How to Live in This World, and: The Golem of Los Angeles, and: Alfred Hitchcock on Chicks

How to Live in This World
(co-written with Li-Young Lee)

The body's cup is broken into psalm
because a fever in the mind declares
there's nothing here but raw bones, gristle, hair,
nothing but living shaken out of song,

else nothing but the world and nothing else.
I break into you, break in your mouth, wreck
the cup to free the clay, and break, and break,
in waves that follow other waves, and pulse.

Turn back from the door. Please. Do you love me?
I breathe into your neck and find a summer.
What does it mean to have you without holding,

to hold you without having to hold, be
a mortal voice that sings below the water?
I feel that I can live in that unfolding.

The Golem of Los Angeles

The students glisten with youth. Every one of them is beautiful.
The world has yet to enter them and breathe away their souls.
I want to be like the children, but I am dirt and clay.
I woke one day and told myself, Stand up and walk like a man!
I raised my dust up out of bed and looked into the mirror
but couldn't read the word written by my forehead lines.
I keep a piece of paper under my tongue and on it one word: be.
So I write my way into my life, trying to name it as it leaves
and walk this clay around, a thing empty of belief.
My body's covered with hair, just like a human being,
but my hands are sticks, my brain's in rags. These days
I feel the hand of death on my forehead and it feels like a relief.

Alfred Hitchcock on Chicks

As in a horror movie, their glances fly at you,
and though you're covered up in cloth
they pluck your hems and stockings, prick
your arms and calves and beat against
your crotch and on your thighs like black wings
against glass, swooping up-skirt and down
your blouse. They snatch your hair to wrap
the thoughts of breast and ass that nest
inside their brains. And say you catch their gaze
upon your nipples and you frown; they'll snap
your lips up in their beaks. And say you steel
yourself and try to stare them down;
they'll steal your eyes like rings and fly away.