In fourth grade, our teacher
noticed we were the only two
who could carve, draw, and paint.

She took us to the museum
and before El Greco,
we looked at each other and knew

we were standing before
a painting of terror and awe.
His tormented brushstrokes,

even the way blue died
into his titanium white
initiated us.

I can’t forget your crooked grin,
or your rooster-tail hair,
the way you argued for “more beauty.”

I can’t forget, because
first you sold stolen wristwatches,
then it was cars, then guns.

You’re in jail now, an El Greco,
hanging on a brick wall
while lightning flashes behind you.

I dreamed last night that there was a shrine half a city block in size. A thirty-foot bronze fence enclosed a mountain of human ashes and bits of broken possessions like cookware, children’s toys, and pieces of plastic whose function could not longer be identified. These were the unidentified remains of people killed in the wars, a gray heap of unknown but still honored human beings.

Outside the shrine, with its Chinese gate of wooden pillars and tiled roof, were worn buildings, traffic, people rushing about on their business. The view to the west was open, with a town of old buildings and fading paint, the same as many small towns—well-used, no fancy money, no boastful high-rises, no pretentious architecture. Beyond the hills, the afternoon sun was still powerful enough to light the streets in honeyed tones, but the mountain had already fallen into shadow.

No one was allowed inside the locked gates, but the ghost of my mother brought me there, put my feet into the sand of crushed bones and burnt flesh, and let the particles run through my bare fingers.

You were a head taller than the rest of us,
with a lean body clad in white T-shirt,
black jeans, rumble belt, and leather jacket
from a street our parents wouldn’t go to.
You were a man among our nervous tribe
of scrawny kids because you didn’t care
about stupid things like graduation.
We scattered when you walked into the gym,
trembled when your huge hands grabbed one of us
and shook us down for money. Astounded
us when you unshouldered your black boom box
and talked tenderly of Nancy Wilson.
You made recess an ordeal. You made class
a confusing thrill with your defiance.
Then you were gone. Not because you cut class—
you’d knocked the boom box into the bathtub,
it was still plugged in but the music stopped.

The summer wind sets the curtains flapping,
the ends of the cords snare-drum the plaster.
Garlic and chili waft from a kitchen
and a sax player on the street blows hard.

She lays on me, panting, black hair flying,
eyelashes wet, damp air like opium.
“Are you hungry?” She says she’ll be right back.
Five minutes later, sirens stop the sax.

I did nothing at the trial. Did nothing
at her funeral. I sit in her room
where the curtains hang limp, and the night fog
smothers the city and snuffs out the stars.

You were a young driver
in a cream-colored coupe.
The rubber tires squealed

around an alpine curve
and then there was no sound
as the car overturned.

It left your parents dead
and you dazed, so to age
with just one memory.

Though your inheritance
and the insurance meant
a comfortable house,

you wandered, your laughter
never easing your frown
or keeping friends with you.

On vacation, you flew
to Thailand. The pilot
erred, and the plane faltered.

It was a fireball
falling to the jungle,
burning one hundred screams.

You were the oldest of seven,
and the table was never full.
The town suffered in soot and smog,
the clang of gears drove off the birds.
You couldn’t tell your left from right.
Dropped out first. Then you were laid off,
and your father was laid off too.
Killing yourself, you thought, would feed
your siblings, and you gulped those pills.

The doctors pumped out your stomach.
For days, you sat at the window,
drawing both your nightmares and dreams.
You walked by an art school, couldn’t
fill out the forms, but you showed them
you could draw and they took you in.
Just as you take in kids today
and put plaster into their hands,
to touch, to mold, to make, to hold.

Five of us in high school—
a phalanx unbroken
until we each went off
to different colleges.
We’ll stay friends, we promised;
see you at winter break.

Your favorite joke was,
“If you fart, laugh, and cough
at the same time, you’ll die.”
You walked out on a ridge
and were caught in headlights
flashing off your glasses.

“I saw your friend’s mother,”
my own mother told me.
“Her hair’s gone white, her face
is lined. She’s sold her house.”
And they will never eat
holiday meals again.

Four o’clock in the afternoon.
Sun slants the trees on families
picnicking on the Bermuda grass.

You make your backpack into a pillow
and try to sleep on a park bench
with just a flannel shirt for warmth,

while Robert, in his chrome-studded
black leather jacket and skull-stud
earring talks to another guy,

saying he’s an “American
consumer.” One of the arrows
painted on his jacket back points

two thousand miles away. Maybe
Ma wonders where you are, but Pa
swills his beer and calls you a tramp.

Sure, that D&C embryo
was a curse, haunting you each night,
an extraterrestrial who

could have become yours and instead
it got flushed, like they threw you out.
With that ghost, you wander the streets—

the shelters are just too creepy.
In your dreams you stand at the docks,
and the boat you board drifts unmoored.