Anthem

On this night of the mid-

summer festival of fire,

where liquid explosives

look like the arch and ache

of the willow tree

so near your grave, on this

night of the awaiting mid-

wife who lulled you in-

to this world, the light

all violet because the Earth and stars

inclined toward each other,

she also sleeps, she who was

your first deliverer, guiding you out

of your mother—her bluing

skin no small sign of the future

cyanosis of her spirit for no

small journey was it to this

country to bring you to birth

in this torch

song heat and an anthem of a free

nation's conception of combustions:

rosins, petroleum, tallow, arsenic

and worse, as you, too, fell from the sky

of her body with me

a microscopic egg inside—

half the composition

that made up my own

toss and tumble to this crash

of ground I sit over and bless

while you lie under, under

the willow, under this world

that no midwife

nor wavelength can under-

standably reach. So I stand

in this over-

determined fire forced out

like bullets upon a target—

the pulled trigger releasing

the hammer that strikes

the impacted mixture—

hailstorm and hymn

of memories. And the outstretched womb

involutes and the abdominal wall tightens

and inside all abandoned encasements

the night over the day darkens.