We smile at each other
and I lean back against the wicker couch.
How does it feel to be dead? I say.
You touch my knees with your blue fingers.
...
"Sit in my hand."
I'm ten.
I can't see him,
but I hear him breathing
...
I'm going out and get something.
I don't know what.
I don't care.
Whatever's out there, I'm going to get it.
...
Sunflowers beside the railroad tracks,
sunflowers giving back the beauty God gave you
to one lonely traveler
who spies you from a train window
...
My sister rubs the doll's face in mud,
then climbs through the truck window.
She ignores me as I walk around it,
...
Today it rained vengefully and hard
and my men deserted me.
...
Lightning hits the roof,
shoves the knife, darkness,
deep in the walls.
They bleed light all over us
...
1. RUSSIA, 1927
On the day the sienna-skinned man
held my shoulders between his spade-shaped hands,
easing me down into the azure water of Jordan,
...
When the rooster jumps up on the windowsill
and spreads his red-gold wings,
I wake, thinking it is the sun
...