I want to write a poem that has not one seed
of grief, isn’t a pocket or vestibule for tragedy—I want

my cavities to growl and ooze with a hypnotic sweetness—
There in the flickering din of a summer night,

diaphanous and full of trill, like the crystal-clear idea that comes
after waking from the duende of sleep. Now the coffee stirred,

a reflective ping from the deep mouths of spoons. My inner calm
dispatched by a DJ with an all-nite radio show, slingin’ those tunes

into making my crinkled skin downy, old as a shirt washed too many times.
Insect wings flinging like two pig-tails, girlish in the wind. A world where no one

has a curfew or a coffin. I want to write the skiff of that poem,
but I hear a racket on the other side of town, in kitchens, where mothers

and moths congregate under lit fixtures of civilization, and meanwhile,
like dark sick bats in basements, their sons are cleaning their guns.