I didn’t write Etsuko,
I sliced her open.
She was carmine inside

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

Mother fingers in the mud. Mother begging bowl.

The just man followed then his angel guide
Where he strode on the black highway, hulking and bright;
But a wild grief in his wife’s bosom cried,

All is despoiled, abandoned, sold;
Death’s wing has swept the sky of color;
All’s eaten by a hungry dolor.