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Please identify where you obtained your training certificates.

Please explain why the tilde is where it is in your name.

Please explain your name and title, when and where acquired, and its importance in the general pecking order of things.

There is a short form bio, and a long form. We always prefer the short, but include everything we might possibly need for future reference and duplication.

Please provide the names and addresses of at least five referees, and their most recent sightings in public media.

When you are done, engage the Social Capital meter on the lower left of the page in order to generate your score.

The green bar indicates good standing and health in your organization and our conglomerates at large. The brown bar indicates dubious areas that may require further investigation.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

What was it he needed to read? There was a book on one
of the shelves. He only remembered the cover was green.

88 keys, 11 octaves. After daily exercises,
the lid came down on a felt runner of green.

The first year is paper, the eighth bronze, the twelfth
silk or linen; the sixteenth, a candlestick silvery-green.

What trees grew in front of our first house? One
shed only flame-colored leaves, the other green.

One arrow struck the girl, the other struck the god. He pursued her,
even as her feet grew roots, her arms leafed over with green.

Near the water, there used to be a house of quarantine. On a short
stretch of road, broken shells in the gravel amid tufts of green.

Should your mind quietly open that side door and leave, what
will you remember of us, of our days greener than green?

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Is it from habit,
this attitude
of supplication?
And is habit therefore
merely another name
for desperation?

Votives line
the metal box, six-
tiered, in the center of which
lies a locked drawer with a slit.
Lit up, their amber flickering
is restless and beautiful.

How faithfully
people come to write
on little slips of paper
their intentions, leave
confessions they cannot entrust
to a human ear: pleas/e.

It is the nuns that collect
the prayers of the faithful,
change the flowers
in the vases, the altar
linens; scrape the hardened
tallow from the metal plates.

As a child I watched them
from the cool of a church pew:
filing out in pairs, kneeling
in the nave then smoothing
the skirts of their habits
down on each side

before prostration.
The name of their convent
stated the vow they’d taken:
perpetual adoration.
They sing hymns, but speak
little. On one side of the chapel

is a door with a window grate.
Deliver a letter, deliver a tray
of eggs so they can pray
for fair weather. You might see
the slender tips of fingers
briefly loosed from a sleeve.

Not a hair escapes
their cotton wimples.
Not a narrative of skin
to clue you in. Did they
dance, turn cartwheels
as children? Did they flash

their legs, wading,
in the sun? Did they have
parents, lovers, who implored
Pleas/e— do not abscond
from this world? Here
they kneel in prayer,

chaste/ning in the folds
of a quiet bell— though I
have known them too
to link their arms like rosaries
in the street, and stand before
an army of advancing tanks.

When the pillars came down
and the foundation shook
us out of our self-absorption,
we promised: if love is never lost
and change is always constant,
we would not calculate the rent
only to declare it wanting.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

I dreamt of lines of fish drying, their bodies
scaled and butterflied and left to leather in the sun,
the coast and fishermen’s nets gritty backdrop

to water’s insistent reruns. You were somewhere
on the beach, your body covered with sand, your face
shielded from the heat by a newspaper. Drowsing

or asleep, you didn’t move; you lay as if dead.
I dug little holes and watched for sand fiddlers.
I looked for whelks, brittle shells, and bits

of broken glass. Before mid-afternoon, you rose
like an idol, ran into the sea to rinse off
the crust of what had hardened and clung.

In response to Via Negativa: Prospector.

In the white sift from low-
slung branches, I saw pages
before the shadows of wings
wrote their script.

What is your intention?
I asked, walking into the heart
of the cold to bring my one
wish as offering.

Somewhere I heard the sound
of an ax splitting wood,
the soft weight of two halves
falling equally to the ground.

In response to Via Negativa: Longing.

The future is a bride
crossing a footbridge
lined with votive lights
near midnight, knowing
there isn’t much time.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

In the marketplace, all the mouths opened
and each tongue had a version of the story.

In the hive, the work of bees builds a complex
of gold cells: each room a miniature story.

How do you know where it begins, where it ends?
And which part is the middle of the story?

At the city gate, the woodcutter, the brigand, the samurai
and his wife— What will you believe, whose story?

Life of endless variation, life of primordial
desire masked as intention. You know the story.

I’ve tried to live my truths. Tend your own dagger,
your sphere of influence; write your own story.

In response to Via Negativa: Loose lips sink ships.

With disappointment
with indignation
with protest

I charge the story avowed
fails to disclose
what it was like

in the aftermath
No contribution no
paycheck no card

Not a crumb
from the ego
of indigenous pride

Don’t talk to me
about (a) the honoring
of a debt (b) the “real”

ways in which things
played out— Time
stonewalls even better

when the blinders
don’t come off
In the mean time

we lived, in
the meantime it’s
our truths we live

In response to Via Negativa: Internal Dialogue.

1

No animal
we knew could make
those prints in the snow.

2

Seconds before the swerve,
she recalled the clear
sound of someone voicing
her name in her ear.

3

A scattering of salt
makes a lace-like doily
for the water glass on the sill.

4

Every dream
became a flag of portent
after the train
did not arrive on time.

5

If you did not call
for a cab, why does the same one
show up every Friday evening at six?

6

Whose kiss unpeels
like a fragrant petal
across my brow before I drift
away into sleep?

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.