Poetry

Portrait of the Author as a Field Guide Entry

19 November 2020
Categories: Poetry

Habitat: Thinks of somewhere she isn’t—
if it’s Alaska, yearns for Spain or Texas;

If it’s Cuba, wishes herself on the subway
headed to the Upper West Side. Rolls hiraeth

and saudade around the tongue,
lets them lodge between teeth and gum.

Family: Hates her father. Hates that he
is half dream and half ghost. Loves her father.

Similar Species: Affinity for reptiles, especially
serpents. Tal vez tipos sin veneno.

Recognition: Includes historical references
like a frightened physician shouting plague cures

across a river to a parish priest in Pasajes
Tendencies towards prepositions and interruptions.

Abundance: Commonly plans to write a haibun
or a sestina, but defaults to a dozen couplets in the end.

Season: Considers privilege and how no poem
she ever writes can be entirely free

of the benefits of white supremacy.
Changes the leaking bucket under the roof

anyway. Three cottonwoods blew down.
One pierced the roof during her first fall in Alaska.

Distribution: Rarely feels at home at home.
Remembers her father was restless, too.

Pound

19 November 2020
Categories: Poetry

One afternoon near the end, before
               the move, we walk the green by the mall
and stop at the water wall, ever-raining monolith
               amid the heat of glass-refracted sun.
Someone’s adjusted the knobs on gravity:
               kites take flight, planes boom overhead,
grackles drop to the earth and graze the grass
               for limp fries, broken chips, anything
left, even a fragment, they cry and yearn.
 
               My own feet can’t get off the ground so I shuffle
on stone beside you, ducking out of the way
               of a camera aimed at a girl in a grad cap.
We stop in a stone archway, getting misted by the falls;
               a few yards off a man leans close to a woman.
—Beloved, don’t you see it? Spacetime’s curved,
               and our gravity field’s cross sections bend
away, a hyperbolic paraboloid, a salty Pringle
               that falls from the hungry hand at 9.8m/s2
and crunches beneath shoes and bird beaks.
 
               The man is talking low. He gets down on one knee. Right
there. The grad girl’s photographer spots this,
               takes aim. It’s sunny and raining. This space city
is one big pane of glass, high as a corporation,
               a window wall to the stratosphere separating me
from something naked and flying, burning up
               as it falls. I pound it trying to get through.
 
A year later we’re back for a visit and the water’s off,
               the stone is dry, it’s just a big black wall. Cleaning it,
you say, or maybe it’s me, and the other agrees.
               We stare a minute and wait for the Nordstrom cars
to turn into the mall and park themselves.
               Those little ridges now dry, I bet I could climb
to the top, little moon man on a mission.
               And then where? Pound. Stars burn out and fall.
A mouth yelling quiet. Love you forever.
               Pound. It’s buy one get one. Product
of masses, inverse proportion of distance between them
               squared. Once you said I wish you’d just
scream and hit me. Pound. Universal constant, order
               and magnitude. My sweet glass eye take aim,
watch me flame apple red. Where else but down.
 

Spell for Misheard Sound

30 April 2020
Categories: Poetry

                                                                                                    “7°F last night. Can’t stop singing Johnny Shines:
                                                                                                    ‘So cold in Vietnam, words don’t sound the same.’”
                                                                                                    —Jake Adam York, Twitter, December 10, 2012

Last Night’s Dream was the same as any other:
salt filling the room crystalized and brackish. You
appeared with a keyboard, predicting your own
death: the words might never sound the same
the words might never even sound/ and yesterday
the murder ballads of the evening shifted before
sleep. A poet in a green suit says cannibal/ heard carnival:
the horse-shift of carousels gone dark. We are always
hearing what we want to and always hearing what
we don’t/don’t have the time to correct wrong/
simply the ear demanding its own certainty
like a god. Today I dream of a tragic green
suit’s misfit, the night’s snapping cold, an illness
we chase like a toy/ its own permanent elegy.

Rost, Metal Brave

30 April 2020
Categories: Poetry

                                                                                                      -On a mountainside in the Nora Sacred Lands

A shadow rolls over the icecap,
                smothers a lighthouse subsumed
by steel eclipse. Braids drape

the glass, solid cold so long ground
                 does not remember ground, the buried
do not remember the buried. At dawn,

hunger lapses, buds chrysalis out
                 of ash, and with a singular focus,
lush breeds lush in the warm hands of rust.

An heirloom, alloy, visits the grave, an exile
                 carefully forgotten. Like seashore air
biting brown against iron, against time, turn

your face to the sun and survive. The seed
                 sheds the scars of the father, the daughter
bears the scars for the seed.

Self Portrait con Valencia

30 April 2020
Categories: Poetry

In ninth grade I discovered chemistry—

intrigued by sodium, the soft metals
                                                    and all those
cliquey elementos that bonded so facilito

the ones that stuck together
while I floated in a corner           like helium
invisible, less noble
                                              my constant struggle

to reach a stable state

Expected to memorize every single name
I carried la tabla periódica in my back pocket
my gringa lips loving a challenge

repeating each element’s name in Spanish,
sequenced, according to its atomic number
that social value I figured out

holds everyone’s place at the table
my tongue whispered their names to my brain
litio, sodio, potassio, rubidio

each grouped by their capacity to connect
and I, xenón wondered about my own valence
still not confident with my outer shell

I observed los panas and los pelados
compounds and molecules
holding hands at recess
swapping electrons like spit

my fourteen-year-old feet felt stuck
in plomo, estaño, germanium, silicón
when my chemistry teacher said don’t memorize

the glamorous synthetic elements
like Californium, and Einsteinium,
no son estábles he croaked

But ¡tecnecio!— I didn’t believe him.

So I searched that table for a secret code
to unlock the power to attract                 anything
found exotic locales, heroes, villains, and

the ability to shape-shift. To glow like tungsten,
shine like a palladium disco ball, I
Newjerseyum dreaming of Europium.

I theorized, if a man-made element
like Americium could find a seat
at that table, between plutonium and curium
and feign an octet state, then

Molybdenium! so would I.

The Last Days of Paradise

30 April 2020
Categories: Poetry

The Last Days of Paradise

We popped pills that made us feel
like jazz, in our sealed, sub-nautical
scream. When the world came crashing
down, not much changed. We had normalized
lipstick stain chaos, shrieking at the sight
of blood but craving crimson. We welcome
patriarchal watchdogs with their murderous
offspring, for they brought paradise with them.
It was a dream, what we waited for—
so long for this world. We danced
all night long, not noticing that our marbles
had been swiped. We didn’t realize
that we had lost. Sometimes people
just need to dance and burn elegiac,
and that’s what we did,
an effigy to a life that never existed.

We Were All There

30 April 2020
Categories: Poetry

Down at the river’s lip
                                                     we strip and wheel
off the dock like moon-mad children, strewn
into brackish nights
                                                     with wounds we don’t want
to heal. Struggling and spitting,
                                                     we swim; we spoon
currents, rippling out
                                                     toward each other, grouped
in pairs like mating critters, yawping, flinging
baptismal mud,                    we loop
ourselves like Ouroboros,
                                                     teething on tongues.

Goose-bumped and cold, each takes their turn.
“Who here believes in sin?”
                                                     —our childish prayer
bewildering no one
                                   but us, and off-kilter

we stray, careening back up the bank still set
to fail again and again, forgetting to find regret.

What Sticks

20 November 2019
Categories: Poetry

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.

White Center, 1950

20 November 2019
Categories: Poetry

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

20 November 2019
Categories: Poetry

 
 
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

20 November 2019
Categories: Poetry

 
 
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

20 November 2019
Categories: Poetry

    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

20 November 2019
Categories: Poetry

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

17 April 2019
Categories: Poetry

& 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

17 April 2019
Categories: Poetry

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’

17 April 2019
Categories: Poetry

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

17 April 2019
Categories: Poetry

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

17 April 2019
Categories: Poetry

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

17 April 2019
1 Comment
Categories: Poetry

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

17 April 2019
Categories: Poetry

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.