another Morning March 2020 The streets are quieter. A line of blue recycling bins wait to be picked up, but don?t make small talk. If there was ever a day I could slip out of the world unnoticed, this is the one. Loneliness, compounding, begins to amplify my self- sabotage. Hope, like spring, isn?t sure it?s a good idea to stay. Alone for so long, I think even more about marriage, eating pancakes on the carpet before the day can wake. If you were here, my love, I?d let you drool on the dirty t-shirt I?ve been wearing for three days as you lean on me, and sleep, the whole house tired and still. I?d be content with that. Greasy hair, our clothes all stretched and wrinkled, barely hanging on, like we are, the days folding in on themselves. I try to wake you and look out at a bird on a roof across the street, the sun on its toes, trying its best. 5 Room ?Everybody say, you got a lot to be proud of Been high this whole time, don't realize what I done Cause when I'm all alone, feel like no one care Isolate myself and don't go nowhere? ?Danny Brown Barely looked out the window these last six years another waist around the star and the sidewalk still cracked Fence woven frayed life events thorn wired top and bottom foundation collapsed name carved in rotten columns Crowd of half-finished paintings all crooked nails rusted hanging out drooped loose carpet climbing holds figure drag reaching gashes piled glass shatters No lady running in the walls just static amp siren songs chasing me on soggy rugs like radiation hunting vital signs Hair growing past my ears devils asking where?d the light go? tempted by tightropes hippocampus sold my chance to be a good disciple Feeling like a concussion might have hit my whole body don?t know where I?ve gone brain giving wicked orders Spilled out on the couch someone no longer recognized nine tail lash synapses got eyes seeing blurry Snow hasn?t lost its fury the door still blocked up left my key stuck in the deadbolt forgot what any thing matters Jesus sleepin? blow up mattress storm eying in the living room but the man never wakes up like he forgot about the garden tomb 6 or whatever contract I thought we had made up A birdsnest on the bookshelf any day from toppling over clothes hanging everywhere they won?t fall off of The world outside leaving more of me each daylight not sure what kind of life I should even dress for 7 First All-Nighter The thick plastic TV set illuminates me and Mom, sitting on the trailer?s sea green carpet. The neighbor?s homes rise up to dwarf ours, so easily rolled away. My sandbox stands in the corner of the yard by my dad?s pride: the wooden fence hiding us from the forest?s eyes. I?d sit out there alone for hours, crafting towers in the sand. Maturity was water pouring from my mind at five years old, holding together the grains. She plays Pok?mon while I watch. Take the controls, Mom, I say. We sit in the forgotten hours, waiting for Dad to return from the night shift at a plant spitting out Mercedes-Benz doors. All the highway?s grace can?t carry his exhausted body back home in the white Accord. When he arrives, Dad sleeps with tin foil on the windows to block all flickers of sunshine; Mom still prefers lamps and sunglasses in the winter. Ink on government pages will make the desired change. They will agree on what cannot be fixed. I?ve got it from here, I say. After we?ve had enough of what the 64 can offer, Mom and I lie on the couch; I remember this image from above. Through the blinds, I see our young star rise over the fence. I fall asleep before Dad returns. When I wake, placed in my bed, I tiptoe through each room and find each object resting in preparation. 8 Depression Don?t blink: god will pull the carpet. Lies have grown fond of me; Melancholia, a lover. 280 Million carry this caustic mystery ?till it spills. My therapists ask, and I always say, Yes, but I never will. Make your thoughts imitate logic. Live like a Macropinna. Conform to the image of an ink blot. God says look at me, but my life has no windows. I can?t see you past the ceiling fan. Can you hear me now? Falling in love isn?t what you want. You can?t bet all of nothing. The walls won?t build themselves. I?ll help, let?s take a walk. Have you seen the devil in his human-hair suit? Quiet, quiet, Adonai. Death calls my name in the silence. The carpet will pull your Christ if you keep on listening. Little Heaven becomes a ball in your hands. Don?t fumble the round weight. Don?t love: Have you ever seen a bloodstained dove? Tear out what hurts and throw it in the frying pan. Depression always comes back when it?s bored with travel. I welcome it in, let it sleep in its room, still decorated from youth. 9 Quality Time Mom likes to ruin our visits together for her own good. It's easier to leave behind what?s left a wound. We drove back to Texas on the only day the paralyzing Southern snow fell. I knew we should have turned back in Louisiana, after the ouroboros of anger, four hours of silence. Then Pandora radio found every curse she wanted to chant over me. When we did arrive at dusk, she told me she was driving ten hours back home, right then. Bye, not Goodbye. I knew it was life or death, so I forced her to stay, my arm bent in the van door. Morning brings a type of mercy, smoothing like a nail file. Our traditional passed down. My weary soul is the bull on the pyre to make her clean. Of course, we make the best of the final days, then she must go. Her arms around me apologize for the brain that wants to drive her off the road. The part she?ll try to evict again when she returns home. The part I?ve locked away in myself. 10 Normal I stay up grading and piecing together lesson plans from my scraps, thinking of the pizza and spicy deli chicken my mom brought home back then. I know now they were not a treat, but a necessity of exhaustion. My receipts pile higher than dishes. I see how she continues the great performance of her life, now from my own editing room. Years of filling in her gaps have left me still too foolish for the average day. She says there?s no such thing as normal, and if there was, it sure as hell isn?t whatever we are. Maybe we?re all discovering fossil footprints in the dried mud we danced in the night before. We have no more than prayers like steam meandering upward until it?s gone. I hope God sees when I?m sleepless and weeping a morning away, like today, for a woman who doesn?t fall as desperately as me, who battles demons in different costumes. Another day passes lying on the couch with depression resting on my chest, unable to lunge, even for the remote, to turn this whole thing off. I hope God sees my words condensing on his window in small, steamy breaths, and makes a picture of them with his fingers. Please, lift up the sun with the slightest motion of your great tattooed hands, and bring, inevitably, at the very least, some mercy. 11 Self-Portrait with Nissan and Failed Romance I?m fingertips interlocked on the console like an oyster. What is our pearl? I?m an embrace that halts your heart and I hope to be the vessels of wine-aged love. I?m long stares and stolen glances, the shine off your wood-grain glasses. You?re tortoiseshell and I?m black lacquer, wood burn, smoke signal. I?m broken speedometer and bent signs. I?m a meteor burned up in ozone and you?re my phoenix in the right seat. I?m tires blowing out, a black halo ripped. I?m a get-out-of-relationship free card. Can you color a fading man? I?m blue confidence, naked secret, violent silence. I?m the kiss you?ve never felt, the felt tip marker you write wrongs with. Never use red, it?s too harsh. I?m lipstick, ink pen. I?m the words I wish were in your throat, the handwritten ones I fashion when you fold into an unread text. I?m the space below the E-line. I?m lightning flash and Texas rain, but I wanna be your Windy City. I?m our rotini twisted. Take and eat unless I?m rancid and expired. I?m milk past its ninth day, I?m on my ninth life. I?m a stray and I?m hands to my own clay. I?m the flower that will last too long, the Valentine?s day poem, your unexpected Yes. You?ve given me your hand and I?m imagining how that pearl will shine when I park this car. I?m letting go. You?re wildfire and dry air. Trust will come when I?m no longer smoke. 12 Response A student emails me about rushing to her last grandma?s funeral. Others message about stress and headaches, the now common mysterious sickness in the body. The assignments they?ll miss, all the papers I have left to grade, theystack for us into windowless towers. When I reply I completely understand, I mean to say my depression is looking for the right moment to stop the guessing games, the day where hope is trapped behind the snow-blocked door or when God?I?ve lost even the memory of how to build a fire, to feel your friction in the air. I?ve got no broken mountains, no sleeping gods, no rotten fruit. I don?t have your supernatural phone number to call anymore. What difference would it make? What could I say anyway? I give my students all the grace I can, some magic in the spaces between expected words. I want to say What you?ll learn about loss is much more important than this class. I hope you didn?t meet the wrong man at the bar. I wish I could be the prophet that hears you, all the voices in the background of an ordinary day disguised. I worry about them, young strangers who take up so much space in my life, who stare silently at me in class. I wonder if they know how much I struggle to be present, to give them what?s left. To give these words to You. My grieving students, I pray you keep everything I?ve lost. Do you know how quickly a day becomes a life? 13 Imagine Your Mother floating to who-knows-where or nowhere, red sea from her bath bomb body, leaking hope until she can?t set a syllable to sail. * asleep forever like she practiced for, bloodstream brimming with too much salvation, whispering that it?s time for an eternal smoke break. * ignoring calls and texts, run into the median on her way from Tuscaloosa or Nineveh. How fast can you drive? Do you remember wanting this for yourself? * now standing with you on river cliffs, joyous or dishonest, standing with you in a stranger?s living room yelling, crying, finding which tactic will be magic tonight. Do you know how long to disbelieve the grave threats, or do you love her enough to tie the weight of her existence tightly around your wrists? Now imagine the cliff again. Repeat this: I?m the only knot in her rope. She dares you to push. 14 Home Home has always escaped me. Walls chipping, white as bones. A winding river, a bare apartment. A river winding bares cracks in my skull. I hope they reveal a mural beneath my naked walls. I wish to become a mural, not a wall, naked, my body seen only by doctors when it fails me. I cannot doctor what has failed me. I?m a picture of straying away from God, his distant beauty. Straying away from God, my only beauty, my hands are in the dirt, digging for a family. My hands in the ground??my dirt family, is there any peace before I return to you? Before I return to you, let my hands be full of empty, the river full of wine. Don?t let home always escape me. 15 II. For a long time I have seen no plums; alone I have climbed blossomless ridges. Wu Li 16 Tribulation God, where are you in my Babylon? Your distance taunts like a matador here. The devil?s locked away all your songs. Even he finds no allure here. I deafen the day with car speakers, search for syncopated peace past the windows. I wander barefoot through this wilderness, praying there?s still a door here. Melancholia never leaves, presses into my skin like bed coils. Home is white walls, a transmuting mirror. The moon, too, looks away from my war here. You?ve placed such longing in my chest. I see a future in someone on the train, her dress like your first paradise. The dark tunnels silence me; there?s nothing left to adore here. To love you, I?ve learned, is to suffer, to feel nails hollowing out space for you. Wordlessness is my jaded offering. Assure me it means something to endure here. Would I be wiser to leave here, to leave you? The mysticism of one finger could be all I need, but you?re a poet too, unconcerned with time or what?s obscured here. I worry my spirit has flown beyond your eyes, that years have voided my name. El Roi, if there can be nothing more than this, show me that you see me torn here. 17 Bird Psalm I?ve grown tired of choking back stained glass, chasing an apparition that carries all loss, though I haven?t seen the end of cornflower fields, new lines of vines. God, when will you let this Magpie fly? Dove, will you finally perch on me when my bones can only mutter to Acacia roots invading my rented earth? Could I lose myself in shoulder blades if I were a Great-Tailed Grackle, calling after some poisonous cure for this ghost-divined pain? When will music inhabit the air once again? I hear spring water in the well, but will the sun guide these wings to sky when I hit bedrock? 18 Summer of ?09 Moundville, AL We skated on the left side of the road through our one-light town where everyone knew too much, except why the grocery store was always cycling through new owners. We knew the words to ?Kick, Push? better than Lupe did. Mom said our DC shoes were too big, but we filled them with adventures past her boundary lines. We shot Sponsor Me videos on my flip phone, little films about not doing drugs and giving your life to Jesus. My friend smoked his Kools, hiding the pack in dirty jean shorts. One day in June, we hiked into the infinite forest behind his house, emerging to a clearing cut for transmission lines. We ran home when the rain came, knowing our mothers couldn?t bear to lose their murky boys. I remember when we bombed that hill on Elliot Ave. I ruined my knees, but he made it to the car wash. My wounds taught my fear of going fast. We lost our heads, dreams of starting a skate mag atop his mom?s shed. He ordered porn one night, when she wasn?t home, didn?t think about the bill for Backseat Banging 5 his dad would find. I had seen the consequences, his dad asking after us. He was grounded for the week; I couldn?t remember My last time getting hit. I pushed home alone, wheels clunking over sidewalk bricks. The last day of summer, he gave me his hat, laughed when I thought I broke my spine on a trick at the Baptist church. It?s been a decade since then, even years since I visited that Indian Mound town, but still, the red sidewalks carry cracks from our falls. 19 Winter Aperture In the photo, you?re holding a bowl up to your chin, the phrase If you love the cat painted on it. I asked what the other side said, but you couldn?t remember. No ending makes sense??that profound secret left among the shelves. Only an E and X peek through your puffer jacket?s zipper teeth (another phrase I do not know). I transfigure them into words like T-Rex or Sexy, a little irony to match the laugh I imagine after the shutter of your friend?s camera phone. Straight black hair streams over your shoulders like ribbons from the cuff of your Capitals beanie. Thick-rimmed glasses draw me into squinting eyes, your stacked smile, then asymmetric lines of shelves crossing behind you, bringing you close. Seeing the picture months after, I notice smaller details: the uneven white tips of your nails at the edges of the bowl, scattered hairs falling over your clothes like scratch lines on old film, orange clearance stickers making a future out of crockpots, fake China, silverware. I have no clue where you are, only that some part of you moves from that aisle, effortlessly, towards me, then away. 20 Sestets for the Devil You?re not much for poetry, but I know you?re writing. Something pragmatic, I?m sure. You take something, leave another. How many, even among your enemies, notice? You?ve been busy (I know you?ll like to hear this), busier than God some days. He likes to rest. You prefer strolling about with your three-piece suit of glass, angelic body that begged for Job?s house to collapse. You hide us up your sleeve, slip us into the wrong hand. You had what I long for, but traded it for terror, and still God outdoes you in punishing the body. You must know the future, an old pastor said, planting thorns in the most fertile soil. At times, you drive us back to God with your Roman spear. You like us best in his close comfort, easy then to slide into the ear and make your joy of us. You know, I prayed for you once. Maybe, just for a while now, you could try the other type of evil, see where that takes us. 21 A Small Anniversary Rain crowns the tree we sit beneath. Our picnic blanket is soaking wet, our pants too, the soles of our shoes. We don?t care. That midnight?s passed, that it?s pouring down, that what?s left of dinner has blown into the grass. She writes Chinese characters on my back. I guess them on a third or fourth try, then struggle to remember the small things I?ve learned, tracing ? and ? on hers, feeling the transitions from skin to sheer shirt, bra band rising where my strokes lose shape. I kept asking Do you want me to kiss you or not? knowing we?d agreed against it, but still she closed her eyes and left the world, leaned into me like we leaned into that tree. We couldn?t see the car down the hill, only a deer passing, not looking long, then the lightning, grey canvas clouds against the moon. 22 For Stephanie You wanted to run from life since you were a girl, leaving your drunken, loveless mother for Miami then finding your way back to Alabama, marrying young, having the kid you never got to be. You gave up Stephanie for your middle name, Megan, then Mom. You seemed happy, the early years I can remember. Splashes at VisionLand in the summer, nights fading into mornings as I watched you play video games, before I could. You say I was always telling you where to go, what to do next. We shined the most in the Sunflower Picture, both of us in pale yellow, you flashing your teeth unprompted in that field of rising gold faces. Now you never show them, hiding a chipped tooth. You look like a sister to your self, a kind of dream mother, the energy of two. You still want your hair that shade of brown again, like mine, but can never find the right dye. The family curse came in seventh grade (maybe you were the same age) and the right man to ruin you again. Your boyfriend and I threw a Frisbee with a hollow center in the yard, played Madden ?09 inside. He shared your love for thrifting and staying crispy tan, riding around Tuscaloosa with no plans. Then, as suddenly as I had seen his naked, tattooed body trailing into between rooms, Bruce Lee staring from his calf, the house was empty. You told me, eventually. The marks he?d left. I was even quieter after that, woke at 6 AM to read or build with Legos upstairs. Other days, I skated around town, miles of dust dirtying my wheels, found the stability in leaving. Desperate texts each day, I wanted to die, never able to be enough for the older girls who couldn?t carry my weight and all of yours. I couldn?t stop you from losing yourself like gold pack Marlboro ash floating down cold. * 23 Depression made you numb, made your work suffer. The orthodontist let you go after a while. That?s when we left the house for an apartment. Soon you needed a roommate to keep it. Then another blow, when I left for school at sixteen. You?d start fights like fires, those three hours of distance you couldn?t take. Then a full day in the car for college in Texas. In the summers when I was home, we had to sleep side-by-side in the canopy bed you?d always wanted and finally bought. I?d sneak in through the dark, always up late. Didn?t care when you?d walk past while I made out with the girl I loved on our cramped loveseat. You and I were lost somewhere in that two-bedroom, looking under furniture for joy. You worked wherever you could, unemployed, then not. Late nights at the gas station, triple shifts at Waffle House to afford enough sleep to repeat the cycle. Our first trip to Texas for orientation, we decided to drive through the night, to get away from Granny?s, our life trapped in the front room of her trailer after the apartment was too expensive to keep. On Thanksgiving, we watched a marathon of Snapped, didn?t leave the room when we heard our names in other?s mouths. We only unlocked the door once everything was foil-wrapped, Granny passed out in her worn-in recliner. You swear you don?t know how, but you passed on that desire to run away from death, craft a new life each place I went. And though I?ve wanted to escape you, though all my therapists say it?s not my job to be your husband or father, we share these toxic knotted veins. The further I leave, the heavier I feel your life yoked to my neck, making it ache. I carry the nights we yelled and cried into the morning. When I said I can?t be your reason to live. When you said that I don?t love you anymore. 24 * Still I stay up late, knowing one day you won?t be lying to me when you say you?re going to do it. Your new roommate who calls you his wife, might push you to the gun, the blade, that tainted white Mercedes at the bottom of the Tennessee River. Maybe it will be me who dies. Though I know I must go on, you?ve said it many times: you couldn?t go on after that. What else is there but the version of me you can?t get back? Like that boy, running around the park in memory, I want to create a life where you don?t need to chase me, where I?m unnecessary, where you understand why we can?t live in the same city, why I?m anxious for my grandkids. I want to peel off the wax of worry, see my skin underneath. But I don?t know if I you can find joy anymore. Worse than the thoughts of you leaving this world are the ones where I imagine myself at ease, no longer wondering where you might go, which part of you depression or rent will take next. I see you weightless with wings, maybe like those wading birds I name for you as we walk miles along the coast. Further down, we can see the pier, all the hotels and casinos rising high, empty of travelers and retirees, those beautiful Spanish roofs, a festival of lights applauding as the sun steps behind the curtain of night. I pray there?s a day before the end where you can walk the beach without me, the ocean almost silent. And still I wonder if I can live a life not haunted by you. Perhaps I?ve been trying all these years, to say goodbye, not quite louder than the waves. 25 St. Christopher and the Christ Child Cummer Museum of Art Jacksonville, FL Does he calm the storm, or call it closer? Divinity hasn?t stopped the weight of his body from pressing my shoulders into a grimace. I should have known he wanted more than this red robe, more than me, as I dug my staff into the river, avoiding sirens I thought were myth. If I could see his eyes, fixed on some invisible thing, would I see affection or authority? I may not know the difference. I agreed to serve, but I didn?t know I?d carry this child, his boyish voice dripping down as he commanded me to walk until I couldn?t. He?d already be saving the world, he says, if only Mary had kept her promise to teach him how to swim. He loves me for the little I can offer, a hand steady in my matted hair, cold toes hanging to tickle my ear. 26 Outside World At the Zoo, she insists on racing, even though we?re both wearing trousers and it?s gotten a little too warm for her sweater. She asks for a three step headstart, even though we?re only going to the end of that bench not even 20 yards down the path, and I beat her the first time, then she wins the second, then I say let?s run way down there, her decline heavy with breath. After close we walk the long path back to the entrance, playing a game where we close our eyes and follow the other?s voice. We hold each other?s hands up, showing off to the empty park, finally walking in this world together, the one outside??not the one we create in her basement apartment where we cook shrimp and scallops together in a single pot on a burner on the coffee table??but this one where we see a family of gorillas sitting, and thinking; a single elephant standing under an AC unit, her feet sinking into a floor of sand; the cheetah curled up like a house cat; the tiger lying near an artificial river it cannot jump; the zebra that we wonder about aloud (Is its head bigger than a horse?s?); the sea lions? parted flippers and slick, lazy bodies on the rock before they dive past us, kneeling down, our faces so close to the glass. All the animals seem happy to be alive, I say, knowing it?s not true. They go on living as we pass. Maybe we brightened their days. Maybe they didn?t even notice us. 27 Seasoning After the split, I?d visit on weekends, sprawl across the arms of his office chair and drink apple juice, eat leftover Howies cold. I spent hours online once AOL discs had faded, taking care of digital pets, talking to strangers in chat rooms, watching sports highlights come around again. I?d often wander through the house while my Dad was sleeping, night-shift tired, always looking as if he?d been awake all his life until this moment, where he knew I?d be there for dinner. Even now, meals mark his days. He?s always telling me what we?ll eat when I finally make it down to Mobile for Christmas or the first of summer. He buys custom cuts of steak at the grocery store or blends three types of ground beef. We eat for days, until the plates are bare, each time the blend of spices blooming beneath our knives. I remember being around 10 when I had my first crawfish. He boiled them in a huge pot in the yard, and while everyone drank beer, I dipped my fingers into a container of Cajun seasoning. Last summer, we found the largest boiling pot in the store. I might as well get the one I want, he said. Later, we bought a forty-pounds of live crawfish, watched them fall into water brown with zest. His beard was grey in places, covering that face of meetings and partings. That day, even after the scent had faded from our private festival, we sat savoring the golden meat, throwing the husks into a bucket between us. 28 One-Sided Conversation ?? she says, say that, even when you don?t understand. It?s alright, you can give it a try. Nod vigorously, keep eating, with the stomach of a deer, but not too fast. Don?t let your plate get empty. It won?t stay that way. Just another day she forecasts this fluent future, all the visits home to Shenzhen. ??, but I don?t understand the picture of life I?m holding. God, did you forget to attach the file? Did I miss a lesson? If you come back tomorrow, I?ll regret the way I?ve spent my days stuck in the dryer, shrinking, died red, like the vintage t-shirts I leave at the bottom of the basket each laundry day that passes. Surely you?ll give me a few more days to make it right, if I know anything about you. ??, but each day makes me wonder if I ever met you, if I was always right to say I had known you like secondhand smoke, not the intoxication I had felt at church until I didn?t, the words, the music, wax in the ear. Have you vanished like friends across the miles? Did you pass my wife the torch? Where have you been hiding in my house? ??. Maybe your face is unswept hair on the bathroom floor. Your arms are fridge handles, 29 your legs a bookmark in a half-finished novel. Your eyes are in a lightswitch, and your ears are stains on the carpet. The rest of you is stuck somewhere in my bloodstream, hit a snag, took a wrong turn in my veins trying to settle in my brain. How do I get outside this revolving hotel room of mine? How can it feel like home? ??, but O Yahweh, have you made me like an eagle circling empty sky between the world and sun? Perhaps our love is like the character ?, a goose and a question, lingering there, two birds. 30 III. with love in his heart like a ruinous wound St. John of the Cross 31 Who You Love ?Lying back on Jesus? chest was one of His disciples, whom Jesus loved.??John 12:23 For years I?ve lied on the stranger-stained carpet calling out, wondering where your touch turned away, became this blight; desire, dunes of sand. I don?t find you in my love?s skin kisses, your body now packaged in plastic. Did you intertwine us as a consolation, a parting gift? Depression you gave, always shadowing me; drives I don?t remember driving, the same lyrics looping back. A lust for death covers my mind like graffiti tags along the metro line. I?ve learned to find beauty in the curving, freehand font of synapses misconnecting, the old gone, their way home lost. My church taught me I could always talk to you, but all the answers I need can?t be tested, can?t be trusted in this imbalanced brain. So many lies kneaded in neurons, I can?t hear much over the static, the worn-down record skip of distance filling time. 32 I wanted to die sophomore year (and later), wandered around campus past midnight, wondering if I?d love heaven like you say I will, if I?ll still feel far away, just one of the billions wanting to touch the end of your robe, to disappear into its folds. So much space and history you see, and hold, and still hear me, even if these words feel lost between my room and where you sit and watch the infinite twist. As a kid, I wanted to be the first to fly through Jupiter. Now I wish I could just lean against you like John did, knowing I was who you love, to be the one who lived. But I know you?re found in suffering, splinters stuck until the skin sheds. Please, if you can?t help me feel the world again, turn and tell me it will end. Let your voice become a piece of paradise. 33 ??????(What do you want?) Lying just far enough apart that our faces aren?t globs of acrylic paint, I ask, ?????? and she tells me my pronunciation has grown so clear. At night, I scrub the piled dishes while she washes her face, then set out her mirror and rose lotion. This morning I brushed her hair, held sections to the light to see the balayage begin. We?re both too kind, echoing ageless phrases one after another. We go back and forth, like a Chinese game we call Please Let Me Pay The Check. ??????????????? Always such big plans for the day. Sometimes we do 7 things, sometimes 3: Studying vocabulary for her Ph.D. Watching documentaries on street food with rice and beef or rare takeout that takes her back to Shenzhen. Video games, card games, looking into the exchange rate of talk and sleep. Learning the dances her students do in the mornings. Seeing me dance to *Nsync makes her fall over laughing. The ice cream she chose solely on name yesterday surprised us both. Pluto Bleu. Sometimes she runs up to me across the room and squeeze tight or call me ???. When we first met, she said she valued her free time. Now she?s always trying to give more of it away. As I write, I?m looking over at her (there?s something we like about seeing each other from far away) and I ask if she can remind me how she answered that question however long ago. ???, she says, and of course, I repeat the phrase clearly. 34 New Year's Day The fur of my parka holds me like an Ad?lie as I walk the Gulf shore. The wind?s eternal song reminds me I?m still alive. Whitecaps crash over uncounted grains of sand, steal them away unseen. Willets, Terns, and Sanderlings scuttle where Poseidon's tired exhales meet the shore. Dad and I brave the frigid day for this detour, on the way to test Florida lotto tickets. He believes with disciple-like faith that he will, eventually, win. We keep our heads forward, only occasionally yelling to check in. We pick up shells to remember the summer: pristine homes collected ?till our pockets are full. 35 Easter Without the Magic We celebrate the day you appeared again to all your clueless friends on the road showed skeptics the seeing stone holes in your skin. Walked around a little rotten maybe. Did you wanna be naked for a while? not be Jesus not be God? a little eternity before the ladies showed up? The old robes left behind. You knew we?d want something to hold. I used to find you in my walls. Caked-up paint dirt that won?t come off the shower floor. Little pareidolias. Now it?s so hard to feel anything. How many years I wonder until I forget the real you? Would you visit me a moment? show off some souvenirs? Or just sit play video games take our minds off things. That?d be nice wouldn?t it? I know you must be so tired. I just washed the sheets if you need a nap. I?ll be quiet. Say whatever you wanna share. But I want to hear your voice, not just your words. Some answers. Would you sing for me? a song you wrote on your piano. Not a churchy one that misses you. There?s room. I?ll move the stone of laundry. I?ll wash the earth from your feet. I?ll try to write you a better poem than this. But the morning is quiet sitting on the couch watching church online. It?s not just that. I turned and where did you go? My router can?t reach you. The tomb (my God) is empty. Nothing feels the same. 36 Protection July 2021 Her?? reminds me to protect her here after what happened (again and again) in Atlanta. She holds my hand tighter today after looking at ourselves in a window across the alley from what could be our new apartment. More and more names down the list of this endless season. I notice each person we pass, wondering why any must feel this way, why she must take inventory of the whole city, even here as we walk DC?s Chinatown. We pass characters climbing up store signs, the arch embossed with ???, a mosaic of red sapphire, turquoise, three dragons resting over H Street. The shop I buy her taro tofu pudding around the corner, restaurants that might bring tears, if they have the right dish. She rests her head in my lap, talking about news stories from WeChat, stones slung on either side about the Uighurs in Xinjiang, students returning home from abroad, bringing the Chinese Virus back with them. All the experiences that can?t be translated. She worries about leaving the house without me, about what will happen when ?? and ?? can finally visit. If they brush past someone on the sidewalk and don?t have the American words to protect themselves, don?t know how to avoid the centuries digging a trench to trap them in themselves. All I can say is???, ???, let it out, let me try to carry some parts of you. I?ll be in the papers, my name on the news, before I let the world take a piece of you. 37 Psalm for the God of Judas Lord of the broken lot as I used to hear on late night TV I can accept your baggage which we carry together you say I miss you in a new way this year I betray my old devotion seek my own saints: dead poets piles of snow like tortoises in the shade little boxes & bags along the road with bread crumbs dried ketchup I leave the window open for you a lantern distance soon consumes I look down & wonder if the neighbor with two dogs sees me naked strolling the house to wash Maybe he?s writing a poem too the odd pale image The trees before the hill the yard dressed with snow God are you a commercial in the night for love songs lost for lips? Despite your heel?s spur I wouldn?t trade you I think I know You see my best like a star unnamed a faint white light in the corner of your room 38 Clean Shave You video call from North Dakota, sitting on a bed of crimson sheets, the room like a freshman dorm. Quiet world (the way you like it), a foot of snow, orange-clouded mountains, pickups parked outside. The hours are long. A man?s work in the oil fields, nitrogen and frostbite at your fingertips. Driving a tanker back from Wyoming, another day riding into town to buy tall rubber boots, eating burgers and chili you say you shouldn?t with your illusive brother. You let yourself breathe when you quit, the air no longer hot as hell up north. Your voice doesn?t carry the woods, the boy who waited, still in the daylight bush, for a buck. A stranger sees the script A on your hat, yells Roll Tide, makes that bit of nowhere not feel as far. You laugh, smiling longer than usual. I take notes when you describe your new equipment, company email, that your beard is gone now, for the respirators. You look like Dad again, your younger self staring at the TV, focused on racing for hours, passing the controller to me once you?d won. I ask how you feel about it all, but don?t get much more than elevator answers. But you send pictures each day: the smokestacks, the endless road, a rabbit licking its paws, an aerodrome of windy snowfall. It?s snowing here too, for once. You sleep early. We wave across our screens. 39 Tangles My arms pulled into a travel pillow of sorts around my wife?s head. Our legs in a fishtail braid, destined for numbness if I don?t say something. The more twisted, the better must be her philosophy, though she opts for comfy to characterize these positions we find ourselves in. Two minutes not working on something and she?s gone, forgetting the ever growing list unrolling from her tongue. My approach to sleep is more methodical by necessity. My back must be straight, one leg curled into hers, the other extending from the spine. My head straight forward like a soldier behind a comrade, marching into the darkness until the bombs come in the morning??garbage trucks with their unknown schedules that transcend the days, which have by now lost their own sense of order. Steady work and teacher pay come back after the summer, and the daily joys of marriage become hard to carry, not due to their weight, but because there?s no good way to grab hold of them. There?s still boxes in the living room, still the fallen closet rail. Odd ends that barely had a proper place before we moved in together. Too many wake-up kisses, the stir fry on my breath lingering like my mom when I finally call. My wife makes me think even more about all the moments that make up a day, all the ones I waste. Love adds, but it can?t take away these worn parts of me. Days start with a crack of the neck. Cold air outside the sheets and half-open eyes that drive her to work and back. We march into the night with two different cadences. I overprepare for the journey and wake exhausted. She travels light and tells me about her dreams in the middle of the night. They are worth all that I lose. 40 If I Could See You in Miami 1993 Young, younger, your mother, states away. No one calls you crater-faced. You get to be Stephanie for a while. Summer goes until December, and boys love to hear you say Ya?ll are crazy down here, your Alabama accent in the ear, for a moment, like sunshowers on beach-burned skin. You don?t have to worry about me, but I know you?re already set on graduating to that motherly dream. A Benneton sweater, Reeboks double-strapped beneath bright leg warmers; you make them seem like angelwear. I can see the neon, the palm trees between sheets of blue, and they?re not holding up the moon or the casinos. You?re not holding the hands of your sisters when your mother disappears into a flick of ash, her magic trick. A snap, another man, then dirt on the carpet, the shoes stacked tall. I hope you don?t fear being like her yet. You can?t drink, so maybe you take me to the strip to sing. We walk and hear ?I Get Around? somewhere along South Beach, slinking out from a glossy Caprice with underglow. You wanna sing TLC, Madonna, or Whitney, or maybe we?re Kriss Kross before our roles get switched. Then we?re at the soccer field where the smell of barbeque fills the neighborhood, and you bite into sugary muffins with corn kernels peeking through. Something sweeter than blueberries, you say. You don?t have to think of who will be lost and left. Your body doesn?t ache, and who but me knows your name? You?re no mother, no sister, no one?s aunt. I want to remember you alone, knowing beneath all beauty there?s something buried. 41 Missing You God, how many years have you been away on vacation, sending unsigned postcards folded into swans, now an Osmanthus bouquet? I?ve longed to see you coming back from afar like you did before a Cuckoo crafted a nest in the hollow of my side. Are you shower steam and Viperfish? Have you hidden a new address for us in Alpha Centauri? Will heaven be the end or the beginning? I don?t know. Maybe we?re both the sort others label as awfully quiet. I have the hardest time believing you can make angels sing in this burning cathedral. So help me forgive all I?ve left at your office door in piles. Lord, Friend, tell me a secret. Tell me about your day. 42 Notes The epigraph of section I comes from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible. ?Mickler?s Landing? references the painting Soria Moria by Theodor Kittelsen, which draws from the Norwegian Fairytale popularized by Peter Christen Asbj?rnsen and J?rgen Moe in their collection Norske folkeeventyr. The epigraph of section II comes from a note for Wu Li?s 23rd poem on Macao, translated by Jonathan Chaves in Singing of the Source: Nature and God in the Poetry of the Chinese Painter Wu Li. The epigraph of section III comes from ?Madrigal? by St. John of the Cross. ?Home? uses the form of Jericho Brown?s series of ?Duplex? poems in The Tradition. ?St. Christopher and the Christ Child? takes inspiration from the titular painting by Lucas Cranach the Elder (1518). ?Who You Love? begins with an epigraph from the New American Standard Version of the Bible. ?Psalm for the God of Judas? borrows a phrase from Gerard Manley Hopkins ?The Lantern out of Doors? in line 12.