today the normal ways of knowing things seem to be melting at their edges,
the distinctions between them nothing but slippery mirage.

what we thought was science is actually poetry.
what we called history is simple math.
               the lessons add up inevitably.

               security isn’t security,
               but chaos isn’t chaos either.
today the trees prepare to bud greenly, impelled by ancient formulas.

a friend who met a glacier while traveling last month
says its enormity brought her to tears. like an animal it groaned and calved,

offspring shearing into the water. a vision she couldn’t comprehend –
               water, but animal.
               ice, but infinity.

don’t try to turn back the clock of your mind.
this is how we know now.       this is who we could become.

i.

the crane outside my office
window spins its long arm
like an autonomous second hand.
alone at my desk I let
Touré’s crooning slip
liquidly into my chest
like burning tea.
I wonder what sits there –
the size and shape of the cage
I’ve constructed around
the wounded animal of my knowing.
in Gaza children have been
told to flee for their lives
and in my belly a poppy
seed-sized life is taking shape.
I take stock of sunlight searing my desk
and my breath, shallow and tight
over images of the bombings.
the long steel arm swings,
and I don’t dare speak.

ii.

my body has identified
a section of unreadable code.
scrambled instructions.
the system is rebooting.
I bleed into my underclothes
while drinking white wine,
while the emcee at the
literary gala cries, drunk,
about the beauty of libraries
& democracy & freedom,
supporting our allies.
from where we sit
in this austere hall,
small chunks of
salmon perched
lifelessly on china plates,
we cannot hear
the bombs falling.
what doesn’t make
sense cannot root.
for a handful of days
I was pregnant,
and now I’m not.
I drain my glass. 
I feel grateful for
my body’s checks and balances.
it’s not like democracy.
my body is authoritarian.
someone should give her a
history book. even the
drugstore pregnancy test
knew before I did,
its second line melting
away midweek as if
erased by an invisible
hand. the code
is all around us,
but you have to know
how to read it.

iii.

the system cries.
it doesn’t make sense
to root these days, but
children have a right.
children have rights and history.
from where we sit
we know how to read it.
the code is austere.
as a child I was told this story:
Gaza & freedom,
the size and shape of burning.
it’s not democracy.
now that the second hand has
made so many revolutions,
can you hear it?
have you dared to speak?

one afternoon in the year of fascism
the grocery store for some reason
is full of young Black men buying flowers.
slim bouquets held in their delicate hands,
their necks – the men’s and the flowers’ –
angled toward the light, their eyes
glowing with love, I think I see
my son among them, though he’s still
in diapers, too young yet to walk or say
my name. I imagine each of these men,
steady in their purpose, on their way
to present the farm-grown roses or carnations
to a mother, lover, father, ailing neighbor,
or Nana, and I think of how when I
dressed my baby boy in a hand-me-down onesie
covered with lacy petals the other night
his sister delighted and we called him
Flowerson as he beamed to be admired so.
I say a quick pantheist’s prayer
that one day he’ll be among them –
the noble, brave and brown-skinned men
who scan plastic-wrapped blessings in the
self-checkout line and move lithely beyond
the automatic doors, chins pointing toward
the horizon, floating above the noise of
other shoppers on their phones and car radios
announcing military news, not dissuaded, not
unhappy, not beholden – but in love in some
way or another, and walking in the light of it
righteously as a peony unfurling.

I was in a room.
The room was where I’d lived my entire life.
It was filled with unlit candles, frozen wax mid-drip down their sides.
I tried feeling my way around, but I kept bumping my shins on unfamiliar objects.
People were yelling from various directions.
I was bruised.
My sense of hearing dulled.
I tried to obey.

I couldn’t pronounce my name.
I meant what I didn’t say.
I couldn’t say things in the normal way.
My tongue took on water and fishtailed out my hands.
My pockets full of keys, I sank to the carpet at the bottom.
I was unspeakable.
I tried to translate.
People were not interested in a story they’d heard before.

I escalated my intentions.
When I wrote that line the first time I typed “escape.”
I was in the escape room in which I’d lived my entire life.
The room was made of glass.
People yelled at me from the other side.
I saw their mouths moving.
What I learned from this experience I will take with me.
There is nothing you can substitute for sleep.

we’re at the playground, where all stories start:
           my daughter, in a toddler swing, is getting addicted
           to centripetal forces. I orbit, entering her atmosphere
           to give another push before the dog’s nose pulls me
           away, frantic as an inbox chime.

later, the gynecologist becomes astrologer:
           clicking through my ultrasound images, she swears
           the starry white bodies deep in my pelvis are all
           shining rightly, nothing is wrong. so the pain is
           phantom? I ask. vestigial spirit? an echo?

now I’m in the kitchen, which is also studio:
           I paint tomatoes, cumin, goat cheese
           on cast iron. the blood in my hand becomes
           garlic-tinged milk. I wonder if to make art
           you must be aware you’re making art.

then I’m in bed, theorizing at midnight:
           at times when something terrible could have
           happened, a parallel story in which it did
           unravels slowly beside me. compelled by
           circular acceleration, I haunt the threshold.

afterward, morning seeps back in:
           what came together in sleep – hundreds of
           bats invisible against the blackened sky,
           moving as a single body through my dreams –
           breaks into a multitude of asynchronous wings.

         dar luz: to give birth (Spanish). Literal translation: to give light.
        “What is to give light must endure burning.” – Victor Frankl

every time you create life
you die a little bit.
the body makes its calculation,
ignites, then rebirths itself.

and me? rent in two,
arteries overcompensating,
blood spinning. hair falling out,
night sweats, unsleeping breasts.

reconstituting from such
rupture, the body is our teacher.
after a violence to the system,
it says, repair. repair and stand up.

not from illness but from
possession. yes, the baby had me
and then he cast me off,
became wholly of himself.