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He sent this key from Florida.

I think. A key to what?

I tried the car, the trucks,

tried every door – nothing fit.

My wife thought it was his idea

of a joke. I never got his jokes.

Not a word from him, just things:

a blank postcard from Colorado Springs;

a snapshot of himself from Aspen,

arm in arm with somebody, but

both faces had been scissored out.

A sign above the bar said SHIT HAPPENS.

Eugene, Spokane… He’s telephone,

collect, and I knew it was him,

though he always used a different name.

At times enough to make you laugh:

Call from Hans, Ricardo, Jeff,

will you accept? Yes. Dial tone.

BLU: … i seen pictures, gemini, of oceans that are actually blue. waters so clear you can stand waist deep, look down and see your feet. not like any ocean i’ve ever been to. light reflects off the top of the water and you can see the sand on the ocean floor.

DOU YI

My hands were packed in dry ice

Flown across the Pacific and

Stitched onto a man who lost his overseas.

My palms open doors to

Rooms my feet haven't walked through and

Caress a woman my eyes will never see.

It doesn't snow there but my

Nails ache when they touch ice and

Scratch strange characters onto that

Soldier's skin while he's sleeping.

His doctors call it post-traumatic stress but

He knows they're words from a

Language his tongue never learned

Justice. 

Justice. 

Justice

Across the East Sea a yam farmer

Uses my corneas to see.

She dreams of snow but thinks

It's ashes from a childhood fire bombing.

On the far side of the Atlantic my stomach digests

Food that never passed through my lips

Food my teeth didn't chew

Food my tongue hasn't tasted

Food that could have made this spirit stronger

And act sooner if someone offered it to Dou Yi.

But my heart--

My heart beats in this town,

Pumping blood through a man

Loved by the son of an official,

A son who moved Heaven and Earth for

His Happiness.

His Future.

His New Harmony.

These offerings have given me strength

I feel my spirit reviving!

Justice. 

Justice. 

Justice.

Justice and burial for the widow Dou Yi

Justice.

Justice.

Justice.

But how can you bury a woman whose butchered body's still living?

Justice. 

Justice.

That is my heart. It should beat inside me.

(Dou Yi thrusts her hand into Rocket's chest and retrieves her heart.)

The car veered, a tree loomed, and we were garlanded in glass, and a branch insinuated itself into Mini’s ribs and encircled her heart, and Ronnie sprang forth and broke against the tree, and in the backseat Caroline was marveling at how her brain became unmoored and seesawed forward into the jagged coastline of the front of her skull and back again, until she was no longer herself, and it was all so mortifying that we could have just died, and we did, we did die, we watched every second of it happen until we realized that we were back on the road, driving, and all of the preceding was just a little movie that Mom had played inside of our heads.

When I was a boy and I sang, my voice felt to me like a leak sprung from a small and secret star hidden somewhere in my chest and whatever there was about me that was fragile disappeared when my mouth opened and I let the voice out. We learned, we were prisons for our voices. You could want to try and make sure the door was always open. Be like a bell, Big Eric would say. But he didn’t know. We weren’t something struck to make a tone. We were strike and instrument both. If you can hold the air and shake it to make something, you learn, maybe you can make anything. Maybe you can walk out of here on this thin, thin air.

Aneita Jean never liked the men at the Klan rallies. It scared her not to see their faces. It made her uncomfortable that they all seemed to know her daddy, and that he knew them by their raspy voices. She would watch them circling around on the hill, their crosses aflame, and snuggle closer to her father’s chest.

“I want to leave, daddy,” she’d say softly, fearful they might overhear and come running back, robes flapping behind like hateful phantoms.

“Hush up, Jeannie.”