This is not a poem of leaving
those velveteen branches or that frowning
hedge at the yard’s edge. This is not about the brushes left
unwashed in the sink. They are already
forgotten, outside the frame. But see how the yellow paves
the bristles like something wanting
to remain? Once, you reached for my hands
like you had just remembered
a name. And I think it has almost
worked—smudging the exile around
your eyes, blending the lines
into a brighter color. I want to tell you
how my hands have already changed.
There’s a song my fingers wrote for you
but my left-hand waltz won’t find lines
the right shade of purple. And around
the house I sprinkled allspice and almost
felt your wooden spoon, almost remembered
something you said about pocketed hands
and split seams. There’s a wanting
in vacant spaces the morning paves
with counted days and already
flavorless foods. Those couches I left
will never miss me. I told you about a frowning
city skyline and nothing, no one, leaving.
Poetry
White Center, 1950
The figs, arranged in still life,
as if by Chardin’s quiet violence;
the house exists to hold them.
Bruised bodies beaded dark wet,
glisten pressed to porcelain in this
astonished kitchen whiteness, this
bewildered daybreak rose.
We know just by looking how
the mouth will form around them,
the subtle shape of promise
and of fleeting tongue-burst flesh.
Chitin Diaries
The kitchen full
of babies roosting
on high shelves
like cups for punch
one by one she
pinches their cheeks
sinks in the glossy
mud of their squall
*
She has a pen pal
who doesn’t write
back each time
she sends a letter
the top of the mailbox
grows more jagged
last time she swore
she saw a tongue
*
One time she
spun a revolving
door all afternoon
a fishbowl
leaking light
brass ring around
her neck the sidewalk
a leaping comet
*
After a bath
she is a hollow
egg the doorknob
sticks like wet
wool a spool
of moss down
the hall a velvet
vest of mold
*
In elevators
she pictures cables
rising like sap
in the dark
buttons slip
from the door
to orbit her hands
a flock of pocket
watches hovering
between floors
*
She was baptized
in the skinny wrist
of the river
by the interstate
popped fuses
of pine trees
her arms coiled
like water moccasins
fractured loop
of the on-ramp
their mouths soft
with spores
*
They come to her
in her sleep
each step a key
in the counter
a series of periscopes
in the morning
she picks bodies
from the bathroom
sink her face
in the mirror
a nicotine smear
*
One day last winter
she stepped outside
onto a small
bird huddled
by the door’s edge
its bones fizzed
through boot and shin
to settle on scalp
a calcium crown
*
Summer sprang
serrated wings
a prism of winds
she steams
in the bedroom
bound by cabbage
worm silk
fog crawls
over the carpet
up the stairs
the backyard flush
with weeds
her hair falling
from every nest
Vulgar Magic
We could live suspicious, breathing
to bleed—but my mouth had nothing for strange quiet.
I was too much, waiting to make my good news face down
on the bed, years ago. Our futures
threw white linen aside, burned cold and bright and displaced.
I was an upcoming birthday, mascara-bound and dazed.
My anxieties knelt to lavish that witch heart in me with maple
and iron—my throat forever this box
of sour faith. I ran, turned my back on rotting thoughts, unable
to apologize. And the music saw me, nearer, dusty on the floor,
sprawled thorny in blue tulle. I had to turn,
see the tarnish, my name enough to make me the devil’s moon
soft and forbidding. Under my smile
I wished for an ocean to take the hours, hostility let out.
This is an erasure poem. Source text: Andrews, V. C. Flowers in the Attic. Pocket Books Paperback ed. New York: Pocket Books, 2014. 295-308. Print.
Fathermark
I.
Unmedicated visionary,
full-time armchair operator—
he could turn a truckbed of scrap lumber
to a hen house squared-up enough no fox
could slide. Lucky roosters peck cornmeal
grain-by-grain off the earth—call it God’s stopwatch.
II.
Through my voicemail phone-static,
Mark jabbers his bus station Radio Shack
logic as bankrupt-outdated-short-circuit
mallrats skitter listless, shelling
their collective family peanut-memory
against spotlessly-flawed marble floors.
III.
Alabama River reeds hum
his floodname after a Gulf hurricane
watermarks all the downtown brick
buildings—for years, I was blindsided
by County jail phone calls, splotchy-postcards
signed love—the word was a phantom
licking stamps in the dark.
Dinner Table
We fill the void behind our teeth
with silence, the grinding
of wedding rings
against knife handles
a language of compatible hollowness.
*
The neighborhood mutts carcass
another roasted chicken,
our wordless bonepile
jangling in their mouths,
as if nothing can choke them blue.
*
I haven’t forgotten when I knelt—
there was so much husk
at the back of your throat,
you wept instead of saying
I do.
*
Like the word erosion on an endless loop,
the sound of your breath
is a kind of satiation,
a crater you dig
to hold me when you won’t.
*
Remember my lament
when your backhand
pattered blood across the window?
What birds could you hear
singing in the eaves?
*
The gap in my teeth
was my vow—to hold
each morpheme in my mouth
and bleed it, limp-tongued
like a partridge in a hound dog’s fangs.
*
The plate is a votive
for the moon’s guttering;
this is how our table speaks:
from void, a whisper at the bottom
of a hole, I mean a home.
in praise of a night of perdition
& what do we say to the boy
digging the sand to find his love?
the earth is for grief and its fullness thereof.
for some strange reasons, a part of him
is enough to build a tower.
gracelessly biting his tongue,
he provokes the blood out of its hiding.
in the canal of his needs, he leaves
the language of want redundant.
across the crimson,
the flesh exposes itself to light.
this hour, the stars are trumpet sound.
& there is a river throwing its face
against the bank.
& for every rain, there is a betrayal
for waters lending the soil their body.
& for he will fill every emptiness
with wings. even air will lose its skin.
he transits into a weapon.
he rules out the boundary.
& the beast wanders out of his palms.
but who is the boy?
spinning the dust into a song,
he preludes his knees with feathers.
one time he is a bird, another time,
he is a reed.
his throat unhusks.
he has many rivers for a voice.
To Say I Means Alone
Emma and I drunk took a bath swimming as a sloppy fish
on another night that we’d never recall in full detail. Wildness overgrown
enters the spine turns it from flour to bone. The photographs
of how she and I moleculed one another lost. I dive lakes covering the entire
mountain afraid water will dissipate. Another man means another bed
means: they see me but don’t see into me, the jaw bone of confessions
waiting for cloud-blue apparitions. Handing over my fragile objects
to anyone who will take them, air tastes of spit, walnuts and tobacco barns:
my ribs exposed and far-reaching over the hood of my car, a man on my back.
We are swimming. We are swimming. Nothing stops me.
self portrait as asa akira’s face on google images when searching ‘asian women’
MY LINEAGE ETCHED IN PIXELS
MY BODY TRANSLATED TOO MUCH
FOR ANOTHER MAN’S EYES I LIVE
UP TO MY STEREOTYPE, WILL,
LEGACY, ONCE MORE: ETERNAL
A CUM THING, BUT WET & NOT WET
IF THEY CAN’T FIND MY CORPSE THEY’LL AT LEAST
FIND A BODY (I CRAFT)
IN A SPACE // ALL MY BIRTHMARKS OUT
OF FOCUS // OUT OF FRAME & IN
-VISIBLE MONIKERS GIVING
A NOT LOVE BUT A RISK WHICH WILL
FOREVER BE MY FUCKING NAME
360P HD ONE WAY MIRROR FOR GIRLS
SO LUBRICATED ON ALL AND BOTH SIDES
(LOVERS, OCEANS, NAMES NOT THEIRS CONDENSED
ONTO SKIN) THEIR EYES REMAIN HALF OPENED//
EVEN AFTER DEATH: ALL OF THEM
WHO DID IT STILL, NAMELESS, REMAIN
Eve, creator
Half a day’s pushing couldn’t shove me into the world, so they snipped me from her stalk. The doctor tossed the hot potato to my father, who couldn’t find the penis he’d promised himself. He delivered me to my mother’s breasts, where I wouldn’t taste her offering. I.V.’s take best to babies’ heads, still soft enough for molding. But glass boxes can’t hold cuddles, only holes drilled for her fingers to brush mine. We can’t leave our grief rootless—we have to point our blame. When I stretched my toes, they pointed at her. Her first had spread back into the womb, dark and formless void, deaf to her questions at the ultrasound tech. What had she done wrong this time?
It was the first attempt to save my life, successful enough. But we bear our birthmarks—a sidestep from perfection, her constant reminder to give praise for what will mourn. The doctor told her it was a 50/50 chance I’d live through the week, lower still that I would grow into the girl who patted her next beach ball. “I remember being there. You fed me apple juice,” I whispered, feeling for kicks. “She’s full of apple juice.”
Losing Angles
Tenacious little devil, eye
level to the world’s approximate lower third—
O every greeting deserves a response Damn
the impulse! Misdirected power, growl grows
from softness Gleam of alabaster teeth Jaw backed
by a tawny satchel, fur sleek over sinewy muscle Surprise
the nitro speed at which it comes on Lolling whistle
tongue explodes the hour into second-shards,
porcupine’s defense Blood never bursts cartoonish
What should be feared, what should be sniffed-out
Failure to differ sleeps child-like within the skull
Not everything loves a child: it’ll bury the life
before it The urge to pouch a small thing
to the front of the body, to slip a note into a shirt
pocket, first loosen the starch seal Everyone here
wants to replicate themselves—canine the exception
Waiting, we mimic the inanimate I’ll quit pleading
for a slower pace Dogs don’t know manners,
they know space I’ll shake the seizing interruption
into stillness Every block I’m sorry I regret,
I’m glowing with knowledge
While the wren sings, the heron flying across the lake
touches the water with one wing, deliberate
or a miscalculation, no way to say. The water
isn’t deep except at the center, old creek bed
dammed to control flooding and create this,
pine water, needled water, lake of old bruises
blooming as old blood turns shades, absorbing
back into the skin. A car has parked in the woods
below the causeway. No need to speak with music
playing and what is there to say anyway? A secret, arms
warm back in their sleeves. Only the male wren sings
and must even in winter to defend his territory.
He repeats teakettle, teakettle: the water on the stove
is boiling, how can you ignore the scream? Around the car,
even the branches of the elms have wings.
Crisis, with Cassowaries
If you can kill two birds with one stone let’s have a rock concert
and hang the winged creatures that hover
over our dirty laundry
out to dry. So you slept
with her once and now you have thrown that shuttlecock
into our game. I could smack it all down with my racket.
The birdie would stick up stiff and yellow
from the green lawn. Rigor mortis.
Hey, I have never believed
in Eden—unless you count the rainforest. Even there, bullet ants
could sting you to certain death, or snakes the circumference
of trees could choke the air from your lungs.
Cassowaries with heads as bright as rainbows can open
your flesh sharp and clean as a hand-held
hole punch with one swipe of claw.
Once in grade school our teacher gave us black construction paper to create
a sky, the holes papered white behind
to indicate intricate galaxies.
Really, if all we are is rocks ground down, why waste our time
being angry when we can wash out our spots and stains.
The shirt still works if you wear it close with a vest.
My love, let’s only symphony about the big things: if we’re bleeding,
or punctured, or dying,
or lost.
A Closeted Visit to Provincetown with my Father
perched on a fist
out in the wild
Atlantic where we
shelve caricatures
of ourselves for
the sweet, barren
dunes of art,
freedom and
most indecent
pleasure,
colorful tackle
hung from store
fronts down
Commercial, bait
for our eyes
that dart away
from the other
like minnow
Memory as Thunderstorm
From my front porch, clouds
hang like gray cotton
from a moth-eaten quilt. No rain,
but it’s promised in the silence
of cicadas and the wind
that whistles and whips the weeds
against the house.
Then comes the flash,
a cacophonous shroud of lightning bugs
that, all at once, decide to fall
and form a neon thunderbolt
to split the air in vengeance
for every single mason jar
or fly swatter that is or was
or will be
and crash somewhere beyond the oaks,
then roar, fly up, and fall again
while water whispers to the roof
the way Nana spat her dentures in a cup
of seltzer water. Clear, at first, then bubbles
boiled between the teeth and rose, with clumps
of crackers, to the surface to sizzle
as they burst against the air.
And she’d say Your granddaddy’s hands were
blue-veined marble. If you looked hard enough,
you could see down to the bone. Her sunken
lips pressed against my forehead. If I ever see
you hit a woman,
I’ll bury you.
GROWING SCALES AND OTHER FLU-LIKE SYMPTOMS
my mother on the other end of the coiled
phone cord describes her insides
as being of snakes
chewing holes in the lining
of her good winter coat rattling
until she feels them under her fingernails
one of her coat threads is sewn
mother to daughter Florida to Alabama
holding us together in our serpentine sickness
I am cold all the time stretched out on a heating pad
I tell her my temperature is 100 and rising
her fever is 101 she says rattlers are sunning
in the rocks on her property’s edge
they get heavy with rats
that come drunk out of the garden
on yellow squash on parsnips
and old pasta from the compost pile
she turns the pile with her nose pinched
shovel like a spatula in a lasagna of rot
each winter layer I shuck in fever
adds me a new rattle to my growing tail
she scoops old goat shit
from the barn into the wheelbarrow
to fertilize next year’s rising crop
she finds the snakes under the foundation
leaves them be in their cool stupor
lets them live to eat another rat
a would-be garden thief caught in a god’s jaw
a late storm leans the crumbling beams over
pushes the antique wood into the empty lot next door
she says the rattlers find a new place to sun
on the hundred-year August-bleached wood
as if to say we will take your barn
we will love this rot
we will lie here if you won’t
make our bodies warm in our sun
and we will be here when you come
to understand that you cannot
fully shed what tethers you
when your rattles grow in
they’ll hurt like wisdom teeth
my mother texts me a video of a dead rattlesnake
I ask her which one is easier to kill
the rats or the rattlers
she says this one was quick got too brave
and writhes after shovel and neck meet
the snake watches its own severing
shovel cleaving scale cleaving scale
my coat is larger than my mother’s
made of diamonds
sewn together with snakeskin
Husbandry
Crawling in the long grass at sunset
with a spritzer bottle half-full of two percent,
I want to lie down in front of a mower.
A long weekend turned the pumpkin’s leaves
into toddler’s palms caked in wet cement.
I called Dad, and he said to remove the ones
with mildew and spray the rest with milk.
I asked Really, milk? and he said, Milk.
How long before it sours on the leaf? Or is
that the point? This is the problem with living
things: they grow beyond their good, develop
ordinary diseases with absurd cures. The sprinklers
stutter at me—enough, enough, enough—
and rinse the milk from each leaf’s empty bowl.
Sonnet For Malformed Heart
the pencil hairs that score your chest
like tv snow on the old tube set
my grandmother smacked during storms
soften the knock of your arrhythmia.
still the dull iambs greet my fingers as
I trace the sorrow of your collarbone.
if I could reach into a ventricle
to part your red seas I could be sold
for silver coins and jump for joy as the Romans wept.
what you ask of the body, what you take from it:
your nakedness in the mirror
a thin road of flesh
to separate a prognosis
and the machinery.
What We Can’t Control
My father raged when protestors left signs
out front, condemning him a Bear Killer.
You should be thanking me, he hollered at cars
while hosing red paint off the mailbox.
The bear had toppled garbage cans up
and down the mountain. Neighbors locked
their kids inside and walked their dogs on leashes.
Now the bear was dead and skinned. I howled
when he brought home the rug. I loved to watch
the black bear lumber through our yard, sniff
at mulberries, acorns, beech nuts, then mosey
out of sight behind needles and leaves.
What kind of idiot loves a thing they fear?
My father asked, then dragged me to the yard.
Learn control. Then you’ll understand.
He put a rifle in my hands and pointed
at a target (a paper cut-out man, with rings
across the chest). The gun was heavy, long,
awkward. Make sure the safety’s on, he said,
taking a bullet, lifting the silver bolt.
See into the breech, where a hammer strikes
the shell. Now snap the bolt back forward.
Listen for the click. He raised the gun
up to my shoulder. I found the crosshairs
in the scope, the target loomed downrange.
My father stood, a perfect statue, holding
my arms straight. I tried to stand my ground.
His finger pressed my finger on the trigger.
The Woodpecker’s Tongue
— After DaVinci
It barbs into the dead
doug fir
at the end of the field.
Sunders soft
rot
long
as a child’s finger
pointing towards
the bird’s red crown
now flashing now
gone.
Not metaphor
but instrument,
more saw than
flute.
It curls inside my skull
as I sleep,
the old painter leaning
so close to my body—
absorbed in coarseness
the tongue’s
blue dusk
— that I can almost taste
the wine
on his breath.