I fell in love with the Siberian Iris
In the garden catalog,
Slender-stemmed, indigo shading to violet,

I don’t know what to say to you
and have called you names—mutilator of souls, 
warden of dust, evocateur— that only placed me

Estas brutal, someone says about the heat or the boricua 
walking down the street with a dulce de leche. My sister shivers. 
I paraphrase a fever when I mount the stairs to the roof to swelter

I can feel the sheet luff on my thighs, the emptiness
cool and pleasant inside my body, and time
stops counting the spruce limbs.

but which verbs do you employ when it’s clear that you are trying 
to side-eye murder your mother, when you are the chilling moral
of every blazing honor thy Sunday sermon, when you are nothing 

Of all cities, Paris
is now the coldest.

What good are the two

Stone lips to the unspoken cave;
Fingering the nervous strings, alone,
I crossed that grey sill, raised my head

It could happen again. It will.
But this time the geography will be more final,
more certain of the rain and its echo

Up the reputable walks of old established trees
They stalk, children of the nouveaux riches; chimes
Of the tall Clock Tower drench their heads in blessing

At White River Roadhouse in the Yukon
A bell rings in the late night:
A lone car on the Alaska highway