To Find the Elusive Wherewithal To find the Wherewithal, one needs to know not only what it is but also where it is. “To know what something is,” the Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus could have written, “one needs to know what it is not, and proceed by a process of elimination until one finds the thing.” The Wherewithal is not egocentric. It leaves no echoes when it speaks. The Wherewithal is no evening sky, nor beating drum, nor barking dog, but of them all, yet beyond – it’s like a barking sunset or a dog beating a sky drum. The Wherewithal (I’ll address its possible location in a minute) is an ambulance siren on a bed of lettuce and desire. Artistically, the Wherewithal follows Visceral Realism, a fictional 1970s Mexican poetry movement, but it’s lighter and moister. You can imagine it as a chilled-out, ten-meter, albino tadpole that local kids tie a string to and fly like a kite while it floats about, gobbling up low, small clouds. The thing is, the Wherewithal has a tremendous skill at biomimicry! And it can maintain its weight – a tiny fraction of an ounce – no matter what the scale. I’m not saying you should look for it because its chameleonic tadpole shape could be floating within your field of vision right now and you would have no idea. The human eye isn’t built to capture the elusive Wherewithal. Your only hope is to grasp it with the mind. Why am I telling you all this? Because there’s a lot you can do if only you have the Wherewithal.

Weeping For Tish I’m driving Ka and Liv around a strange city at night, fast. We’re devastated at the news, weeping violently for Tish in our white 2015 Ford Escape. I don’t notice that we’re heading down a hill until we pick up speed. I grab the wheel and slam on the breaks. We skid across a lawn to stop a foot away from somebody’s house at the intersection where this street ends. I back up and speed off in another direction, only to find myself a few minutes later skidding down the same street, only faster this time. I think the first clear thought I’ve had for minutes: “I’m in no condition to drive.” Flooring the brakes and fishtailing, I hit the front of the house with a light tap. I tell Ka and Liv I need to talk to the people in there. I stumble up and knock on the door, which opens immediately. I’m facing a six-person Arab family around a dinner table. The thirty-something man who opened the door mutely beckons me inside. I’m struck by a peculiarity of his face: apart from being an Arab, his broad cheeks, triangular nose, and receding forehead show he has a high proportion of genes from one of the ostensibly extinct human species—Neanderthals and Denisovans and such. He speaks no English. His hospitality code demands that before asking what a visitor wants, you offer them a seat, a drink, and some food. Before he or his family, including his non-identical twin brother, will hear anything about a car crashing into their house, I must be welcomed. Holding a tall glass of water, I remember Ka and Liv in the car outside while I watch the family's miniature Newfoundland dog – it's the size of a Golden Retriever – racing around and around and around the sumptuous living room.

Aimé Césaire, from "Soleil cou coupé": And the ship flew over the crater to the very doors of the hour plowed by eagles. The ship walked with calm boots of shooting stars, with tawny boots of cut wharves and panoplies, and the ship released a broadside of mice, of telegrams, of cowries, of Houris. A Wolof dancer was pointing and signaling at the top of the highest mast. All night long we saw him dancing, loaded with amulets and alcohol, leaping to the height of the fat stars: an army of crows, an army of knives, an army of parables. And the arched ship released an army of horses. At midnight, the Earth entered the channel of the crater, and the Wind of Diamonds stretched its red cassocks out of oblivion and blew on the horses’ hooves, singing the adventure of death in a milky voice in the gardens of the rainbow planted with carob trees. Translation: NH

A translation of an excerpt from an interview by Ruth Moya of Siekopai Alberto Payaguaje for her book Requiem por los espejos y los tigres. Certainly, I have jaguar] relatives in the forest. They come looking for me so we can meet up. I talk with them every day. There are other people—my forest children, the animals. They have different names, names from the forest itself. I send jaguars to talk to my brother. He looks like a person. He doesn’t look like a jaguar when you see him. There’s another man I forgot to mention to you, Yehané. He’s also from the forest. He doesn’t look like a jaguar. Jaguars are people, they look like humans. The ones who concentrate with humans don’t walk on the ground, but through the air. You don’t see their tracks because they don’t set foot on the earth. That’s why they can cross to the other side through the air: because they’re animals and they’re spirits.

Today I Found Myself • And by myself, I mean, of course, • My cell phone. • Today I found myself • Struggling to open a can of bread • Rendered boneless by ambulance sirens. • Today I found myself bobbing for durians • While balancing on the back of my head • The groans of a dozen dying men. • Then looking in the fridge for food. • Then looking in the food I’d found for more fridge. • Then mapping it all out in my mind on the kitchen wall. • Then plotting the downfall of sorrow. • Today I didn’t find myself • Foraging for porridge. I • Haven’t done that for a while. I • Have some porridge to keep me going. • You find it in the darndest places and you stash it away. • Nor have I been training sea urchins for the US Navy. • They’re too slow. • I have not been proofreading. • I did not have sexual relations with that woman Miss Lewinsky. • But I did inhale. Multiple times. • Today I have not been floating under the basement, • Nor swimming in sandhills, • Nor looming up at the pavement. • Today I have been neither cloud nor lightning storm. • Today I found myself • Looming from loam like a lion, • Fending off a fine friendly feline, • Freediving into hypothe-seas, • Channeling the most ordinary trees, • And, vaguely, from certain angles, • Resembling, as you do, • The dance of moonlight on water from the entrails of the jungle.

Two Dad Dreams 1. My dad is preparing for departure. A couple times I realize he’s dead. He’s quite upbeat. We’re in his apartment with a few other people. He mentions that I have an identical twin brother who was taken away and given to another family to raise, and who’s living somewhere else. I say, “Well, give me his contact info, for God’s sake!” But my dad just smiles and shakes his head. When he’s gone, I notice how clean the place is. He left nothing but a pair of his brown shoes, which, when I look at them, turn into a pair of brown baby shoes. 2. I’m in a building in Vienna. Outside, rain is beginning to fall. Through the open window to the courtyard, I can hear my father’s voice. He’s rhapsodizing about how good the rain feels falling on his head. I lean out the window to say, “You put a hat on right now, young man,” but the courtyard is empty.

In Times of Old From time to time, in times of old, we found the time to find the time: we drank the savage moonlight savagely, we swam a race against the time of time, in time, from time to time, to time the time of time; again, again, we fished the shallow waters in the moonlight; savagely we fished the savage moonlight in a race against the time to time to time to time to time—the same old time—from time to time; along the time, we drank the time; we fished the shallow moon against the time, along the moon; we drank so savagely against the race in time, inside the time, above the time, we found the time to flee from time, along the savage moonlit shores along the seas of time. We taped up time, we scraped up time, we romped and bomped and shaped up time, we scattered time, we shattered time, we dropped and slopped and spattered time, we romped on time, we pomped on time, we rang and sang and stomped on time, we lined up time, we shined up time, made several plans to bind up time— the fucking time, the sucking time— we clung to the back of the bucking time, so savagely we raced across the shallow seas of moonlit time, so silently we drank upon the moon upon a sea of time, of blowing time, of flowing time, of roosters that were crowing time, of glowing time, of growing time, of never, never knowing time, we climbed the swaying trees of moonlight silently inside the time; from time to time, in times of old, we found the time to find the time again.

Aimé Césaire, from "Batouque": batouque when the world will be a fishpond where I will fish my eyes with the line of your eyes batouque when the world will be the long-lasting latex of the sleeping flesh drunk batouque batouque of swells and hiccups batouque of sneering sobs frightened buffalo batouque carmine bee-eaters challenge batouque in the marauding fire and the smoky sky batouque of the hands batouque breasts batouque of the seven beheaded sins batouque of sex with the kiss of bird with the escape of fish black princess batouque in fondant sun tiara batouque of the princess poking a thousand unknown guardians a thousand gardens forgotten under the sand and the rainbow batouque of the princess with thighs of Congo from Borneo from Casamance coreless night batouque nightclub without lips tie of the jet of my nameless galley of my boomerang bird I cast my eye in the roll in the Guinea of despair and death all the strange freezes Easter Island, Easter Island all the strange cut of the shadow cavalry a stream of fresh water flows in my hand Sargassum of melted cries And the stripped ship dug in the brains of the stubborn nights my exile-minaret-thirst-for-branches batouque The currents rolled tufts of silver sabers and nausea spoons and the wind pierced with the fingers of the sun shears the armpit of the foam-haired islands with fire

Brother Rattling Bug The universe keeps sending the man potential wives and he keeps sending them away. One day, it’ll stop. He’ll die without wife or kids. Why did you never settle down? folks will ask. He’ll say, I kept hopping like a flea from woman to woman till they stayed away from me. Right when he imagines saying that, a big bug flies into the mostly dark room, its wings rattling against each other. The rattling bug heads for him and bounces off his calf before flying away, rattling, in another dimension. The effect is soothing, like being punched lightly on the shoulder by a friend who then says, “I know just how you feel, Bro. One way or another, you’ll be right as rain.” Perfect. Thank you, he thinks in the bug’s direction. The moment suddenly defines how he has been feeling: like a bug bouncing off the leg of a giant as he rattles as he flies. My life keeps hitting giant legs, he thinks. His thoughtful side turns on and strokes its chin. It’s clear the bug is a reflection of my soul, and I of his, the man muses, and I just flew into my own leg so I could reintroduce myself to me. According to the Mexican philosophical concept of inlakesh, the bug and I are one. I’ll speak to him directly. Rattling Bug, the man begins, speaking out loud, since he is alone, addressing the direction the rattling bug seemed to have gone, I’m a Rattling Bug like you. Like you, I rattle as I fly with transparent wings on which I’ve written incomprehensible poems. Like you, I sometimes bug people. And when I land, I write words in the wet sand of the riverbank with one claw. Finishing, I look up at the baroque sun, the rococo thundercloud, the scaly rainbow, the meteor shower, the troop of fifty Capuchin monkeys rustling and chittering as they leap from one leafy tree to another directly above, the anacondas of language nesting in the clouds of desire, the seven sodden satellites, and the thirty-five hundred moons. Then, I look back down, continues the man, still talking to the rattling bug, or to the direction in which it vanished. And it’s weird, Rattling Bug, says the man, I feel like I’m an instrument of evolution because I blow on the words I’ve written in the sand and they drift up into the air. Rattling Bug, the words become cloud, become bluebird, cloud, yellow bird, become voice, wind, whirling, spinning. But I think of the women I’ve failed at loving, Rattling Bug. How many? Let’s see. Ricki. Jennifer. The Girl with the Silver Flute. Eunmi. Elena. Deirdre. That’s just off the top of my head, Rattling Bug. The list goes on. Lily. Liza. My heart, I swear, is a blue crystal shattering from inside, or at least a convincing metaphor for one. My body is a Surrealist exquisite corpse weeping molten lead, Rattling Bug. Is this normal for us? Is this how I’ll look when I’m dead? My fingernails are Plexiglas, my freckled skin a blank page of connect the dots like stars, Rattling Bug, my eye sockets brimming bowls of chicken soup with matzo balls and noodles and a big silver spoon from 1925 stuck in each one. And my cousin and I are about to dig in to each bowl. And don’t get me started about my wings. Still, my irises, Rattling Bug, my freaking irises, I should say, are primordial swamps, hot and green and full of stinky life. Shit is evolving in there into perfume. Orchestrating it all is My Brain, a quick lacy gray guacamole fungus woven of the sharpest neurons. Each of my hairs is a golem brought to life to defend the Jewish people. Sometimes the ones on my shoulders try to punch people. It’s ruined many a relationship. I wish I knew the sacred words to make them knock it off. But often they’re up in the night muttering to each other in whatever language they mutter in, Hebrew or Golem or Golemic Hebrew. My fingerprints are maps of whirlpools in the Aguarico River, each one caused by an anyapeke, described as an eight-meter fully aquatic boa, or a whale, depending on who is describing it to you, with a horizontal tail (they all agree on that) and a magnet in its mouth like a tongue that has telekinetic power over water, causing streams to rise or fall and creating whirlpools in rivers to suck down canoes and swallow humans. My knuckles are fragments of the Tablets of the Law. And if I hit you with these Commandments, it’s LOVE, and if I hit you with these Commandments, it’s HATE. Commandments can be used like that, for both purposes. My pupils are black holes devouring the universe one photon at a time. My tongue is a prehensile strawberry gone on Wednesday only to reappear the previous Monday. Did I say that my pupils are black holes devouring the universe one photon at a time? I meant to say that they’re generating it. But it’s a slow process. It’s like both processes are happening at once. When I smile, Rattling Bug, it’s the opening of a very special oyster. When I yawn, angels yawn to my right, devils to my left. It’s like I’m the middle bird of this giant, weird flock of critters – or beings; I suppose we should call them beings. Though “entities,” a term pioneered by Brazilians, might be a better word. When I walk, Rattling Bug, you fellow critter, fellow being, fellow entity, says the man, I hold still and a giant ball of wet rock rolls beneath my feet. I know you know how this is. So no matter how much I travel, and despite the famously high cost of plane tickets, there’s no way to go anywhere. I’m just here ambling this sunny labyrinth of time with you, Rattling Bug. You’re my brother. And that’s good.