It means to have

beautiful leftovers.

Not food but the body&rsquo;s

look in old age.&nbsp;

Mom always says

Robert Redford looks

like&nbsp;une vieille pomme&nbsp;

an old apple

though he has

de beaux restes.

I&rsquo;m aware how often

I say my&nbsp;mom used to

or&nbsp;my dad used to,

that there&rsquo;s no one

to pass my hair down

to. That this apple

stain which might have been

the blood of a dinosaur clears away

with enough hot water.

The futon by itself in Philly.

I&rsquo;m watching a spy

movie from the 70&rsquo;s

in my hometown

on a Sunday, a channel

I can&rsquo;t get anywhere

else. Pretty sure

I&rsquo;m going to go out

of this life scrambling after

facts: the times I did so

and you managed

in the code of people

who understand everything

to look away. Robert

Redford comes

back from getting

his lunch and all

his coworkers

lie shot. I think

so often of when the

roads stayed out of view,

when I curled in

the backseat

of the car,

too small to look

out the window.

I totally get how you

want to lean things

together in a field

of nothing. The two

sides of things seem

utter vapor. You

probably also were

a kid so quiet, they

came to the door

to say,&nbsp;you still alive?

Sometimes my mom says,&nbsp;

I wish dad were here so I

could fight with

him.&nbsp;Robert Redford

dials an untraceable

phone and when

he finds out it&rsquo;s all

an inside job, my

mom says,&nbsp;This

is a terrible movie.

Maybe it&rsquo;s

nostalgia that

creates the essential

nothing. For the people

we thought could

hold the cellphone

while we found

a shrub to use

in the park, now

departed. Now

Robert Redford

asks his boss

who had been

trying to kill him

in the big tell-off

moment, quote,

Are we really

planning to invade

The Middle East

for oil?&nbsp;When the film

came out, everyone

thought the movie

was crap and had

no substance. For

fuck&rsquo;s sake now I&rsquo;m

suspicious of even

the apples. No roads

go pewter calm.

I&rsquo;ve seen you tell

a roomful of parents:&nbsp;this

is what happened

when I asked your

children to make

a pencil speak.

When friends

are not around

which is often,

I watch celebrities

reveal their souls

on YouTube.&nbsp;

Robert Redford

his face not quite

gone to hardwood.&nbsp;

You&rsquo;re gonna die

a very lonely man,&nbsp;

they tell spy Redford

when he throws their

interior conspiracy

and all its lurking

detail to the&nbsp;Times.&nbsp;

You&rsquo;re right, an utterance

is still worth it

even if it hangs

out in the open,

a coral pendant.

A verb to be we&rsquo;re

inclined to show.

I remember the

literal flies tapping

on the window.

Robert Redford

does look like

an old apple

though the&nbsp;beaux

restes&nbsp;means well-

preserved, not leftovers.

You&rsquo;ve probably seen

a doll with a dried

apple for a head

and pretended it

could hear. Who the hell

is there to tell but

quiet people? The terrible

leftovers I didn&rsquo;t

throw out that you

must have seen. I felt

confirmed in my

trying to have a baby when

I realized what huge

bags of food I kept giving

you. Redford&rsquo;s hidden

sorrow he wouldn&rsquo;t

even tell his biographer

about, the writer who

followed him

for 14 years (that his first baby

died a crib death).

I think that&rsquo;s what&rsquo;s

inside good acting:

the not pretending. I think,&nbsp;

in the movie, that

line about you&rsquo;re gonna die

a lonely man&mdash;

that simple lie&mdash; those

are the open windows

of being alive.


De Beaux Restes

Feeling in pain when there is no stomach-ache.
There is only the pain of the mind and hundreds and thousands
of small gold oblongs wired into a surface. Into this burns the sun,
bottlecaps thrown, a chain mail, trash draping, curtaining,
a sound, a stone thrown across a shield or metal grate,
a sorrow not forthcoming but showing the leathering hand.
The artist pours out this visible tension, scraps pouring through.
Heat on neck, glare on glass, dust in the air. Scintillations&mdash;
things that stick, memorized coins, everything assembled.

I wish I spoke more languages because each new language is a window says El Anatsui
and notes that the word he says means war and erupt and disrupt
how his language can stretch. I&rsquo;ve been at words this whole time,
spelling in my sleep. A wall, flattened back, of curves and sticks,
a thimble tall quake. Metal and rapid small beads
a nimble hand fixed to cloth fine as a soldier&rsquo;s golden skin
made to move. El Anatsui takes death/trash, mends it
into a sheath. Lightning, a crow. We mean crown. I mean
your language, English, he says, is too specific. So unpreventable.


El Anatsui

After all the humans are gone, grandparents in a kindergarten


and the teacher draw an accordion wall across


to keep the children in anti-gravity class together;


the grandparents each grade balloon worksheets. Sunlight floats in,


the android grandparents thoughtful about addition, mulling vacation


Come here I said to the little one too little to be in floating class


I want to tell you something and you repeat it back to me next time


She toddled over, put her arms up to hug me, we hugged.


Under her coat was no body, only space and a white planet.


Repeat after me: more human than a human, got it? I cuddled her.


A bus in a strange galaxy shows, in its windows, more familiar faces.


Okay, she said, I&rsquo;m more human than a human.


Everybody Believes They are the Good Guy

If I can&rsquo;t say, brother, what I meant to say, tell yourself a grudge was my homage to you.
The benevolent bulk of your shadow, dragon like, cutting the wounded helpfully

the anticipation of sewing them back together. Like watching grass grow.
Mangled hands, the person who let their arm dangle out a window

and the van rolled on it so that an attending holds her wrist up while
you bend over the thousand capillaries, clock the place to snip the spool.

Cold room, then, for the woman who didn&rsquo;t see it coming, crumpled from
&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; damage sunk into everything. You repair, you store ointment

in wounds which is your work. Your eyes always dip to sleep after a remark
about how climatologists are overreacting, the march of history, the next civil war,

&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; all good things come to an end. What kind of bandage
&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; goes with this single mode of protection: against threats only&mdash;

warning me about counting cash on the street, to stockpiling water
&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; or attack dogs. Your scrubs a mess

of bloody willows, of fire breathing, of trust me I&rsquo;m a doctor, or eat shit and die,
of it&rsquo;s okay but in the future try to remember. Because blood doesn't lie.

All my back talk only for you, it trained me

for this moment. Together you and I can make anyone uncomfortable, clear the room
snapping out headlines that cancel each other out, brandishing outliers,

and then freedom&mdash;

most of a nation learned to lean out the window never suspecting this danger.
&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;One arm now restless in the lap,
&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;the other mostly useless from wanting a moment in the free wind.


Freedom of Speech

It seemed endless and then

it didn&rsquo;t disappear but

there was no way to

look it in the face.

I had walked far into

a winter of stone steeples

a bunch of graffiti that

read elect the dead and

then no more sidewalk.

Nausea on the way to

get groceries: someone

is about to drop a bomb.

A hallway of sunshine.

Done for another eon.

I heard if you get

drained by people,

create a purple energy

shield around you

so what could I do

but imagine purple

light as a bubble

around the city, the

whole country, the

world. Thought about

us-ness and ongoing

fully invasive mint

old trees chanting

shame, us burning

[with] nostalgia

about the time when

the future was promising.

Languages with no

future tense use

the present instead,

make future a suite

next to the present.

Tomorrow I break free.

Tomorrow he is gone.

The gas engine is no more.

I do not smoke. Tomorrow

most animals and trees

are dead. In the fall,

I live. I live this fall.

The speakers of these

supposedly have

more prudence, prepare,

save money, smoke less.

Except an outlier culture

that has no marker

for the future tense

who don&rsquo;t especially

prepare for their future

selves: perhaps to

some, hedonists.

I guess you could pull

your dick through

a hole in a mask

but it&rsquo;ll be tough

to get your pants up.


Futureless Languages

I took a thing from my car that wasn&rsquo;t supposed to be there. I stopped bothering to say hi to my white neighbors because they never say hi back. The cosmos kept blowing up like a snake in a fake peanut brittle box. &nbsp;I stopped buying corn from the woman at the final stall because she already was constantly complaining about non-problems but then, as I was rearranging my groceries in my tote, squatted down by the corner of the table, she said are you keeping an eye on the something something and I said what and realized she was telling the Amish woman who worked for her to keep an eye out for shoplifters. Mopping the cool of the browbeater. Block me or I&rsquo;ll block you first. I saw us eating pizza sleepily while on the timeline of the cosmos, an infinity of dead stretched before us. I would be hard pressed to pick one memory from this life to use as a bridge to oblivion. Walking in a cold meadow after a swim. Sitting on my dad&rsquo;s chest as an infant. Laughing so hard with Jenny we couldn&rsquo;t breathe, throwing stuffed animals. A made-up game.


In 5000 Years None of This Will Really Matter

The air in the rocks speaks.

The pits in the vase speak.

The sheep caught on a hard slant speak.

The birches planted close together speak. The trout speak blue.

The lake speaks the wind and the wind speaks the terns and the terns speak nails.

The poet speaks the words&nbsp;bear shirt&nbsp;and the bear shirt says&nbsp;

I also mean &ldquo;without-armor&rdquo;.

His axe spoke about deprivation and graffiti and mold.

His blood speaks on the rocks

and the lava speaks about building new land with your rage

the rage speaks in lightning and bats

and the bats speak sonor

which speaks laughter through the halls of Hekla

whose speech makes the kettles swing

their hair howls in whorls that ask for raw egg

that asks for hands or to slide in a jar,

the jar speaks of rain separating from mud,

nails and vials, horns and clover, dots from light

and the pattern speaks of a mother now broken

and the mother speaks green gold which might be a fresh mother itself&mdash;

&nbsp;speaking of wool and the wool speaks of late afternoon.


Inheritance

Leaves have trafficked the unsaid and burst the blood-bag unexpectedly.


My friend years ago said there&rsquo;s a shade of red that gives her a headache.


Was it a red of nature or the reds of marketing or the red of known quantities?


We sat on either side of a nurse who drew our blood with impunity.


Near and far patches of orange where the field catches a person fainting in an elevator.


The specific obvious decaying to the lesser reminders ad infinitum, but then


You must deal with the flaming field while its red fades to noticeable orange.


Talking in the car about scary movies, enjoyable fear versus the unwatchable.


And the hill re-appears. The red arms of everything blot out air, ash, and lymph.


Or are the clouds&mdash;verdigris and aqua&mdash;a way of saying I&rsquo;m tired and blacking out.


My friend reappears after her death. Standing in a yard, I have no idea how to say hi to her.


In the movie, a smoking battlefield morphs, a hundred years passing, into a meadow.


Waking up lying half out of an elevator: clouds sewn to the hill. Do we wake to death?


The fence that may be running through the grove steadies all: do we live to dream?


A crisp distance in autumn that may as well be full spring, the blood spring.


At night his arm around me, our veins full of unspoken things.


For years, the phrase&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;when someone leaves an open field alone.


Painting of a Field by Vlaminck

The elderly swept their arms up in unison.


Pushing up the heavens. Lion growing. Mist sinking into the horizon.


&nbsp;


At night, the stars chucked plentiful


against blackness, full of discount lightning.


&nbsp;


Hectic Manhattan&rsquo;s Chinatown, that


drawer of sidewalk and rings, no


room to pass either side.


&nbsp;


Five billion people, those were the days.


&nbsp;


To cover the world with more apples


to cover the ground around back porches


and also to show


what and who endures in


this nowhere pavilion of necessities


I awoke, shining&mdash;


&nbsp;


outside the city, at night a lake&rsquo;s alarm


an apple that played a lunar light


I saw two selves


the one faithful to history


&nbsp;


&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; and one who prefers the actual


they walk away from the corner


each down separate roads


&nbsp;


the best moment for calling the ancestors&mdash;


for asking for clarity on how to change suffering to nothing


or whether that is the goal


&nbsp;


Ask yourself when making these nail and yarn dolls&mdash;


you, so disappointed by the strangleholds of evil men&mdash;


Do I wish the person this doll represents some harm or some good?


Cynthia Arrieu-King

De Beaux Restes

El Anatsui

Everybody Believes They are the Good Guy

Freedom of Speech

Futureless Languages

In 5000 Years None of This Will Really Matter

Inheritance

Painting of a Field by Vlaminck

Two Old Selves

By Some Miracle a Year Lousy With Meteors

Cynthia Arrieu-King

Continuity

Futureless Languages

De Beaux Restes

El Anatsui

Everybody Believes They are the Good Guy

Freedom of Speech

Futureless Languages

In 5000 Years None of This Will Really Matter

Inheritance

Painting of a Field by Vlaminck

Two Old Selves

By Some Miracle a Year Lousy With Meteors