Tonight my brother, in heavy boots… through the bare rooms over my hea… opening and closing doors. What could he be looking for in an… What could he possibly need there…

And when, in the city in which I… even my most excellent song goes u… andI mount the scabbed streets, the long shouts of avenues, and tunnel sunken night in search…

Ivy ties the cellar door in autumn, in summer morning glory wraps the ribs of a mouse. Love binds me to the one whose hair I’ve found in my mouth,

Here, as in childhood, Brother, n… And someone has died, and someone… born, while our father walks throu… and sets all the clocks for spring… weighs heavy on my forehead, his d…

Choose a quiet place, a ruins, a house no more a house, under whose stone archway I stood one day to duck the rain.

We come to each other exactly at the center, the spine of ample fire, and suffe… to be revised. Stay with me.

We two sit on our bed, you between my legs, your back to me,… slightly bowed, that I may brush a… your hair. My father did this for my mother,

That sparrow on the iron railing, not worth a farthing, purchases a… its shrill cries measure, trading dying for being. It’s up to no good,

He gossips like my grandmother, th… with my face, and I could stand amused all afternoon in the Hon Kee Grocery, amid hanging meats he

I’ve pulled the last of the year’s… The garden is bare now. The grou… brown and old. What is left of th… in the maples at the corner of my eye. I turn, a cardinal vanishes.

In sixth grade Mrs. Walker slapped the back of my head and made me stand in the corner for not knowing the difference between persimmon and precision.

Because this graveyard is a hill, I must climb up to see my dead, stopping once midway to rest beside this tree. It was here, between the anticipat…

She begins, and my grandmother joi… Mother and daughter sing like youn… If my father were alive, he would… his accordion and sway like a boat… I’ve never been in Peking, or the…

It’s late. I’ve come to find the flower which blossoms like a saint dying upside down. The rose won’t do, nor the iris. I’ve come to find the moody one, t…