The wind is against us and the ash of war covers the earth. We see our spirit flash on a razor blade, a helmet’s curve. The brackish springs of autumn salt our wounds. 

We smile at each other
and I lean back against the wicker couch.
How does it feel to be dead? I say.

Stalin has to press his ear to my mouth:
I have only myself. Put me on the train.
I won’t look back.

She was carmine inside
like a sea bass
and empty.

A man once rode away on a yellow crane,
leaving only this empty pavilion.
Once gone, the yellow crane never returns;

I was on top, pressed into the scent
    you left at night on the shabby
bed. We were both on add and you said

Take this pic—take this
newly minted plaque.

For plaque, read empire. Say—puff puff
pass. Say—Baba, please. Zip up. You and your dirty

One hundred and eighty-two pages spreads her story like disease.
They send me one false daughter—Dracula—
and then carefully erase the scene.

        She’s been erected out of thin air—with the thin air of money.
In Konya—I scream—in Ulus—I embrace her—
while these papers spread her story like disease.

I murdered my least defensible vices,

stacking them like bodies

in the surf.

A ribbon around an oak tree reads
brother. The oak’s roots

sinking deeper into the dirt.
A heart