An Island

        Celebrated neurologists posit only fate,
inscrutable as proteins folded, just so. Proteins
like rope from a tug of war, crumpled
into wrinkles on the floor of a closet
at the end of summer when the oaks have pelted
the leaved earth with living stones, and the winds
move with purpose and you do what the universe says
because it makes you—

        I shiver into the will to choose my life
despite my life lying back in time, back
and back as if I could follow a string from now
until the cold beginning and its monster:
my older sister’s toddler’s casket lies alone
and still in a field on the way to Coney Island.
Houses and houses labyrinth against the labyrinth
of those little stones. Her airless end,
the clogged throat, was my howling
beginning.
        Therefore, I howl

when my hormones cascade down
next to yours, when my flesh is drawn
to the terrible melancholy
of your body which sleeps so quietly now
but will vigour the dust from the sheets
when I’m gone—

        You light the tinder
of a match and draw smoke
into your lungs, where some miniature
of me tries to curl into a sac, a blastocyst
imbedding in an alveolo, because I never could be
anywhere but where your dark stain fates
and pushes me out with your air.

        The days grow darker and evil shaped
and rust. Why did you smoke
all those bloody cigarettes? The clods and continents
of our dying bodies hear bells and

        become aware. Choose the fact that no one is