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Afghan Funeral in Paris
The aunts here clink Malbec glasses
and parade their grief with musky, expensive scents
that whisper in elevators and hallways.
Each natural passing articulates
the unnatural: every aunt has a son
who fell, or a daughter who hid in rubble
for two years, until that knock of officers
holding a bin bag filled with a dress
and bones. But what do I know?
I get pedicures and eat madeleines
while reading “Swann’s Way.” When I tell
one aunt I’d like to go back,
she screams It is not yours to want.
Have some cream cheese with that, says another.
Oh, what wonder to be alive and see
my father’s footprints in his sister’s garden.
He’s furiously scissoring the hyacinths,
saying All the time when the tele-researcher asks him
How often do you think your life
is a mistake? During the procession, the aunts’ wails
vibrate: wires full of crows in heavy wind.
I hate every plumed minute of it. God invented
everything out of nothing, but the nothing
shines through, said Paul Valéry. Paris never charmed me,
but when some stranger asks
if it stinks in Afghanistan, I am so shocked
that I hug him. And he lets me,
his ankles briefly brushing against mine.
Thirteen Ways of Looking at an Arab Girl
1.
She doesn't read
The Atlantic
nor does she orgasm.
2.
Dancing, sucking her belly toward her spine.
Black vines
sway to the mumble of a lute,
descend the trellis of her,
sweep bare feet.
3.
Princess Jasmine
Gigi Hadid
Shakira
Sabah
4.
Have you seen the brown-necked raven
who builds a home inside a bomb shelter?
The laughing dove who nests in olive trees?
5.
I am given the name of an American cheerleader; I am
fearfully made.
6.
almond eyes & thighs
& rug-burned knees
7.
I don't know which I prefer:
to be a child in my father's house
a servant in my husband's
or liberated by a
fashion
magazine?
8.
Salma Hayek
George Clooneyswifey
Fairouz
A Pole-Dancing Muslim Miss USA
9.
Carrying a basket into a field
disappearing parcel by parcel.
She mourns groves of desire.
10.
She dies
like an American in the street or some Mesopotamian desert
at midnight in the afternoon.
11.
The bulbul also sings.
12.
Someday my name will sound like Olds,
will sound like Plath.
Someday, in my father's Spanish inflection,
will sound like Abughattàs.
13.created by God
to fuck,
to serve
coffee and tea.
Ode to the Head Nod
the slight angling up of the forehead
neck extension quick jut of chin
meeting the strangers’ eyes
a gilded curtsy to the sunfill in another
in yourself tithe of respect
in an early version the copy editor deleted
the word “head” from the title
the copy editor says it’s implied
the copy editor means well
the copy editor means
she is only fluent in one language of gestures
i do not explain i feel sad for her
limited understanding of greetings & maybe
this is why my acknowledgements are so long;
didn’t we learn this early?
to look at white spaces
& find the color
thank god o thank god for
you
are here.
The Star Spanglish Banner
Oh say can you see
Miguel wants to learn the Star-Spangled Banner.
Miguel was the last fourth grader to migrate
into my English as a second language course,
and is the first to raise his hand for every question.
But Miguel views letters in a different way than most.
Because there are a lot of words in Spanish
that do not exist in English,
he learns how to pack them in a suitcase and forget.
Because many phrases translate backwards
when crossing over from Spanish to English,
throughout the whole song,
he tends to say things in the wrong order.
So when I ask him to sing the second verse,
it sounds like
And the rocket's red glare
We watched our home
Bursting in air
It gave proof to the night
that the flag was still theirs
They say music is deeply intertwined with how we remember.
Miguel hears the marimba and learns the word home,
hears his mother's accent being mocked and learns the words shame,
hears his mother's weeping and learns the word sacrifice.
He asks, what does the word America mean?
What does the word dream mean?
I say two words with the same meaning are what we call synonyms.
You could say America is a dream,
something we all feel silly for believing in.
He says, teach me.
Teach me how to say bandera.
Teach me how to say star.
Teach me how to hide my country behind the consonants
that do not get pronounced.
Miss Angelica,
teach the letters to just flee from my lips like my parents,
and build a word out of nothing.
In my tongue, we do not pronounce the letter H.
Home is not a sound my voice knows how to make.
It's strange what our memories hold on to.
It's strange what makes it over the border
to the left side of the brain,
what our minds do not let us forget,
how an accent is just a mother tongue
that refuses to let her child go.
The language barrier is a 74 mile wall
lodged in the back of Miguel's throat,
the bodies of words so easily lost in the translation.
Oh, say for whom does that
star-spangled banner yet wave
Give back the land to the brave
and let us make a home for us free.
Against the Parts of Me That Think They Know Anything
They want to put out the light of God with their mouths—
want, like the sovereignty of the dead, extending just short of flesh. Their
today is broken, they suggest tomorrow, who right now is dancing in the sun with
putty over his eyes. Like an ocean coughing up trash, I’m squeezing God
out from my pores, intention throbbing like a moon. Which of
the jokes I told was best—the difference between man and light?
Light won’t ask for your tongue. Good joke, the taste of lemon. The
official death toll rising while we sleep. It’s crude how they’ve figured out
God, tacky as jugglers at a funeral. Just let me grieve what I’ve lost. They were put
with me fully built, passionless as shoelaces, pitying even my name. To
their credit, they weren’t given what I have: majesty and the heft of a face. They want
mouths like mine that can blow out tiny fires. The mercy of speech. Of sleep. Of they.
Stationery
The moon did not become the sun.
It just fell on the desert
in great sheets, reams
of silver handmade by you.
The night is your cottage industry now,
the day is your brisk emporium.
The world is full of paper.
Write to me.
Honeymoon
Of this room remember heat. A fight with my father and
glass evil eyes. The television sparking like a glamorous fish.
We’ve turned off every lightbulb, fan each other with foreign
magazines. I take photographs of stray dogs. In the car,
the Turkish driver listens to horse races on the radio.
I won, he tells us. I dress like a pillar. I want to burn the verbs
I mispronounce to the Egyptian waiter. My uterus bleeds from Athens
to Istanbul and the moon is a spider tracking its white mud
across the sky. Orange blossoms open like pepper in the courtyard.
Everywhere, blue rooftops. Antibiotics for my infected jaw.
We take Rome with us to Rome. At the passport control line,
you tell me to let you speak. You tell them I'm with you.
Alone
Lying, thinking
Last night
How to find my soul a home
Where water is not thirsty
And bread loaf is not stone
I came up with one thing
And I don't believe I'm wrong
That nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.
There are some millionaires
With money they can't use
Their wives run round like banshees
Their children sing the blues
They've got expensive doctors
To cure their hearts of stone.
But nobody
No, nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Now if you listen closely
I'll tell you what I know
Storm clouds are gathering
The wind is gonna blow
The race of man is suffering
And I can hear the moan,
'Cause nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Come, and Be my Baby
The highway is full of big cars
going nowhere fast
And folks is smoking anything that’ll burn
Some people wrap their lies around a cocktail glass
And you sit wondering
where you’re going to turn
I got it.
Come. And be my baby.
Some prophets say the world is gonna end tomorrow
But others say we’ve got a week or two
The paper is full of every kind of blooming horror
And you sit wondering
What you’re gonna do.
I got it.
Come. And be my baby.
Meditation on a Grapefruit
To wake when all is possible
before the agitations of the day
have gripped you
To come to the kitchen
and peel a little basketball
for breakfast
To tear the husk
like cotton padding a cloud of oil
misting out of its pinprick pores
clean and sharp as pepper
To ease
each pale pink section out of its case
so carefully without breaking
a single pearly cell
To slide each piece
into a cold blue china bowl
the juice pooling until the whole
fruit is divided from its skin
and only then to eat
so sweet
a discipline
precisely pointless a devout
involvement of the hands and senses
a pause a little emptiness
each year harder to live within
each year harder to live without
Pluto Shits on the Universe
On February 7, 1979, Pluto crossed over Neptune’s orbit and became the eighth planet from the sun for twenty years. A study in 1988 determined that Pluto’s path of orbit could never be accurately predicted. Labeled as “chaotic,” Pluto was later discredited from planet status in 2006.
Today, I broke your solar system. Oops.
My bad. Your graph said I was supposed
to make a nice little loop around the sun.
Naw.
I chaos like a motherfucker. Ain’t no one can
chart me. All the other planets, they think
I’m annoying. They think I’m an escaped
moon, running free.
Fuck your moon. Fuck your solar system.
Fuck your time. Your year? Your year ain’t
shit but a day to me. I could spend your
whole year turning the winds in my bed. Thinking
about rings and how Jupiter should just pussy
on up and marry me by now. Your day?
That’s an asswipe. A sniffle. Your whole day
is barely the start of my sunset.
My name means hell, bitch. I am hell, bitch. All the cold
you have yet to feel. Chaos like a motherfucker.
And you tried to order me. Called me ninth.
Somewhere in the mess of graphs and math and compass
you tried to make me follow rules. Rules? Fuck your
rules. Neptune, that bitch slow. And I deserve all the sun
I can get, and all the blue-gold sky I want around me.
It is February 7th, 1979 and my skin is more
copper than any sky will ever be. More metal.
Neptune is bitch-sobbing in my rearview,
and I got my running shoes on and all this sky that’s all mine.
Fuck your order. Fuck your time. I realigned the cosmos.
I chaosed all the hell you have yet to feel. Now all your kids
in the classrooms, they confused. All their clocks:
wrong. They don’t even know what the fuck to do.
They gotta memorize new songs and shit. And the other
planets, I fucked their orbits. I shook the sky. Chaos like
a motherfucker.
It is February 7th, 1979. The sky is blue-gold:
the freedom of possibility.
Today, I broke your solar system. Oops. My bad.
Men Compliment Me
Men compliment me like I’m a distant planet
—only they have the good taste to admire its desolate beauty!
O to reach into the galaxy like it was filled just for you.
One man tells me I look sad and I think too much so
I think about that, too.
I think about his good intentions.
My freshly bloodied teeth.
The men who scare me most come not like wolves but like mice
and gnaw away at the floor beneath my feet.
I was twelve the first time I was called exotic.
Fourteen when I was deemed a terrorist.
Fifteen when I starved myself to rib
and yellowed skin. Thin as a tomato slice.
I mean a planet eventually plots its own extinction
as an aging empire waves its flag from the moon.
White men say the world is ending.
White men say the world is ending
and she's asking for it.
Love Poem
Dear Proofreader,
you’re right. It is warped.
My syntax, a sentence
on myself: third person
absent pronouns. I’m glad
you liked the article
about gender & interpretation.
Glad to grace your pages
wearing this ink
dress. Just what I wanted
I couldn’t tell you
all those Christmas nights
of family, trying
to decipher their mutant
kin. Yes, I’m certain
the fault is mine. I
a fault line, been falling
through the fissure
all my life.
At the bottom of the problem?
[ ]
& at the bottom
of language, an animal
prayer & at the bottom of prayer
let me assure you
tangled fur, my proper name.
As a Possible Lover
Practices
silence, the way of wind
bursting
in early lull. Cold morning
to night, we go so
slowly, without
thought
to ourselves. (Enough
to have thought
tonight, nothing
finishes it. What
you are, will have
no certainty, or
end. That you will
stay, where you are,
a human gentle wisp
of life. Ah…)
practices
loneliness,
as a virtue. A single
specious need
to keep
what you have
never really
had.
Ode to Fat
Tonight, as you undress, I watch your wondrous
flesh that’s swelled again, the way a river swells
when the ice relents. Sweet relief
just to regard the sheaves of your hips,
your boundless breasts and marshy belly.
I adore the acreage
of your thighs and praise the promising
planets of your ass.
Oh, you were lean that terrifying year
you were unraveling, as though you were returning
to the slender scrap of a girl I fell in love with.
But your skin was vacant, a ripped sack,
sugar spilling out and your bones insistent.
Oh, praise the loyalty of the body
that labors to rebuild its palatial realm.
Bless butter. Bless brie.
Sanctify schmaltz. And cream and cashews.
Stoke the furnace
of the stomach and load the vessels. Darling,
drench yourself in opulent oil,
the lamp of your body glowing. May you always
flourish enormous and sumptuous,
be marbled with fat, a great vault that
I can enter, the cathedral where I pray.
Little Stones at My Window
translated by Charles Hatfield
for roberto and adelaida
Once in a while
joy throws little stones at my window
it wants to let me know that it's waiting for me
but today I'm calm
I'd almost say even-tempered
I'm going to keep anxiety locked up
and then lie flat on my back
which is an elegant and comfortable position
for receiving and believing news
who knows where I'll be next
or when my story will be taken into account
who knows what advice I still might come up with
and what easy way out I'll take not to follow it
don't worry, I won't gamble with an eviction
I won't tattoo remembering with forgetting
there are many things left to say and suppress
and many grapes left to fill our mouths
don't worry, I'm convinced
joy doesn't need to throw any more little stones
I'm coming
I'm coming.
Excerpt from "Blessings"
I don't make songs for free, I make 'em for freedom
Don't believe in kings, believe in the Kingdom
Chisel me into stone, prayer whistle me into song air
Dying laughing with Krillin saying something 'bout blonde hair
Jesus' black life ain't matter, I know, I talked to his daddy
Said you the man of the house now, look out for your family
He has ordered my steps, gave me a sword with a crest
And gave Donnie a trumpet in case I get shortness of breath
r u dense ? {I'm the Baddest Kiss}
If there’s one boss left, it’s not you {on this stage}.
Aqua regia, step off. Come caustic, creep corrosion
& stay salty, my rainbows {ro the gods ur :: one hit :: hon}. My
iris will weather & true whatever is burning up you. I bless
a compass with its bearings & the crucible I keep unhurried
& sane when under fever & fury of flame. I’m the iron lore
that celestials this molten core. Chasmed the Cretaceous
& shook all legion & sky & sea— :: BOOMED your beloved
dinosaurs & unknown beasts :: Believe a lot of comet I did
not cherry bomb in peace. {How I still brittle that— kiss}.
Why expose me now {‘tis not my rage}:: I’m a precious pinch,
much more mint than platinum’s greatest thick, I don’t need
to lay it on. I {for when you go amiss} I {c’mon, don’t
quit} am the only boss {make a wish}— on :: the :: stage.
One Art
The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.
—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
Vivisection
How you bisected me —
the elegance of the scars.
The disease? It was not chemical.
You could not cure it.
I cling to this chill.
Watch how I unfurl
before it, flag of myself,
a mirror distorted. This body —
it is nothing. In an instant
I could transform it.
Now it is a lake spreading
outward, now small and blank,
a flat stone poised
in a hand. Now it breaks apart,
only the grains of it.
Listen, how they drift and scratch.
The old story, the forms
that were broken are still here.
Now they reassemble, a buzz,
a communion.
They promise me courage,
other virtues, the rough shield,
freedom from pain. They tell me
I am this, or this —
calcium, magnesium,
a vitamin that is missing,
blue phosphorus burning.
Chips fall from a chisel.
Joints burst into loud
red flower. A bird flies
out of my mouth,
into the ceiling.
Chemotherapy
My friend is going through the fire on his knees,
His hands, crossing the entire field of it;
Once in a while he calls out, bewildered,
The other side unclear, wanting to just
Lie down and wait among the scattered stones.
Unimaginable heat: he pants, lost in the light
Of what keeps happening–think water, think water,
And he manages to make out one nurse
Up against the bright and it takes everything
To tell her what he needs, as if he had come upon
The one tree still standing, and understood
She promises nothing, who in her uniform
Was all that was ever asked for and who
Could hold him as he has never been held.
My Father in English
First half of his life lived in Spanish: the long syntax
of las montañas that lined his village, the rhyme
of sol with his soul—a Cuban alma—that swayed
with las palmas, the sharp rhythm of his machete
cutting through caña, the syllables of his canarios
that sung into la brisa of the island home he left
to spell out the second half of his life in English—
the vernacular of New York City sleet, neon, glass—
and the brick factory where he learned to polish
steel twelve hours a day. Enough to save enough
to buy a used Spanish-English dictionary he kept
bedside like a bible—studied fifteen new words
after his prayers each night, then practiced them
on us the next day: Buenos días, indeed, my family.
Indeed más coffee. Have a good day today, indeed—
and again in the evening: Gracias to my bella wife,
indeed, for dinner. Hicistes tu homework, indeed?
La vida is indeed difícil. Indeed did indeed become
his favorite word, which, like the rest of his new life,
he never quite grasped: overused and misused often
to my embarrassment. Yet the word I most learned
to love and know him through: indeed, the exile who
tried to master the language he chose to master him,
indeed, the husband who refused to say I love you
in English to my mother, the man who died without
true translation. Indeed, meaning: in fact/en efecto,
meaning: in reality/de hecho, meaning to say now
what I always meant to tell him in both languages:
thank you/gracias for surrendering the past tense
of your life so that I might conjugate myself here
in the present of this country, in truth/así es, indeed.
A Heart Can Be Broken Only Once, Like A Window
I miss the kind of love they sing about in oldiez songs
but I don't ask for it anymore. My palms are turned down
against gusts taking themselves away. I listen to wild parrots
while I run between sycamores in the park. I walk around
uncomfortable in the jeans and wonder if the holes
are something I've made. I think about some things
so I don't think about other things: pizza, poetry, Neosporin.
I eat my fried eggs out of a bowl shaped like a man's hands.
The thin, gold rings on his fingers are still mine. I have myself
to remind me of love, and that's all. I tie tiny triangles of glass
to string that I wear around my neck, and some say it's pretty.
When my mother doesn't recognize the jewelry adorning me,
hoping, she asks if it's new. And even though I am Mexican,
feel deeply & joke dark, God still owes me a drink for every time
the woman I should be has died. I no longer mean it when
I say please. Sometimes words belong between certain people
And neither one is you. Sometimes people are just lines in a song.
Today, I feel like telling jokes instead of pretending
to write pretty music and I am angry with the word should.
I think about words so I don't think about loss, or all the feathers
left on my porch. I want to open the front door and see
a clean bird waiting for me on the doormat like I'm Snow White
even if it has rusted forks for wings. I once heard
that the world breaks everyone. That afterwards,
many are stronger at the broken places. I wish
a whole woman would wake up inside of me.
Oh Wonder
It’s the garden spider who eats her mistakes
at the end of day so she can billow in the lung
of night, dangling from an insecure branch
or caught on the coral spur of a dove’s foot
and sleep, her spinnerets trailing radials like
ungathered hair. It’s a million pound cumulus.
It’s the stratosphere, holding it, miraculous. It’s
a mammatus rolling her weight through dusk
waiting to unhook and shake free the hail.
Sometimes it’s so ordinary it escapes your notice—
pothos reaching for windows, ease of an avocado
slipping its skin. A porcelain boy with lamp-black
eyes told me most mammals have the same average
number of heartbeats in a lifetime. It is the mouse
engine that hums too hot to last. It is the blue whale’s
slow electricity—six pumps per minute is the way
to live centuries. I think it’s also the hummingbird
I saw in a video lifted off a cement floor by firefighters
and fed sugar water until she was again a tempest.
It wasn’t when my mother lay on the garage floor
and my brother lifted her while I tried to shout louder
than her sobs. But it was her heart, a washable ink.
It was her dark’s genius, how it moaned slow enough
to outlive her. It is the orca who pushes her dead calf
a thousand miles before she drops it or it falls apart.
And it is also when she plays with her pod the day
after. It is the night my son tugs at his pajama
collar and cries: The sad is so big I can’t get it all out,
and I behold him, astonished, his sadness as clean
and abundant as spring. His thunder-heart, a marvel
I refuse to invade with empathy. And outside, clouds
groan like gods, a garden spider consumes her home.
It’s knowing she can weave it tomorrow between
citrus leaves and earth. It’s her chamberless heart
cleaving the length of her body. It is lifting my son
into my lap to witness the birth of his grieving.
Break up with your gender, I’m bored
after The Real Housewives of Atlanta
We could start this letter with the audacity.
How you ignore the growth of flesh on your chest & how
the sight of them brings you to tears like Kandi
in seasons 2–11. How they carry the world
like Kenya Moore carried season 8 of Real Housewives
& how I hate them just as much as everyone hates Kenya
for what she did to Phaedra (in season 6
exclusively). How they sway in your cerebrum & you get
nauseous with shame. How un-diligence leads to ignorance;
your back, stressed from sleeping in binders for 3 days
in a row. It’s time, KB. Break up with your gender like Nene
broke up with Greg until he got his [ ] together in season 5.
What if top surgery changes nothing; what if the [ ]
don’t heal properly? What will become of you then?
Loyalty is not gender’s language, like it isn’t
the language of Nene in seasons 1–12. I want more
for you, KB; I want more for love; this has never been it.
After this, you’ll be free (like Phaedra from her season
10 contract). You won’t have to breathe & feel
everything tonight. You’ll feel nothing, and nothing
is the true meaning of gender, isn’t it?
The Microscopes
Heavy and expensive, hard and black
With bits of chrome, they looked
Like baby cannons, the real children of war, and I
Hated them for that, for what our teacher said
They could do, and then I hated them
For what they did when we gave up
Stealing looks at one another's bodies
To press a left or right eye into the barrel and see
Our actual selves taken down to a cell
Then blown back up again, every atomic thing
About a piece of my coiled hair on one slide
Just as unimportant as anyone else's
Growing in that science
Class where I learned what little difference
God saw if God saw me. It was the start of one fear,
A puny one not much worth mentioning,
Narrow as the pencil tucked behind my ear, lost
When I reached for it
To stab someone I secretly loved: a bigger boy
Who'd advance
Through those tight, locker-lined corridors shoving
Without saying
Excuse me, more an insult than a battle. No large loss.
Not at all. Nothing necessary to study
Or recall. No fighting in the hall
On the way to an American history exam
I almost passed. Redcoats.
Red blood cells. Red-bricked
Education I rode the bus to get. I can't remember
The exact date or
Grade, but I know when I began ignoring slight alarms
That move others to charge or retreat. I'm a kind
of camouflage. I never let on when scared
of conflicts so old they seem to amount
To nothing really-dust particles left behind
Like the viral geography of an occupied territory,
A region I imagine you imagine when you see
A white woman walking with a speck like me.
Excerpt from “The Glass Essay”
You remember too much,
my mother said to me recently.
Why hold onto all that? And I said,
Where can I put it down?
Excerpt from "Obit" [Blame]
Blame—wants to die but cannot. Its
hair is untidy but it’s always here. My
mother blamed my father. I blamed my
father’s dementia. My father blamed
my mother’s lack of exercise. My
father is the story, not the storyteller.
I eventually blamed my father because
the story kept on trying to become the
storyteller. Blame has no face. I have
walked on its staircase around and
around, trying to slap its face but only
hitting my own cheeks. When some
people suffer, they want to tell everyone
about their suffering. When the brush
hits a knot, the child cries out loud,
makes a noise that is an expression of
pain but not the pain itself. I can’t feel
the child’s pain but some echo of her
pain, based on my imagination. Blame
is just an echo of pain, a veil across
the face of the one you blame. I blame
God. I want to complain to the boss of
God about God. What if the boss of
God is rain and the only way to speak
to rain is to open your mouth to the sky
and drown?
Tea
Five times a day, I make tea. I do this
because I like the warmth in my hands, like the feeling
of self-directed kindness. I’m not used to it—
warmth and kindness, both—so I create my own
when I can. It’s easy. You just pour
water into a kettle and turn the knob and listen
for the scream. I do this
five times a day. Sometimes, when I’m pleased,
I let out a little sound. A poet noticed this
and it made me feel I might one day
properly be loved. Because no one is here
to love me, I make tea for myself
and leave the radio playing. I must
remind myself I am here, and do so
by noticing myself: my feet are cold
inside my socks, they touch the ground, my stomach
churns, my heart stutters, in my hands I hold
a warmth I make. I come from
a people who pray five times a day
and make tea. I admire the way they do
both. How they drop to the ground
wherever they are. Drop
pine nuts and mint sprigs in a glass.
I think to care for the self
is a kind of prayer. It is a gesture
of devotion toward what is not always beloved
or believed. I do not always believe
in myself, or love myself, I am sure
there are times I am bad or gone
or lying. In another’s mouth, tea often means gossip,
but sometimes means truth. Despite
the trope, in my experience my people do not lie
for pleasure, or when they should,
even when it might be a gesture
of kindness. But they are kind. If you were
to visit, a woman would bring you
a tray of tea. At any time of day.
My people love tea so much
it was once considered a sickness. Their colonizers
tried, as with any joy, to snuff it out. They feared a love
so strong one might sell or kill their other
loves for leaves and sugar. Teaism
sounds like a kind of faith
I’d buy into, a god I wouldn’t fear. I think now I truly believe
I wouldn’t kill anyone for love,
not even myself—most days
I can barely get out of bed. So I make tea.
I stand at the window while I wait.
My feet are cold and the radio plays its little sounds.
I do the small thing I know how to do
to care for myself. I am trying to notice joy,
which means survive. I do this all day, and then the next.
Self-Portrait as a Wild Extrovert
I have 600 dear friends.
I hug each of them
daily. I never need a mint
but am always ready to offer one
or 600. I love & know a lot
about biking/baking. I love & know
a lot about Celine Dion,
thanks to my mom, who is, if I
absolutely had to pick one—but
who am I kidding, of course
she’s my best friend.
Once, every five years, I might
feel a smidge of sadness.
& when I do, I just
sit down, maintaining impeccable,
approachable posture, & breathe.
I breathe like the very well-
organized, very wall-less
ad agency I’ve run
since birth. I breathe
like breathing is my oldest
dear friend named Daphne
Daphne, whom I still call every night
before bed to say, You are
an incandescent multiverse—don’t you
forget it, & that never
fails to do the trick.
Catastrophe Is Next to Godliness
Lord, I confess I want the clarity of catastrophe but not the catastrophe.
Like everyone else, I want a storm I can dance in.
I want an excuse to change my life.
The day A. died, the sun was brighter than any sun.
I answered the phone, and a channel opened
between my stupid head and heaven, or what was left of it. The blankness
stared back; and I made sound after sound with my blood-wet gullet.
O unsayable—O tender and divine unsayable, I knew you then:
you line straight to the planet’s calamitous core; you moment moment moment;
you intimate abyss I called sister for a good reason.
When the Bad Thing happened, I saw every blade.
And every year I find out what they’ve done to us, I shed another skin.
I get closer to open air; true north.
Lord, if I say Bless the cold water you throw on my face,
does that make me a costume party. Am I greedy for comfort
if I ask you not to kill my friends; if I beg you to press
your heel against my throat—not enough to ruin me,
but just so—just so I can almost see your face—
Excerpt from "The First Black Bachelorette"
There was an episode once
on the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
with the actress Tisha Campbell.
The premise: they were on a date
and stuck in a basement for hours.
She stripped off her weave, fake nails,
contacts, and eyelashes. She molted.
Will, then asks, Now, what else
on your body can I get at the mall?
RuPaul says, we’re all born naked
and the rest is drag. Derrick has a list
of funny drag names and I want one.
I want to be called what I really am
or what I pretend to be, which, I guess
in a way, is me? Or someone who I think
might be beautiful enough to be approached,
discovered. Someone who doesn’t have
to pay for movers. Someone who walks
into a party and doesn’t have to be anxious
because the privilege of their beauty
makes them at rest and people find vacations
in their faces. I require something fake.
Woven and glued, stuck to my body
but not of my body. How does a body
even start?
won’t you celebrate with me
won't you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
my one hand holding tight
my other hand; come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.
In Colorado My Father Scoured and Stacked Dishes
in a Tex-Mex restaurant. His co-workers,
unable to utter his name, renamed him Jalapeño.
If I ask for a goldfish, he spits a glob of phlegm
into a jar of water. The silver letters
on his black belt spell Sangrón. Once, borracho,
at dinner, he said: Jesus wasn’t a snowman.
Arriba Durango. Arriba Orizaba. Packed
into a car trunk, he was smuggled into the States.
Frijolero. Greaser. In Tucson he branded
cattle. He slept in a stable. The horse blankets
oddly fragrant: wood smoke, lilac. He’s an illegal.
I’m an Illegal-American. Once, in a grove
of saguaro, at dusk, I slept next to him. I woke
with his thumb in my mouth. ¿No qué no
tronabas, pistolita? He learned English
by listening to the radio. The first four words
he memorized: In God We Trust. The fifth:
Percolate. Again and again I borrow his clothes.
He calls me Scarecrow. In Oregon he picked apples.
Braeburn. Jonagold. Cameo. Nightly,
to entertain his cuates, around a campfire,
he strummed a guitarra, sang corridos. Arriba
Durango. Arriba Orizaba. Packed into
a car trunk, he was smuggled into the States.
Greaser. Beaner. Once, borracho, at breakfast,
he said: The heart can only be broken
once, like a window. ¡No mames! His favorite
belt buckle: an águila perched on a nopal.
If he laughs out loud, his hands tremble.
Bugs Bunny wants to deport him. César Chávez
wants to deport him. When I walk through
the desert, I wear his shirt. The gaze of the moon
stitches the buttons of his shirt to my skin.
The snake hisses. The snake is torn.
maggie and milly and molly and may
maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach(to play one day)
and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles,and
milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;
and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and
may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.
For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)
it's always ourselves we find in the sea
Black Stars
Whitney was a star once.
Waltzed across our television skies,
a waning crescent.
So was Michael.
& Marvin.
All stars die though.
Explode into air thin,
cascade into black hole.
Black stars form under pressure
& leave us tragically,
either by death or betrayal.
When there was no other beacon on our screens,
we looked up to Bill.
When we wanted to name a future for ourselves,
we looked through Raven’s eyes.
When we needed validation an institution could not give,
we called on Kanye.
Astronomers say the larger a star’s mass, the faster they burn their fuel,
the shorter their lifespan.
I say the more expansive the black star, the more mass of the explosion.
I say the greater the black star, the shorter we can expect them to shine.
Some weeks I only listen to Whitney.
Cradle her name, a prayer between my lips.
One dim dusk, her lover gifted her stardust.
Whitney danced, dosed, then drowned.
& we mourn her body celestial after all these years.
Joe Jackson tried to carve galaxies out of his children.
MJ got addicted to surgeoning his features for the masses.
His daddy beat him, say dance, say sing, say don’t glide.
Walk on the moon, boy.
Turn this Indiana basement into a universe.
You a star, boy.
Kanye West composed pieces we didn’t know our bodies needed.
We had all the flashing lights on ‘Ye but he’s still a black star made in America
so he don’t get to shine forever.
‘Ye from the South Side resurrected and named himself Yeezus.
Got so big, white folks thought he was the sun
of God.
Now Yeezus only praises white folks in red hats
and white girls with fake asses.
Scientists say when you look up at night, some of the stars you see are already dead.
Maybe this means by the time a Black person becomes a star, they are already burnt out.
Maybe this means it takes a supernova to create a superstar.
Maybe we’re all waiting to be on fire.
Black stars disintegrate for reaching up towards a pearly gaze.
Whiteness has always been both a goal and unattainable.
Has been the measure of our success and the weapon that bludgeons us.
The higher we get, the closer we get to fame or manhood or God.
The further we get from ground or dirt or us.
Black folks stay folding in on ourselves,
stay a star on the tip of someone’s rising.
I say look at the way supremacy told Raven she ain’t black.
Misogyny told Bill he could take what wasn’t his to claim.
Masculinity gave Marvin Gaye’s father a gun,
told him to shoot his son.
& ain’t a sun the biggest star?
Don’t the biggest stars have the shortest lives?
Make the largest explosions?
Have you seen
the energy burning out
turn to dust?
Did you know above you
there are a sea of stars
falling.
Where Did You Get That Pick-Up Line? You Should Drop it Back Off
Excuse me, sir. Are you the moon? Because I need you
238,900 miles away from me.
You make me want to go to Hogwarts
so I can make you disappear.
Oh my god you’re so funny…looking.
Are we at the rodeo?
Because this conversation is bullshit.
You look so strong. Why don’t you go take down the patriarchy
and heteronormative ideals while I sit over here and watch?
Your advances and excess touching and jokes are all so funny
I decided to tell them to my lawyer.
You make me think all kinds of naughty things,
like where to hide a body.
If I had a nickel for every time I heard that line,
I would throw them all at you.
You want to know how I got these guns?
Working out because I’m terrified of violent masculinity!
You remind me of 1919,
the way I don’t have a say in this exchange.
Can I please have 78% of the time you’re giving me, please?
You and my bra have something in common—
You’re both annoying and make everything less enjoyable.
You look like a wonderful piece of meat,
You would look great under a butcher knife.
You must be a tree the way I see you and think,
leave.
Poem That Gives No Fucks
A poem should be heavy metal
worn as armor when the world hurts.
Should be a jangly guitar arpeggio
draping the highway or blue jay pecking apart
a robin’s egg, crisp blue fragments split with red.
A poem should be a Lisa Frank unicorn
vomiting rainbows who makes you ask:
how do I continue to do what I hate
day in and day out, and then answers
“Bitch, one day you’re going to grow wings
so stop screaming into the 22nd century.
Get nasty, mechanize the messy.
Reinvent your pussy into a box of butterflies.”
Because if a poem isn’t god’s tooth
tonguing you for gold then it’s only a half moonwalk,
only a date with the toilet and last night’s chardonnay.
A poem should feel like an encyclopedia
chewed up by stray dogs behind a Tiger Mart.
Seductive as a saint with truck driver hands.
Should glint like a prayer made of bodily fluids,
make you want to burn all your clothes,
eat yourself alive, smother your heart
and say: I've been searching
for the blues my whole damn life.
Shifting the Sun
When your father dies, say the Irish,
you lose your umbrella against bad weather.
May his sun be your light, say the Armenians.
When your father dies, say the Welsh,
you sink a foot deeper into the earth.
May you inherit his light, say the Armenians.
When your father dies, say the Canadians,
you run out of excuses. May you inherit
his sun, say the Armenians.
When your father dies, say the French,
you become your own father.
May you stand up in his light, say the Armenians.
When your father dies, say the Indians,
he comes back as the thunder.
May you inherit his light, say the Armenians.
When your father dies, say the Russians,
he takes your childhood with him.
May you inherit his light, say the Armenians.
When your father dies, say the English,
you join his club you vowed you wouldn't.
May you inherit his sun, say the Armenians.
When your father dies, say the Armenians,
your sun shifts forever.
And you walk in his light.
From the Desire Field
I don’t call it sleep anymore.
I’ll risk losing something new instead—
like you lost your rosen moon, shook it loose.
But sometimes when I get my horns in a thing—
a wonder, a grief or a line of her—it is a sticky and ruined
fruit to unfasten from,
despite my trembling.
Let me call my anxiety, desire, then.
Let me call it, a garden.
Maybe this is what Lorca meant
when he said, verde que te quiero verde—
because when the shade of night comes,
I am a field of it, of any worry ready to flower in my chest.
My mind in the dark is una bestia, unfocused,
hot. And if not yoked to exhaustion
beneath the hip and plow of my lover,
then I am another night wandering the desire field—
bewildered in its low green glow,
belling the meadow between midnight and morning.
Insomnia is like Spring that way—surprising
and many petaled,
the kick and leap of gold grasshoppers at my brow.
I am struck in the witched hours of want—
I want her green life. Her inside me
in a green hour I can’t stop.
Green vein in her throat green wing in my mouth
green thorn in my eye. I want her like a river goes, bending.
Green moving green, moving.
Fast as that, this is how it happens—
soy una sonámbula.
And even though you said today you felt better,
and it is so late in this poem, is it okay to be clear,
to say, I don’t feel good,
to ask you to tell me a story
about the sweet grass you planted—and tell it again
or again—
until I can smell its sweet smoke,
leave this thrashed field, and be smooth.
Tell all the truth but tell it slant — (1263)
Tell all the truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind —
Why Bother?
Because right now, there is someone
out there with
a wound in the exact shape
of your words.
Party Dress for a First Born
Headless girl, so ill at ease on the bed,
I know, if you could, what you’re thinking of:
nothing. I used to think that, too,
whenever I sat down to a full plate
or unwittingly stepped on an ant.
When I ran to my mother, waiting radiant
as a cornstalk at the edge of the field,
nothing else mattered: the world stood still.
Tonight men stride like elegant scissors across the lawn
to the women arrayed there, petals waiting to loosen.
When I step out, disguised in your blushing skin,
they will nudge each other to get a peek
and I will smile, all the while wishing them dead.
Mother's calling. Stand up: it will be our secret.
Sweetness
Just when it has seemed I couldn’t bear
one more friend
waking with a tumor, one more maniac
with a perfect reason, often a sweetness
has come
and changed nothing in the world
except the way I stumbled through it,
for a while lost
in the ignorance of loving
someone or something, the world shrunk
to mouth-size,
hand-size, and never seeming small.
I acknowledge there is no sweetness
that doesn’t leave a stain,
no sweetness that’s ever sufficiently sweet ....
Tonight a friend called to say his lover
was killed in a car
he was driving. His voice was low
and guttural, he repeated what he needed
to repeat, and I repeated
the one or two words we have for such grief
until we were speaking only in tones.
Often a sweetness comes
as if on loan, stays just long enough
to make sense of what it means to be alive,
then returns to its dark
source. As for me, I don’t care
where it’s been, or what bitter road
it’s traveled
to come so far, to taste so good.
Magnitude and Bond
More than anything, I need this boy
so close to my ears, his questions
electric as honeybees in an acreage
of goldenrod and aster. And time where
we are, slow sugar in the veins
of white pine, rubbery mushrooms
cloistered at their feet. His tawny
listening at the water’s edge, shy
antlers in pooling green light, while
we consider fox prints etched in clay.
I need little black boys to be able to be
little black boys, whole salt water galaxies
in cotton and loudness—not fixed
in stunned suspension, episodes on hot
asphalt, waiting in the dazzling absence
of apology. I need this kid to stay mighty
and coltish, thundering alongside
other black kids, their wrestle and whoop,
the brightness of it—I need for the world
to bear it. And until it will, may the trees
kneel closer, while we sit in mineral hush,
together. May the boy whose dark eyes
are an echo of my father’s dark eyes,
and his father’s dark eyes, reach
with cupped hands into the braided
current. The boy, restless and lanky, the boy
for whom each moment endlessly opens,
for the attention he invests in the beetle’s
lacquered armor, each furrowed seed
or heartbeat, the boy who once told me
the world gives you second chances, the boy
tugging my arm, saying look, saying now.
Excerpt from "Faceless"
My dear, if it is not a city, it is a prison.
If it has a prison, it is a prison. Not a city.
Self-Portrait without Stitches
after Tarfia Faizullah
i was hurt i wasn’t i saw it
on the internet licked yogurt
from a spoon while the girls
described their blood hot seizing
the cotton of a sheet i am speaking
from the cut place from my other
mouths do not believe me for i
was never cut or i was hurt but
never sewn or i wasn’t i want
-ed it i didn’t i screamed i didn’t
i bit down i bled i didn’t i click
through pictures of the girls moonfaced
thick-cheeked still fastened to the
roundness of childhood consider
the softness of my jaw my face without
angles without edges i covered
i cowered i didn’t i cried i came to
i click & learn their names incant them
i learn the names of the stones the theory
it wasn’t me i think of all the ways
we match it could have been it
couldn’t consider the cut place thick
liquid of citizenship spilling from
my many mouths uncut my many
uncut mouths
Daveen
Blonde, chipper, & with a name like a cleaning solution
the young nurse catches my drool in a mini paper cup
as I spit out the meds, again. This is her third try. She sighs.
Only a few years older, Daveen grabs me under-the-armpits,
transports me to the chair, then wheels me to the room
at the hospital’s end. Someone/a stranger/everyone
is disappointed in me. Ten days later I’m released—is what
they call it. She breaks strict code to walk me through
the heavy doors to my car in the lot, lightly punches my shoulder
like a stepsister. I’m not just outside, I keep thinking, I’m Out.
With nothing to gain, Daveen pulls me in close. She’s hugging me
so tight, spots choke my vision. With all this concrete fog
in my head it’s hard to hold on to a sentence but she says
"I hope," she says "I never," says "see you," says "again."
A Guide to Reading Trans Literature
We’re dying and we’re really sad.
We keep dying because trans women
are supposed to die.
This is sad.
I don’t have the words for my body
so I’ll say I’m a cloud
or a mountain
or something pretty that people enjoy
so if I die
people will be like “Oh, that’s sad”.
Be sad about that.
It’s okay to be sad.
It is sad when people die.
It is sad when people want to die.
I sometimes want to die but I don’t!
I’m one of the lucky ones.
You can feel happy about that.
It’s okay to feel happy about that.
Now pretend this is very serious:
History doesn’t exist.
My body doesn’t exist.
There’s nothing left for you to be complicit in.
It’s okay for you to feel happy about that.
Now pretend I am crying
right in front of you,
opening that wound up just for you.
Now pretend you can feel my pain.
Now pretend something in you
has been moved, has been transformed.
Now pretend you are absolved.
what I mean when I say I’m sharpening my oyster knife
I mean I'm here
to eat up all the ocean you thought was yours.
I mean I brought my own quarter of a lemon,
tart and full of seeds. I mean I'm a tart.
I'm a bad seed. I'm a red-handled thing
and if you move your eyes from me
I'll cut the tender place where your fingers meet.
I mean I never met a dish of horseradish I didn't like.
I mean you're a twisted and ugly root
and I'm the pungent, stinging firmness inside.
I mean I look so good in this hat
with a feather
and I'm a feather
and I'm the heaviest featherweight you know.
I mean you can't spell anything I talk about
with that sorry alphabet you have left over from yesterday.
I mean
when I see something dull and uneven,
barnacled and ruined,
I know how to get to its iridescent everything.
I mean I eat them alive.
what I mean is I'll eat you alive,
slipping the blade in sideways, cutting
nothing because the space was always there.
The Sacrifice
—Qurbani Eid
No, I said, I want
to watch them behead
the goat
with the men.
Her eyes glistened
as the scythe sang
down
her neck
and spine. I’m proud
of you, the uncles said. It is
important
to observe
death. Her hoof, cleaved
from her shin. Her belly.
Everywhere
I looked
was trickling ant-shadow.
Pleasant banter. Her blood.
The aunts
came out
to slide the chopped acres
of her into hissing oil
and onion,
She was
steam—sift and spice-bold.
I ate her between my cousins,
licked
my palm across
the blood-gravy of what was left
on the filigreed china. Yes,
I savored
her more than
once: first with rice, then with
chutney. My first death. I felt
curious,
conflicted. Satisfied.
At Twenty-Eight
It seems I get by on more luck than sense,
not the kind brought on by knuckle to wood,
breath on dice, or pennies found in the mud.
I shimmy and slip by on pure fool chance.
At turns charmed and cursed, a girl knows romance
as coffee, red wine, and books; solitude
she counts as daylight virtue and muted
evenings, the inventory of absence.
But this is no sorry spinster story,
just the way days string together a life.
Sometimes I eat soup right out of the pan.
Sometimes I don’t care if I will marry.
I dance in my kitchen on Friday nights,
singing like only a lucky girl can.
Mercy
after Nikki Giovanni
She asked me to kill the spider
Instead, I get the most
peaceful weapons I can find.
I take a cup and a napkin.
I catch the spider, put it outside
and allow it to walk away.
If I am ever caught in the wrong place
at the wrong time, just being alive
and not bothering anyone,
I hope I am greeted
with the same kind
of mercy.
Urban Girl Writes Another Poem About Her Dead Father
My father is dead.
I notice it most
During things that haven’t happened
yet.
My Father is dead
at my wedding.
He is a slow dance of bullets
an autopsy trying
to make polite conversation with the guests.
My flower girl is me at every age
he did not see me turn.
I am throwing things I haven’t seen in years
(My virginity, pig-tails, my diploma, joy and names of old lovers).
My father is dead
at the birth of my first child
The doctor asks where is the father
I say murdered out of habit.
The doctor does not specify so neither do I
Instead we both stare
at my child who is named after the chill in the room.
My father is dead
at my death bed. We play
Blackjack until the light comes.
When it does, he lifts me onto his shoulders
I get the piggy back ride promised to a child
who time had been waiting on.
Nothing Gold Can Stay
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
Little Weapon
Imagine if I had to console
The families of those slain I slayed on game consoles
I aim, I hold right trigger to squeeze
Press up and Y, one less person breathe
B for the bombs, press pause for your moms
Make the room silent, she don't approve of violent games
She leave; resume activity
Scarred and blue heart, of hard, sharp wizardry
On next part, I insert code
To sweeten up the little person's murder workload
I tell him he work for CIA with A
A operative; I operate this game all day
I hold the controller connected to the soldier
With weapons on his shoulder
He's only seconds older than me
We playful but serious
Now, keep that on mind for online experience
Sorrow Is Not My Name
—after Gwendolyn Brooks
—for Walter Aikens
No matter the pull toward brink. No
matter the florid, deep sleep awaits.
There is a time for everything. Look,
just this morning a vulture
nodded his red, grizzled head at me,
and I looked at him, admiring
the sickle of his beak.
Then the wind kicked up, and,
after arranging that good suit of feathers
he up and took off.
Just like that. And to boot,
there are, on this planet alone, something like two
million naturally occurring sweet things,
some with names so generous as to kick
the steel from my knees: agave, persimmon,
stick ball, the purple okra I bought for two bucks
at the market. Think of that. The long night,
the skeleton in the mirror, the man behind me
on the bus taking notes, yeah, yeah.
But look; my niece is running through a field
calling my name. My neighbor sings like an angel
and at the end of my block is a basketball court.
I remember. My color's green. I'm spring.
Excerpt from "America"
America I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing.
America two dollars and twentyseven cents January 17, 1956.
I can’t stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go [ ] yourself with your atom bomb.
I don’t feel good don’t bother me.
I won’t write my poem till I’m in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I’m sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don’t think he’ll come back it’s sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke?
I’m trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I’m doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
Choices
if i can't do
what i want to do
then my job is to not
do what i don't want
to do
it's not the same thing
but it's the best i can
do
if i can't have
what i want then
my job is to want
what i've got
and be satisfied
that at least there
is something more
to want
since i can't go
where i need
to go then i must go
where the signs point
though always understanding
parallel movement
isn't lateral
when i can't express
what i really feel
i practice feeling
what i can express
and none of it is equal
i know
but that's why mankind
alone among the animals
learns to cry
The Red Poppy
The great thing
is not having
a mind. Feelings:
oh, I have those; they
govern me. I have
a lord in heaven
called the sun, and open
for him, showing him
the fire of my own heart, fire
like his presence.
What could such glory be
if not a heart? Oh my brothers and sisters,
were you like me once, long ago,
before you were human? Did you
permit yourselves
to open once, who would never
open again? Because in truth
I am speaking now
the way you do. I speak
because I am shattered.
Failed Essay on Privilege
I came from something popularly known as “nothing”
and in the coming I got a lot.
My parents didn’t speak money, didn’t speak college.
Still—I went to Yale.
For a while I tried to condemn.
I wrote Let me introduce you to evil.
Still, I was a guest there, I made myself at home.
And I know a fine shoe when I see one.
And I know to be sincerely sorry for those people’s problems.
I know to want nothing more
than it would be so nice to have
and I confess I’ll never hate what I’ve been given
as much as I wish I could.
Still I thought I of all people understood Aristotle: what is and isn’t the good life . . .
because, I wrote, privilege is an aggressive form of amnesia . . .
I left a house with no heat. I left the habit of hunger. I left a room
I shared with seven brothers and sisters I also left.
Even the good is regrettable, or at least sometimes
should be regretted
yet to hate myself is not to absolve her.
I paid so much
for wisdom, and look at all of this, look at all I have—
Birthright
in the village
of your birth
cuts a wall
bleeds a border
in the heat
you cannot swim
in the rain
you cannot climb
in the north
you cannot be
cuts a paper
cuts a law
cuts a finger
finger bleeds
baby hungers
baby feeds
baby needs
you cannot go
you cannot buy
you cannot bring
baby grows
baby knows
bordercrossing
seasons bring
winter border
summer border
falls a border
border spring
That's So Lame
He says when the bus is late, when the TV
show is canceled, when a fascist is elected,
when the WiFi’s bad. That’s so lame! I say
rubbernecking my own body in the bath
-room mirror. See, every time lame comes
out a mouth it doesn’t belong in, my cane
hand itches, my bum-knee cracks, my tongue’s
limp gets worse. Some days it’s so bedridden
in the bottom of my jaw, it can’t stand up
for itself. Fumbles a fuck you, trips over its
own etymology, when all I want to ask is Why
do you keep dragging my body into this? When
I want to ask, Did you know how this slur
feathered its way into language? By way of lame
duck, whose own wings sever it from the flock
& make it perfect prey. I want to ask How long
have you been naming us by our dead? Baby
-booked your broken from the textbooks of our
anatomy? A car limped along the freeway,
a child crippled by their mother’s baleful stare.
Before I could accept this body’s fractures,
I had to unlearn lame as the first breath of
lament. I’m still learning not to let a stranger speak
me into a funeral, an elegy in orthodox slang.
My dad used to tell me this old riddle: What
value is there in a lame horse that cannot gallop?
A bullet & whatever a butcher can make of it.
My Brilliant Image
translated by Daniel Ladinsky
I wish I could show you
When you are lonely or in darkness,
The Astonishing Light
Of your own Being!
Excerpt from "She Had Some Horses"
I. She Had Some Horses
She had some horses.
She had horses who were bodies of sand.
She had horses who were maps drawn of blood.
She had horses who were skins of ocean water.
She had horses who were the blue air of sky.
She had horses who were fur and teeth.
She had horses who were clay and would break.
She had horses who were splintered red cliff.
She had some horses.
She had horses with eyes of trains.
She had horses with full, brown thighs.
She had horses who laughed too much.
She had horses who threw rocks at glass houses.
She had horses who licked razor blades.
She had some horses.
She had horses who danced in their mothers' arms.
She had horses who thought they were the sun and their
bodies shone and burned like stars.
She had horses who waltzed nightly on the moon.
She had horses who were much too shy, and kept quiet
in stalls of their own making.
She had some horses.
She had horses who whispered in the dark, who were afraid to speak.
She had horses who screamed out of fear of the silence, who
carried knives to protect themselves from ghosts.
She had horses who waited for destruction.
She had horses who waited for resurrection.
She had some horses.
She had some horses she loved.
She had some horses she hated.
These were the same horses.
Makin' Jump Shots
He waltzes into the lane
’cross the free-throw line,
fakes a drive, pivots,
floats from the asphalt turf
in an arc of black light,
and sinks two into the chains.
One on one he fakes
down the main, passes
into the free lane
and hits the chains.
A sniff in the fallen air—
he stuffs it through the chains
riding high:
“traveling” someone calls—
and he laughs, stepping
to a silent beat, gliding
as he sinks two into the chains.
Carp Poem
After I have parked below the spray paint caked in the granite
grooves of the Frederick Douglass Middle School sign,
where men-size children loiter like shadows drape in outsize
denim, jerseys, braids, and boots that mean I am no longer young;
after I have made my way to the New Orleans Parish Jail down the block,
where the black prison guard wearing the same weariness
my prison guard father wears buzzes me in, I follow his pistol and shield
along each corridor trying not to look at the black men
boxed and bunked around me until I reach the tiny classroom
where two dozen black boys are dressed in jumpsuits orange as the carp
I saw in a pond once in Japan, so many fat, snaggletoothed fish
ganged in and lurching for food that a lightweight tourist could have crossed
the water on their backs so long as he had tiny rice balls or bread
to drop into the mouths below his footsteps, which I’m thinking
is how Jesus must have walked on the lake that day, the crackers and crumbs
falling from the folds of his robe, and how maybe it was the one fish
so hungry it leaped up his sleeve that he later miraculously changed
into a narrow loaf of bread, something that could stick to a believer’s ribs,
and don’t get me wrong, I’m a believer too, in the power of food at least,
having seen a footbridge of carp packed gill to gill, packed tighter
than a room of boy prisoners waiting to talk poetry with a young black poet,
packed so close they'd have eaten each other had there been nothing else to eat.
Social Distancing
with design by Anthony Cody
Fuck Your Lecture on Craft
Colonizers write about flowers.
I tell you about children throwing rocks at Israeli tanks
seconds before becoming daisies.
I want to be like those poets who care about the moon.
Palestinians don’t see the moon from jail cells and prisons.
It’s so beautiful, the moon.
They’re so beautiful, the flowers.
I pick flowers for my dead father when I’m sad.
He watches Al Jazeera all day.
I wish Jessica would stop texting me Happy Ramadan.
I know I’m American because when I walk into a room something dies.
Metaphors about death are for poets who think ghosts care about sound.
When I die, I promise to haunt you forever.
One day, I'll write about the flowers like we own them.
Poem
I loved my friend.
He went away from me.
There's nothing more to say.
The poem ends,
Soft as it began—
I loved my friend.
Theme for English B
The instructor said,
Go home and write
a page tonight.
And let that page come out of you—
Then, it will be true.
I wonder if it’s that simple?
I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem.
I went to school there, then Durham, then here
to this college on the hill above Harlem.
I am the only colored student in my class.
The steps from the hill lead down into Harlem,
through a park, then I cross St. Nicholas,
Eighth Avenue, Seventh, and I come to the Y,
the Harlem Branch Y, where I take the elevator
up to my room, sit down, and write this page:
It’s not easy to know what is true for you or me
at twenty-two, my age. But I guess I’m what
I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you.
hear you, hear me—we two—you, me, talk on this page.
(I hear New York, too.) Me—who?
Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love.
I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.
I like a pipe for a Christmas present,
or records—Bessie, bop, or Bach.
I guess being colored doesn’t make me not like
the same things other folks like who are other races.
So will my page be colored that I write?
Being me, it will not be white.
But it will be
a part of you, instructor.
You are white—
yet a part of me, as I am a part of you.
That’s American.
Sometimes perhaps you don’t want to be a part of me.
Nor do I often want to be a part of you.
But we are, that’s true!
As I learn from you,
I guess you learn from me—
although you’re older—and white—
and somewhat more free.
This is my page for English B.
The Negro Speaks of Rivers
I’ve known rivers:
I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.
I’ve known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
Excerpt from "Bigger Than Life"
No I don't want your love, it’s not why I make music
I owe myself, I told myself back then that I would do this
And I always look so out of reach, and just seem so confusing
That I felt my place in life, a young black man it seems so useless
But I don’t want no help, just let me suffer through this
The world would not know Jesus Christ if there was never Judas
This knife that's in my back will be the truth that introduced us
And the distance in between us is the proof of my conclusion
Life is what you make it, I hope you make a movement
Hope your opportunity survives the opportunist
Hopin' as you walk across the sand, you see my shoe print
And you follow 'til it change your life, it’s all an evolution
And I hope you find your passion 'cause I found mine in this music
But I hope it’s not material 'cause that’s all an illusion
And they all in collusion / This racist institution, double standard
Actin' like they not the reason we ruthless
Assimilation Bouquet
open
your fist
like a nesting
flower
picture dahlia,
hyacinth
roused
in time-lapse
lightning bolts
captured
in a bevy
of pickling jars
cup
calyx
to leaf
through anther
& filament
to a part called
stigma,
& stem
new replicas
to hang around
your neck
like garlands
& gorge
your cheeks
full
of anthems
TRANS IS AGAINST NOSTALGIA
Everyday I build the little boat,
my body boat, hold for the unique one,
the formless soul, the blue fire
that coaxes my being into being.
Yes, there was music in the woods, and
I was in love with the trees, and a beautiful man
grew my heartbeat in his hands, and there
was my mother’s regret that I slept with.
To live there is pointless. I’m building the boat,
the same way I’d build a new love—
looking ahead at the terrain. And the water
is rising, and the generous ones are moving on.
O New Day, I get to build the boat!
I tell myself to live again.
Somehow I made it out of being 15
and wanting to jump off the roof
of my attic room. Somehow I survived
my loneliness and throwing up in a jail cell.
O New Day, I’ve broken my own heart. The boat
is still here, is fortified in my brokeness.
I’ve picked up the hammer every day
and forgiven myself. There is a new
language I’m learning by speaking it.
I’m a blind cartographer, I know the way
fearing the distance. O New Day,
there isn’t a part of you I don’t love
to fear. I’m holding hands with
the poet speaking of light, saying I made it up
I made it up.
Intifada Incantation: Poem 38 for b.b.L.
I SAID I LOVED YOU AND I WANTED
GENOCIDE TO STOP
I SAID I LOVED YOU AND I WANTED AFFIRMATIVE
ACTION AND REACTION
I SAID I LOVED YOU AND I WANTED MUSIC
OUT THE WINDOWS
I SAID I LOVED YOU AND I WANTED
NOBODY THIRST AND NOBODY
NOBODY COLD
I SAID I LOVED YOU AND I WANTED I WANTED
JUSTICE UNDER MY NOSE
I SAID I LOVED YOU AND I WANTED
BOUNDARIES TO DISAPPEAR
I WANTED
NOBODY ROLL BACK THE TREES!
I WANTED
NOBODY TAKE AWAY DAYBREAK!
I WANTED NOBODY FREEZE ALL THE PEOPLE ON THEIR
KNEES!
I WANTED YOU
I WANTED YOUR KISS ON THE SKIN OF MY SOUL
AND NOW YOU SAY YOU LOVE ME AND I STAND
DESPITE THE TRILLION TREACHERIES OF SAND
YOU SAY YOU LOVE ME AND I HOLD THE LONGING
OF THE WINTER IN MY HAND
YOU SAY YOU LOVE ME AND I COMMIT
TO FRICTION AND THE UNDERTAKING
OF THE PEARL
YOU SAY YOU LOVE ME
YOU SAY YOU LOVE ME
AND I HAVE BEGUN
I BEGIN TO BELIEVE MAYBE
MAYBE YOU DO
I AM TASTING MYSELF
IN THE MOUNTAIN OF THE SUN
Besaydoo
While sipping coffee in my mother’s Toyota, we hear the birdcall of two teenage boys
in the parking lot: Aiight, one says, Besaydoo, the other returns, as they reach
for each other. Their cupped handshake pops like the first, fat, firecrackers of summer,
their fingers shimmy as if they’re solving a Rubik’s cube just beyond our sight. Moments
later, their Schwinns head in opposite directions. My mother turns to me, revealing the
milky, John-Waters-mustache-thin foam on her upper lip, Wetin dem bin say?
Besaydoo? Nar English? she asks, tickled by this tangle of new language. Alright.
Be safe dude, I pull apart each syllable like string cheese for her. Oh yah, dem nar real padi,
she smiles, surprisingly broken by the tenderness expressed by what half my family might call
thugs. Besaydoo. Besaydoo. Besaydoo, we chirp in the car, then nightly into our phones
after I leave California. Besaydoo, she says as she softly muffles the rattling of my bones
in newfound sobriety. Besaydoo, I say years later, her response made raspy by an oxygen
treatment at the ER. Besaydoo, we whisper to each other across the country. Like
some word from deep in a somewhere too newborn-pure for the outdoors, but we
saw those two boys do it, in broad daylight, under a decadent, ruinous, sun.
Elegy for Bruce Lee
Somewhere in the dark sky is a beautiful fight,
one-two, cha cha chá—all our knuckles rapping
against the stars’ edges for the dancing master,
for a flying sidekick to our bodies’ centers.
My father called you Little Dragon Lee, told me
how you swiveled your hips across the floor—
three-four, cha cha chá—then you both wrote
love poems for a girl in your English class.
I practiced throwing roundhouse kicks as a boy,
feet aimed at my reflection in store windows,
at street signs, at parked cars, everything I knew
I could break. Now, my feet cannot leave
the ground, and I write love poems for the dead.
The last time I watched Enter the Dragon,
I imagined it was my father emerging victorious
from the hall of mirrors, my father hustling
on the dance floor, because the last time
I saw my father, he had been waiting for me
the whole day in the morgue. Hold me,
he said, and I did until his body stopped
acting like it was alive. There is no fight
where there is no spark, no wretched cock crow
in the dark, just this cha cha chá—grief is a fist
and a promise to hurt someone. Just give it
an inch between knuckle and breastbone.
It will punch through everyone.
The bottoms of my shoes
The bottoms of my shoes
are clean
From walking in the rain
Bad Mood, Baker Beach
Just told some dude with a poodle to fuck off.
My pound mutt humped his puppy’s ass.
He pretends to call the cops. No answer and I knew it.
Bigger problems in this town.
I will never understand the appeal of anger.
So bored. Weather exhausts me. You call this winter?
I’ll show you winter. Tea kettle spilled over door locks.
Hot shovel from the wood stove. Ashes, pitfall.
The water here is always bitter cold.
Big tease. Did I mention I am allergic to wet suits?
So much for surfing. Might as well move back East,
land of snow and warm summer water. Might be better
than sitting on a cold beach, staring at a red bridge
they never stop painting. What’s the point? All of this beauty
everywhere. So stupid. My wet dog licks my cheek, shakes
out the water from his fur all over me.
Dumb sun, set already. This sucks. Sand in my socks.
I will never be happy.
Blue Light Lounge Sutra for the Performance Poets at Harold Park Hotel
the need gotta be
so deep words can't
answer simple questions
all night long notes
stumble off the tongue
& color the air indigo
so deep fragments of gut
& flesh cling to the song
you gotta get into it
so deep salt crystalizes on eyelashes
the need gotta be
so deep you can vomit up ghosts
& not feel broken
till you are no more
than a half ounce of gold
in painful brightness
you gotta get into it
blow that saxophone
so deep all the sex & dope in this world
can't erase your need
to howl against the sky
the need gotta be
so deep you can't
just wiggle your hips
& rise up out of it
chaos in the cosmos
modern man in the pepperpot
you gotta get hooked
into every hungry groove
so deep the bomb locked
in rust opens like a fist
into it into it so deep
rhythm is pre-memory
the need gotta be basic
animal need to see
& know the terror
we are made of honey
cause if you wanna dance
this boogie be ready
to let the devil use your head
for a drum
Graduation
When you showed up drunk as hell, humming
tunelessly to yourself, and slumped against
the auditorium's faux-wood paneling — when
you fumbled in the pockets of your coat,
fished out a cigarette, brought it to your lips,
then, realizing for the first time where you were,
tossed it away and said Fuck it loud enough
that everyone turned in their seats and a friend
elbowed me and asked if I knew you — I shook
my head and spent the next hour wondering why
I was so glad you came. You, who slept
each night in your battered van, who skipped
meetings and lied to your sponsor, who still
called your ex-wife every day, restraining order
be damned. You shouldn't have been there
either: a hundred yards was the agreement
after you gathered all the meds in the house
into a shoebox and threatened to take them.
You had come regardless. You were there.
And I was there. And when I walked the stage
you hollered my name with a kind
of wild conviction, then said it a second time,
less convinced, and I thought of that night
when the cops came and you, unashamed
of the fuss you caused, of your desperate,
public struggle for happiness, kissed me
on the head — once, twice — and went quietly.
Small Kindnesses
I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat," "Go ahead — you first," "I like your hat."
Out of Hiding
Someone said my name in the garden,
while I grew smaller
in the spreading shadow of the peonies,
grew larger by my absence to another,
grew older among the ants, ancient
under the opening heads of the flowers,
new to myself, and stranger.
When I heard my name again, it sounded far,
like the name of the child next door,
or a favorite cousin visiting for the summer,
while the quiet seemed my true name,
a near and inaudible singing
born of hidden ground.
Quiet to quiet, I called back.
And the birds declared my whereabouts all morning.
Spratchet
I like the idea of a spratchet,
which today I learned
is the plastic divider
used in check-out lines
that says this is almost mine
and this is almost yours.
I like how it helps two strangers
not skinny dip in the reservoirs
of each other’s bank accounts.
There’s nothing rude about a spratchet—
it’s polite as plastic can possibly be.
Unlike the bolt click behind a door
or the whining hinge of a fence gate,
the spratchet keeps things
only subtly separate.
Gently, the cashier lowers
my oyster crackers into a bag.
He divides the dry from the frozen.
I nod my spratchet nod. At work
I shake with my practiced
spratchet hand. At home,
I put the groceries in the cupboard
and kiss my love, and even our lips
are little spratchets. I cannot know her.
She cannot know me. No matter
how intimate. Not really.
That’s what we have to agree on.
That's what I intend on forgetting.
The Conditional
Say tomorrow doesn't come.
Say the moon becomes an icy pit.
Say the sweet-gum tree is petrified.
Say the sun's a foul black tire fire.
Say the owl's eyes are pinpricks.
Say the raccoon's a hot tar stain.
Say the shirt's plastic ditch-litter.
Say the kitchen's a cow's corpse.
Say we never get to see it: bright
future, stuck like a bum star, never
coming close, never dazzling.
Say we never meet her. Never him.
Say we spend our last moments staring
at each other, hands knotted together,
clutching the dog, watching the sky burn.
Say, It doesn't matter. Say, That would be
enough. Say you'd still want this: us alive,
right here, feeling lucky.
I Used to Pray
to any God that made me
feel ashamed.
Girls are takers,
Mama used to say.
I took every lesson
she gave me, learned
to swim out of my body
& abandon it.
With incense I burned pages
until a perfect eye stared back.
God drilled a hole to make us see.
See? Mine is filthy.
He, too, eyed me
each day afterschool,
clutching the line to the lure.
When I walked by
he’d catch me & groan
Oh you’ve grown so heavy.
Like his breath, his fingers
were meaty & thick.
For years I weighed myself
then I weighed myself down.
In the water, my scaled body
lay bent & murky.
Listen — Don’t believe in God
unless he admits
he was always watching.
Look back at him.
If he had my courage
he’d choose to be born
a daughter.
What am I begging for?
I have two mouths.
One remembers.
Neither forgives.
The Lovers
I was always afraid
of the next card
the psychic would turn
over for us—
Forgive me
for not knowing
how we were
every card in the deck.
Obligations 2
As we
embrace resist
the future the present the past
we work we struggle we begin we fail
to understand to find to unbraid to accept to question
the grief the grief the grief the grief
we shift we wield we bury
into light as ash
across our faces
Gacela of the Remembrance of Love
translated by James Wright
Do not carry your remembrance.
Leave it, alone, in my breast,
tremor of a white cherry tree
in the torment of January.
There divides me from the dead
a wall of difficult dreams.
I give the pain of a fresh lily
for a heart of chalk.
All night long, in the orchard
my eyes, like two dogs.
All night long, quinces
of poison, flowing.
Sometimes the wind
is a tulip of fear,
a sick tulip,
daybreak of winter.
A wall of difficult dreams
divides me from the dead.
Excerpt from "Power"
The difference between poetry and rhetoric
is being ready to kill
yourself
instead of your children.
I am trapped on a desert of raw gunshot wounds
and a dead child dragging his shattered black
face off the edge of my sleep
blood from his punctured cheeks and shoulders
is the only liquid for miles
and my stomach
churns at the imagined taste while
my mouth splits into dry lips
without loyalty or reason
thirsting for the wetness of his blood
as it sinks into the whiteness
of the desert where I am lost
without imagery or magic
trying to make power out of hatred and destruction
trying to heal my dying son with kisses
only the sun will bleach his bones quicker.
I have not been able to touch the destruction
within me.
Still, I Don’t Love My Father
In a Greyhound Station his last name
is read before my first
by the entrance attendant I hand my ticket to. Who
is kind & asks me “Why didn’t you bring
me breakfast?” It is 4 in the morning, I blush
to myself. Oedipus, I do not want
the older stranger inquiring
on his day’s first meal. I respond, “You
were bringing me breakfast today” a snappy
teen in my gullet. Glum, but glinting
in my cheekiness extended
to the aged stranger who I knew
was Nigerian before his exhort of such. I don’t love
my father, but the Greyhound says, “Your name
is beautiful is it African?” & he means
my name,
not
my last.
& I cannot say I believe in love because
I love my father. No. That country stretched
itself large w/ new children. There is no room.
But I believe in love, 20th of January, even
in a Greyhound bus station where
fluorescents blink to bleakness, even
as my country inchoate
itches to slide me off its flag,
when I remember the Attendant in Atlanta
taught me hello in Ibo
when I told him I could not speak
my father’s language. Oh,
how the weeping followed.
The Women in My Family Are Bitches
cranky! bitches
stuck up! bitches
customer service turned sour! bitches.
can i help you? bitches
next in line! bitches
i like this purse 'cause it makes me look mean bitches
can you take a picture of my outfit? full length!
get the shoes in! bitches
i always wear heels to la fiesta! and i never take
them off! bitches
all men will kill you! bitches
all men will leave you anyway! bitches
you better text me when you get home okay! bitches
pray before the plane takes off! bitches
pray before the baby comes! bitches
she has my eyes my big mouth, my fight! bitches
sing to the scabs on her knees when she falls
down! bitches
give abuelita bendiciones! bitches
it's okay not to be liked! bitches
on our own til infinity! bitches
the vengeful violent
pissed prissed and polished
lipstick stained on an envelope,
i'll be damned if i'm compliant! bitches
the what did you call us?
what did you say to us?
what's that kind of love called again?
bitches!
Everyone I Love is Drafting Their Own Eulogies
in parking lots, in bedrooms,
in supermarkets between the ground beef
and the egg noodles. Let's try that again:
so much comes down to a body
handcuffing itself to its ghost.
I want to tell you about the time
the past was an earring
under the bed. How I lived
in the space between touching
and not touching, how I wanted
everyone I love
to wear me like a hat. Now I'm the darkness
a city bus moves through,
but not always, not when I pass someone
walking more than three dogs,
not when everyone I love
is working full-time as my lungs.
In Los Angeles, someone's replaced
all the oxygen with surgical grade stainless steel,
someone's tagged all the freeway overpasses
and I can't tell if they wrote HELEN
or HELP. Everyone I love is trying
to shine me like a flashlight,
everyone I love is telling me
to say ahh. In my backyard, forty ants
are sharing a slice of watermelon,
and I don't know why that makes me feel
lonely, why I wish I was their size
and with them, fighting for the juiciest piece
with everyone I love
or just letting them have it.
Like a Freedom Too Strange to be Conquered
i pretend to cut
my eyes at you
in line
waiting
for water
swat your laugh away
from my neck in the hall
you got a mouth that
like a ‘lil nip anyway
i change your name in
my journal to Marcus
surrounded by petals
in each, a letter
spelling out into bloom
damn. even here in my
own private truth I can’t say
yes i love and it
is the youngest, freshest thang
yes i love and at
the formal we gon dance the way
children dance— bodies rubbin
hard against imagination & bone,
pantin before we even know
why, droolin the lyrics of our
mothers favorite poems into
one another’s ear— oh, , yes
imma moan your whole name
into a roll of toilet paper and
flush. i swear, imma play dead
on the black top. i wanna tell the world
about you & i can’t. i wanna tell the world
about me but i ain’t met her yet.
i wanna tell the world somethin
other than ooo Fidel Lee so fine
man fuck that nigga & his sweaty hands
i’d rather dance in the thursday sun
that is your name. that is your laugh.
i wanna toil in a queerness that ain’t
nobody punch line & speaking of strike —
somehow it was just the two of us
in a bathroom on the third floor that first time
i wash my hands and keep my eyes out the mirror
auri you say my name
like a damned flute
auri & i turn slower than worlds
your lips are there & my lips are there & oh god
i love you i love you i love you & was the freest me right then.
Rememory
is the sound of me thinking
in a language stolen from my
ancestors. I can’t tell you who the
first slave in my family was, but we
are the last. Descendants
of the sun. Rye skinned
and vibrant, wailing to
a sailing tomb. We twist
creoled tongues. Make English
a song worth singing. You erase
our history and call it freedom.
Take our flesh and call it fashion.
Swallow nations and call it
humanity. We so savage
we let you live.
I can’t tell you who the first slave
in my family was, but we remember
the bodies. Our bodies remember.
We are their favorite melody. Beat
into bucket. Broken
into cardboard covered
concrete. Shaken
into Harlem. The getting over
never begins, but there
is always the get down. Our DNA
sheet music humming
at the bottom
of the ocean.
Athazagoraphobia (Fear of Being Ignored)
II used to bury plum pits between houses. Buried
bits of wire there too. Used to bury matches
but nothing ever burned and nothing ever thrived
so I set fire to a mattress, disassembled a stereo,
attacked flies with a water pistol, and drowned ants
in perfume. I pierced my eyebrow, inserted
a stainless steel bar, traded that for a scar in a melee, [
], swerved
into traffic while unbuttoning my shirt—
There is a woman
waiting for me to marry her or forget her name
forever—whichever loosens the ribbons from her hair.
I fill the bathtub for an enemy, lick the earlobe
of my nemesis. I try to dance like firelight
without setting anyone ablaze. I am leaning over
the railing of a bridge, seeing my face shimmer
on the river below—it’s everywhere now—
Look for me
in scattered windshield beneath an overpass,
on the sculpture of a man with metal skin grafts,
in patterns on mud-draggled wood, feathers
circling leaves in rainwater—look. Even the blade
of a knife holds my quickly fading likeness
while I run out of ways to say I am here.
Frida Kahlo to Marty McConnell
leaving is not enough; you must
stay gone. train your heart
like a dog. change the locks
even on the house he’s never
visited. you lucky, lucky girl.
you have an apartment
just your size. a bathtub
full of tea. a heart the size
of Arizona, but not nearly
so arid. don’t wish away
your cracked past, your
crooked toes, your problems
are papier mache puppets
you made or bought because the vendor
at the market was so compelling you just
had to have them. you had to have him.
and you did. and now you pull down
the bridge between your houses,
you make him call before
he visits, you take a lover
for granted, you take
a lover who looks at you
like maybe you are magic. make
the first bottle you consume
in this place a relic. place it
on whatever altar you fashion
with a knife and five cranberries.
don’t lose too much weight.
stupid girls are always trying
to disappear as revenge. and you
are not stupid. you loved a man
with more hands than a parade
of beggars, and here you stand. heart
like a four poster bed. heart like a canvas.
heart leaking something so strong
they can smell it in the street.
Standing at The Mirror, The Author Writes A Poem for Himself in Which the Word Hate Is Replaced with The Word Forgive
& while I wait for my eyes to relearn open I [forgive] myself for the slow rise
the deep ache in the crane of my neck from bowing down inside myself
I [forgive] the surrender the swollen knee the bruise on my rib shape & shade
of an August sunrise I [forgive] the fence I could swear was the horizon or at least
a way out I [forgive] myself for imagining a way out is a place I could visit
like a corner café or ex-lover’s thigh I [forgive] myself for loving
those who have harmed me for cooking them dinner & burning the rice forgetting
to add pepper or make myself a plate I [forgive] myself for staying I [forgive]
myself for staying until I left my skin another blanket on the bed until the sound
of a door opening turned each room into a reason to leave I counted each second
alone as a tiny victory until I lost count which is the only victory that matters
please let healing be not a season but the body that still belongs to me & every day
I remember to buy bread to hide the keys beneath the window succulent
or walk along the road dreaming of anything other than traffic is a day I get closer
to a future made better by how I live through it I [forgive] myself for failing
today for falling back into bed & drawing the blinds give me time
I’ll get up I promise I know it doesn’t matter where I go every direction is forward
I just have to get there I take a step & step naked into the shower the water
so cold I forget to breathe my body yearns to follow the pearls falling through
the metal grate to become not quite a ghost but a shadow just out of frame I say no
I [forgive] I [forgive] myself with my body right in front of me
Separation
Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stitched with its color.
First Fig
My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—
It gives a lovely light!
Sonnet 19: When I consider how my light is spent
When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one Talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, though my Soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide;
“Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?”
I fondly ask. But patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need
Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o’er Land and Ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait.”
Mercy, Mercy Me
Crips, Bloods, and butterflies.
A sunflower somehow planted
in the alley. Its broken neck.
Maybe memory is all the home
you get. And rage, where you
first learn how fragile the axis
upon which everything tilts.
But to say you’ve come to terms
with a city that’s never loved you
might be overstating things a bit.
All you know is there was once
a walk-up where now sits a lot,
vacant, and rats in deep grass
hide themselves from the day.
That one apartment fire
set back in ’76—one the streets
called arson to collect a claim—
could not do, ultimately, what
the city itself did, left to its own dank
devices, some sixteen years later.
Rebellions, said some. Riots,
said the rest. In any case, flames;
and the home you knew, ash.
It’s not an actual memory, but
you remember it still: a rust-
bottomed Datsun handed down,
then stolen. Stripped, recovered,
and built back from bolts.
Driving away in May. 1992.
What’s left of that life quivers
in the rearview—the world on fire,
and half your head with it.
Sonnet 65
Matilde, where are you? I only just noticed
behind my necktie and above my heart,
a certain melancholy between my ribs:
It was that, all of a sudden, you are gone.
I needed the light of your energy so much.
I looked all around me, devouring hope,
and saw that the space without you is a house,
with nothing left in it but tragic windows.
In the pure silence now, the roof is listening
to the falling of ancient leafless rain,
to feathers, to what the night has imprisoned.
And so I still wait, like a lonely house,
for you to see me and inhabit me again.
Until that time, my windows ache.
MSP to ____
Though I am often, I am bad
at being alone. I turn off the bathroom lights
& let the shower steam fill the room.
I draw a new face in the mirror.
I imagine my friends, when I don’t see them
for a while, as little dots roaming a map.
Being a poet means being far from the people you love.
Someone I no longer love said that.
My friend says he can’t do another winter
in Minnesota, but leaving seems impractical.
I thought I could keep them all,
but I did not notice the door
until the room was empty.
There are people who don’t need
to hear from me to know I love them.
That’s what happens, I miss people
when I know they are happy.
It’s true: I’ve stopped drinking
because I needed it. I know who to call
in an emergency; that’s not the problem.
I could do it, you know, disappear
& be missed—there was, at one point, a boy
who asked me to stay, asked if I could
be happy there. I told him no. Told him
I had dreams & aspirations,
whatever that means. Truth is,
I think I could’ve been. Happy, I mean.
Fuck me if I’m wrong, but I am doing
some things right, right? What’s up, buttercup.
Howdy-do, buckaroo. I could be happy
anywhere, I think. I’m off again in the morning,
so I drag the suitcase from my closet
& fill it with obnoxious colors,
a green jumper, a yellow scarf, a red coat
I've been meaning to wear where it rains.
Gate A-4
Wandering around the Albuquerque Airport Terminal, after learning
my flight had been delayed four hours, I heard an announcement:
"If anyone in the vicinity of Gate A-4 understands any Arabic, please
come to the gate immediately."
Well—one pauses these days. Gate A-4 was my own gate. I went there.
An older woman in full traditional Palestinian embroidered dress, just
like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing. "Help,"
said the flight agent. "Talk to her. What is her problem? We
told her the flight was going to be late and she did this."
I stooped to put my arm around the woman and spoke haltingly.
"Shu-dow-a, Shu-bid-uck Habibti? Stani schway, Min fadlick, Shu-bit-
se-wee?" The minute she heard any words she knew, however poorly
used, she stopped crying. She thought the flight had been cancelled
entirely. She needed to be in El Paso for major medical treatment the
next day. I said, "No, we're fine, you'll get there, just later, who is
picking you up? Let's call him."
We called her son, I spoke with him in English. I told him I would
stay with his mother till we got on the plane and ride next to
her. She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just
for the fun of it. Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while
in Arabic and found out of course they had ten shared friends. Then I
thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian poets I know
and let them chat with her? This all took up two hours.
She was laughing a lot by then. Telling of her life, patting my knee,
answering questions. She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool
cookies—little powdered sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and
nuts—from her bag—and was offering them to all the women at the gate.
To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a
sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the mom from California, the
lovely woman from Laredo—we were all covered with the same powdered
sugar. And smiling. There is no better cookie.
And then the airline broke out free apple juice from huge coolers and two
little girls from our flight ran around serving it and they
were covered with powdered sugar, too. And I noticed my new best friend—
by now we were holding hands—had a potted plant poking out of her bag,
some medicinal thing, with green furry leaves. Such an old country tradi-
tion. Always carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere.
And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and I thought, This
is the world I want to live in. The shared world. Not a single person in that
gate—once the crying of confusion stopped—seemed apprehensive about
any other person. They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women, too.
This can still happen anywhere. Not everything is lost.
Black Stars
Whitney was a star once.
Waltzed across our television skies,
a waning crescent.
So was Michael.
& Marvin.
All stars die though.
Explode into air thin,
cascade into black hole.
Black stars form under pressure
& leave us tragically,
either by death or betrayal.
When there was no other beacon on our screens,
we looked up to Bill.
When we wanted to name a future for ourselves,
we looked through Raven’s eyes.
When we needed validation an institution could not give,
we called on Kanye.
Astronomers say the larger a star’s mass, the faster they burn their fuel,
the shorter their lifespan.
I say the more expansive the black star, the more mass of the explosion.
I say the greater the black star, the shorter we can expect them to shine.
Some weeks I only listen to Whitney.
Cradle her name, a prayer between my lips.
One dim dusk, her lover gifted her stardust.
Whitney danced, dosed, then drowned.
& we mourn her body celestial after all these years.
Joe Jackson tried to carve galaxies out of his children.
MJ got addicted to surgeoning his features for the masses.
His daddy beat him, say dance, say sing, say don’t glide.
Walk on the moon, boy.
Turn this Indiana basement into a universe.
You a star, boy.
Kanye West composed pieces we didn’t know our bodies needed.
We had all the flashing lights on ‘Ye but he’s still a black star made in America
so he don’t get to shine forever.
‘Ye from the South Side resurrected and named himself Yeezus.
Got so big, white folks thought he was the sun
of God.
Now Yeezus only praises white folks in red hats
and white girls with fake asses.
Scientists say when you look up at night, some of the stars you see are already dead.
Maybe this means by the time a Black person becomes a star, they are already burnt out.
Maybe this means it takes a supernova to create a superstar.
Maybe we’re all waiting to be on fire.
Black stars disintegrate for reaching up towards a pearly gaze.
Whiteness has always been both a goal and unattainable.
Has been the measure of our success and the weapon that bludgeons us.
The higher we get, the closer we get to fame or manhood or God.
The further we get from ground or dirt or us.
Black folks stay folding in on ourselves,
stay a star on the tip of someone’s rising.
I say look at the way supremacy told Raven she ain’t black.
Misogyny told Bill he could take what wasn’t his to claim.
Masculinity gave Marvin Gaye’s father a gun,
told him to shoot his son.
& ain’t a sun the biggest star?
Don’t the biggest stars have the shortest lives?
Make the largest explosions?
Have you seen
the energy burning out
turn to dust?
Did you know above you
there are a sea of stars
falling.
Getting Ready to Say I Love You to My Dad, It Rains
i love you dad, i say to the cat.
i love you dad, i say to the sky.
i love you dad, i say to the mirror.
it rains, & my mom's plants
open their mouths. my dad stays
on the couch. maybe the couch opened
its mouth & started eating my dad.
i love you dad, i say to the couch,
its tongue working my dad like a puppet.
i hear the rain fall & think the city is drinking.
or making itself clean. i am here
with my dad & the TV & the TV drones
on & on, so i'm not sure i hear it--
my dad grunting and nodding,
not the mushy stuff i was expecting,
neither of us cry, no hug or kiss.
a grunt & a nod. i love* you dad,
i say to my dad. we sit together
and watch TV. outside it rains. my dad
turns the volume up. the city is drunk.
the city is singing badly in the shower.
i killed a plant once because i gave
it too much water. lord, i worry
that love is violence. my dad is silent
& our relationship is not new or clean.
i killed a plant once because i didn't give
it enough water. my dad & i watch TV
on a rainy day. we rinse our mouths
with this water.
*America loves me most when i strum a Spanish song. mi boca guitarrón. when i say me estoy muriendo, they say that's my jam.
The Uses of Sorrow
Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.
It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.
Certainty
translated by Charles Tomlinson
If it is real the white
Light from this lamp, real
The writing hand, are they
Real, the eyes looking at what I write?
From one word to the other
What I say vanishes.
I know that I am alive
Between two parentheses.
Excerpt from "Nature Poem"
When a star dies, it becomes any number of things
like a black hole, or a documentary.
The early universe of our skin was remarkably smooth
now I stand in a rapidly dampening Christina Aguilera tee
The first stars were born of a gravity, my ancestors—
our sky is really the only thing same for me as it was for them,
which is a pretty stellar inheritance
I don’t know how they made sense of that swell, how they survived long enough to make me, and am sort of at war with sentimentality, generally
but that absence of an answer, yet suggestion of meaning
isn’t ultimately that different from a poem
So I’ve started reading the stars
Nothing is possible until it happens, like digesting sulfur instead of sunlight
or friends with benefits
Poems were my scripture and the poets, my gods
but even gods I mean especially gods are subject to the artifice
of humanity.
I look up at the poem, all of them up there in the hot sky and fall
into the water, a stone
Gardening
After my father
would beat one of us
he would place flowers
on the kitchen table
the next morning
he cut the stems flush
and laid the begonias in a circle
in an inch of water
the lavender and fuchsia
permeated the morning
we were called to breakfast
we ate waffles
and said nothing of the raging blooms
the apologies
buried in the ordered way
the flowers were arranged
we looked down at our plates
eating
eating
gorging
ignoring his
sun scorched hands
these days
I spend time
pulling petals
out of my body
placing a shovel
in the open earth
placing flowers
back into the ground
day’s end
These days I work
the garden—pulling
up the old, turning
the soil for the new.
This keeps my ghost
in prosperity—a bright
exhaustion; bright yet
unsensational. Parsley
& tomatoes & peppers
to inquire into the silence
that inquires into me.
I imagine I’ll love people
again, eventually. But not
today—& not up close.
I’m learning how time,
its blank shimmer, plays
across my absence which
is not quite absence, not
anymore—it’s greener
than absence, closer to
ritual, a strategy against
the debasements. Ignored
by the goldfinch, I hum
to the dirt, requiring no
crumb of compensation.
Sunlight buries its body
in earth, compost sets
forth its gift of rotting,
from this rotting blooms
my emptiness. Nothing
to be but silent here, amid
the thirsty miracles. Why
continue making such
noise—no matter what
I say I'm saying hold me.
Ways to Disappear
In the dark
Down a stairwell
Through the doorway
Gone west
With a new wish
In daylight
Down the sidewalk
In a wool coat
In a white dress
Without a name
Without asking
On your knees
On your stomach
Gone silent
In the backseat
In the courtroom
In a cage
In the desert
In the park
Gone swimming
On the shortest night
At the bottom of the lake
In pieces
In pictures
Without meaning
Without a face
Seeking refuge
In a new land
Gone still
In the heart
With your head bowed
In deference
In sickness
In surrender
With your hands up
On the sidewalk
In the daylight
In the dark
Song
You’re wondering if I’m lonely:
OK then, yes, I’m lonely
as a plane rides lonely and level
on its radio beam, aiming
across the Rockies
for the blue-strung aisles
of an airfield on the ocean
You want to ask, am I lonely?
Well, of course, lonely
as a woman driving across country
day after day, leaving behind
mile after mile
little towns she might have stopped
and lived and died in, lonely
If I’m lonely
it must be the loneliness
of waking first, of breathing
dawns’ first cold breath on the city
of being the one awake
in a house wrapped in sleep
If I’m lonely
it’s with the rowboat ice-fast on the shore
in the last red light of the year
that knows what it is, that knows it’s neither
ice nor mud nor winter light
but wood, with a gift for burning
Untitled [Do you still remember: falling stars]
Do you still remember: falling stars,
how they leapt slantwise through the sky
like horses over suddenly held-out hurdles
of our wishes—did we have so many?—
for stars, innumerable, leapt everywhere;
almost every gaze upward became
wedded to the swift hazard of their play,
and our heart felt like a single thing
beneath that vast disintegration of their brilliance—
and was whole, as if it would survive them!
Mexican American Sonnet
with gratitude to Wanda Coleman & Terrance Hayes
for Kristen
We have the same ankles, hips, nipples, knees—
our bodies bore the forks/tenedors
we use to eat. What do we eat? Darkness
from cathedral floors,
the heart’s woe in abundance. Please let us
go through the world touching what we want,
knock things over. Slap & kick & punch
until we get something right. ¿Verdad?
Isn’t it true, my father always asks.
Your father is the ghost of mine & vice
versa. & when did our pasts
stop recognizing themselves? It was always like
us to first person: yo. To disrupt a hurricane’s
path with our own inwardness.
C’mon huracán, you watery migraine,
prove us wrong for once. This sadness
lasts/esta tristeza perdura. Say it both ways
so language doesn't bite back, but stays.
Despedida Ardiente
For Dale, Elizabeth, Stephen, J.D., Tori, and Cara
Dear feverless, dear poets, dear love-
sick ones, now cured, there are
bloodless battles
to be won. Stout your maw
with your finest curses. Yap
your demons to their proper graves. O,
meek weepers! Asymmetries! Be
kissed! Let the trash stack
in the kitchen. Keep your lover
a full day from work. O, sweet
neglect! O, nectarine! Those
bitter pits are meant
for more than nibbling. There is
a holy jump off. There is a funky
genesis. There is
a reason love and jive
kind of rhyme. You oblong fruit
not three days ripe, somewhere in you
lies the science of typhoons, a dream
of strings. O, dirty word! O, first murder!
(O, cocoa butter whiff
on a smoky bus!) There are theories
we’re made of mostly nothing
but motion. O,
gap-toothed guitar! O, sound hole!
You faraway drum. You slang-
mouthed blessing. You long
chime. You chamberless
sextet. Let me leave you
with a few last words: When
mad dogs break chains
to run at you, charge
back. Bare your very
teeth. No monster, I promise,
outruns you. Whack them on the ankle
with a stick. Chase the bastards
down. Listen—this vertigo, this
wreckage, this bad ballad
straining the thickest tendons of your legs—O,
darling sleepers, may you wake
in the middle of the night to strange
sounds. You champions
of laughter. All you have to do is speak
simply. Your business
is the truth. Your heart's
catastrophe is just
a little of history’s
twisted bulwark.
If there weren’t a sky
within your chest
worth breaking, believe
me, you
would have stopped
all this singing
by now.
Red
I fucking depended on you and
you left the fucking wheelbarrow
out and it’s fucking raining
and now the white chickens
are fucking filthy
Depression is My Daughter and Now I Brush Her Hair
I know I am a mother
because I have had so many
things escape my body.
Today my daughter sits on cold
tile. Her knees, a dry aftertaste.
I brush her hair. It
tangles. The dark coiled silk,
Tough like mine.
I brush her hair, because she asks me to.
Because if I do not, she will cry—wither maybe.
And my heart is too soft to hear such terrible sounds.
I am her mother after all. I did make her in my body.
I must care for her, tend to the knots.
Gorda
you take the word. the one that sliced through you like a
knife through pan fresco. the one your Tío called you de
cariño. the one the boys in school hissed as you walked
by. you take the word and write it down. one time. two
times. say it in English. Fat. it hurts that way too. maybe
even more. the word is now a blade. two sides. you write
it down. hundreds of times. you start saying it to describe
yourself. you don’t flinch. others do. they fear it more
than they do [ ]. the word gives you power.
you date a few men. they won’t say the word. they prefer
thick or curvy or big. you say you want to hear it. like
you hear your name. some can’t say it without laughing.
embarrassed. like you just flashed a [ ] in public. they
call you brave. you say it’s just the parts of you that you
can touch. like short. like glasses. like curly. like brown.
the word is home. you write it down. you write it down.
you write it down. you are a bruja when you write it down.
look at that magic. Gorda. mira que bella. Gorda. your
body answers: hello. I’m here. thank you.
Haiku [for you]
love between us is
speech and breath. loving you is
a long river running.
[It’s no use / Mother dear...]
translated by Mary Barnard
It’s no use
Mother dear, I
can’t finish my
weaving
You may
blame Aphrodite
soft as she is
she has almost
killed me with
love for that boy
First Will and Testament
i look to history to explain & this is my first mistake
when i say history i mean the stone
half-buried by the roadside has witnessed
more tragedy than a filthy glass of a water. i look to the water
but all i see is dust. i look to the dust & all there is
is history. here’s a feather & well of blood
to write the labor movement across the fractal
back of infrastructure. here’s a father leaving home
to build railroads with his bare hands. write the laws
that claw the eyes from owls, that build a wall
between the river & the thirsty, that drag families
from one hell into the next. o this house of mine
was built by men & o i, a man sometimes, pass
through its acid chambers & leave out the backdoor
dust. when i say history i mean what lives in us,
i mean the faux gold chain around my neck,
the diseases passed from generation to generation
dating back to a time before christ, i mean any word
traced to its origin is a small child begging for water.
Buen Esqueleto
after Maggie Smith
Life is short, and I tell this to mis hijas.
Life is short, & I show them how to talk
to police without opening the door, how
to leave the social security number blank
on the exam, I tell this to mis hijas.
This world tells them I hate you every day
& I don’t keep this from mis hijas
because of the bus driver who kicks them
to the street for fare evasion. Because I love
mis hijas, I keep them from men who’d knock
their heads together just to hear the chime.
Life is short & the world is terrible. I know
no kind strangers in this country who aren’t
sisters a desert away, & I don’t keep this
from mis hijas. It’s not my job to sell
them the world, but to keep them safe
in case I get deported. Our first
landlord said with a bucket of bleach
the mold would come right off. He shook
mis hijas, said they had good bones
for hard work. Mi’jas, could we make this place
beautiful? I tried to make this place beautiful.
Sixty
We are from the border
like the sun that is born there
behind the eucalyptus
shines all day
above the river
and goes to sleep there
beyond the Rodrígueses’ house.
From the border like the moon
that makes the night nearly day
resting its moonlight
on the banks of the Cuareim.
Like the wind
that makes the flags dance
like the rain
carries away their shacks
together with ours.
All of us are from the border
like those birds
flying from there to here
singing in a language
everyone understands.
We came from the border
we go to the border
like our grandparents and our children
eating bread that the Devil kneaded
suffering in this end of the world.
We are the border
more than any river and more
way more
than any bridge.
Speech: To be, or not to be, that is the question
(from Hamlet, spoken by Hamlet)
To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing, end them. To die—to sleep,
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to: 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there's the rub:
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause—there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th'oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of dispriz'd love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th'unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovere'd country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action.
Excerpt from “The Near Transitive Properties of the Political and Poetical: Erasure”
A lover, once: You can’t say every action is political. Then the word political loses all meaning.
He added: What is political about this moment?
I was washing his dishes. I had left the water running.
Real Estate
My mother married a man who divorced her for money. Phyllis, he would say, If you don’t stop buying jewelry, I will have to divorce you to keep us out of the poorhouse. When he said this, she would stub out a cigarette, mutter something under her breath. Eventually, he was forced to divorce her. Then, he died. Then she did. The man was not my father. My father was buried down the road, in a box his other son selected, the ashes of his third wife in a brass urn that he will hold in the crook of his arm forever. At the reception, after his funeral, I got mean on four cups of Lime Sherbet Punch. When the man who was not my father divorced my mother, I stopped being related to him. These things are complicated, says the Talmud. When he died, I couldn’t prove it. I couldn’t get a death certificate. These things are complicated, says the Health Department. Their names remain on the deed to the house. It isn’t haunted, it’s owned by ghosts. When I die, I will come in fast and low. I will stick the landing. There will be no confusion. The dead will make room for me.
Buffalograss
Barely-morning pink curtains
drape an open window. Roaches scatter,
the letter t vibrating in cottonwoods.
His hair horsetail and snakeweed.
I siphon doubt from his throat
for the buffalograss.
Seep willow antler press against
the memory of the first man I saw naked.
His tongue a mosquito whispering
its name a hymn on mesquite,
my cheek. The things we see the other do
collapse words into yucca bone.
The Navajo word for eye
hardens into the word for war.
i didn’t like you when i met you
but like the funk of a dude unwashed & sun-whooped
i learned the need. & like dude, you were stank & i
was stank right back, two skunks pissed & pissing, smelling like skunks.
but somehow (was it mutual hate for a stanker fuck? a song
our dueling shoulders found each other in? a synced nod?
being the only of our kind in a room full of not-us?) here we live
two stank bitches, thick as mothers, a lil gone off love’s gold milk.
i didn’t know when i thought, i don’t like that hoe, it was just
my reflection i couldn’t stand. i saw it. the way you would break me
into a better me. i ran from it. like any child, i saw my medicine
& it looked so sharp, so exact, a blade fit to the curve of my name.
what a shame. i was slow to you. walked up on you like a bee trapped
in a car—all that fear pent in my wings, those screaming, swatting giants
& then, finally, the window, the wind, the flowers, the honey
myqueenmyqueenmyqueen!
What Betsy Has to Say
In 1965, Hurricane Betsy swept through the Bahamas and South Florida, then hit Louisiana coast, flooding New Orleans. During the four days of the storm, 75 people died.
No nuance. Got no whisper
in you, do you girl?
The idea was not
to stomp it flat, ‘trina,
all you had to do was kiss the land,
brush your thunderous lips against it
and leave it stuttering, scared barren
at your very notion. Instead,
You roared through like
a [ ] man, all biceps and must,
flinging your dreaded mane
and lifting souls up to feed your ravenous eye.
I thought I taught you better, girl.
I showed you the right way to romance that city,
how to break its heart
and leave it pining for more of your slap.
So if this was your way of erasing me,
turning me from rough lesson to raindrop,
you did it ugly, chile. Yeah, I truly enjoyed
being God for that minute. But unlike you,
rash gal, I left some of my signature standing.
I only killed what got in my way.
Credo
I believe in his foot hitting the accelerator.
I believe in the traffic light, its green fuse over every street.
I believe in bows hemmed in by rain and milk.
The secret places we go: old Yoder Road, lots behind the gutted saw mill.
Heaven, Nick jokes, is the back of his car.
I believe ephemerals.
Turnips push, radishes root down.
I believe the cracked mounts nurse the oil leak, steady shiver in the light.
I believe in creek, corn and sycamore, vastness broken where thorns unwind.
I believe in the lake, turtles tucked in burrows, their drowsing three-chambered hearts.
I believe our hands in the icy water. I’m a kid, and then I’m not.
I believe in the crumbling elm, which owes nothing to memory.
Let the loons lift. Let the past recede into rapeseed.
Faith is the shrinking distance between his mouth and mine.
I believe the fate of the shoreline.
I believe cattails shattering into seed.
Nothing can stop the waves.
Let the fish strain against fish lines.
Let the bloody pliers tear out the hooks.
Sestina: Like
With a nod to Jonah Winter
Now we’re all “friends,” there is no love but Like,
A semi-demi goddess, something like
A reality-TV star look-alike,
Named Simile or Me Two. So we like
In order to be liked. It isn’t like
There’s Love or Hate now. Even plain “dislike”
Is frowned on: there’s no button for it. Like
Is something you can quantify: each “like”
You gather’s almost something money-like,
Token of virtual support. “Please like
This page to stamp out hunger.” And you’d like
To end hunger and climate change alike,
But it’s unlikely Like does diddly. Like
Just twiddles its unopposing thumbs-ups, like-
Wise props up scarecrow silences. “I’m like,
So OVER him,” I overhear. “But, like,
He doesn’t get it. Like, you know? He’s like
It’s all OK. Like I don’t even LIKE
Him anymore. Whatever. I’m all like ... ”
Take “like” out of our chat, we’d all alike
Flounder, agape, gesticulating like
A foreign film sans subtitles, fall like
Dumb phones to mooted desuetude. Unlike
With other crutches, um, when we use “like,”
We’re not just buying time on credit: Like
Displaces other words; crowds, cuckoo-like,
Endangered hatchlings from the nest. (Click “like”
If you’re against extinction!) Like is like
Invasive zebra mussels, or it’s like
Those nutria-things, or kudzu, or belike
Redundant fast food franchises, each like
(More like) the next. Those poets who dislike
Inversions, archaisms, who just like
Plain English as she’s spoke — why isn’t “like”
Their (literally) every other word? I’d like
Us just to admit that’s what real speech is like.
But as you like, my friend. Yes, we’re alike,
How we pronounce, say, lichen, and dislike
Cancer and war. So like this page. Click Like.
What Do I Care
What do I care, in the dreams and the languor of spring,
That my songs do not show me at all?
For they are a fragrance, and I am a flint and a fire,
I am an answer, they are only a call.
But what do I care, for love will be over so soon,
Let my heart have its say and my mind stand idly by,
For my mind is proud and strong enough to be silent,
It is my heart that makes my songs, not I.
Detox Passage
after William Brewer
You find spoons everywhere:
under kitchen cabinets, inside comforters,
poking through boxer briefs. Yesterday,
you sat on the sofa and discovered spoons
had replaced stuffing. You cut open cushions,
heaved out hundreds. This is a clearing process.
You dream only of metal. The pastor tells you:
This is normal. You must simply let go of the spoons.
You accept this but the sink still fills up with silver.
The shower spits sterling. Rid yourself of the temptation,
my son. The pastor has our father's blue-green eyes.
You listen and nod: throw out every spoon in the house.
You tell the pastor you can do it. You believe
you can do it. God is with you, my son.
The jerks in your arms and teeth begin
to go. All you had to do was rid yourself
of temptation. You thank God for new strength,
bow your head to pray for more good,
more clean, but every time you close
your eyes you see
that silver curve
and linger.
French Toast
ah my mother used to make it
with eggs and milk
and stale white bread
slid onto a plate with
Log Cabin fake maple syrup
and I always wanted more
to disappear what troubled me
the man under the moon
the man in our living room
make enough spitting bacon
to forget the broken gameboards
splintered bat
missing family car
his vanishings and sudden returns
smelling of other rooms
my mother’s tears
over the stove
her catchy milky breath
Do not go gentle into that good night
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Galileo
I thought I could stop
time by taking apart
the clock. Minute hand. Hour hand.
Nothing can keep. Nothing
is kept. Only kept track of. I felt
passing seconds
accumulate like dead calves
in a thunderstorm
of the mind no longer a mind
but a page torn
from the dictionary with the definition of self
effaced. I couldn’t face it: the world moving
on as if nothing happened.
Everyone I knew got up. Got dressed.
Went to work. Went home.
There were parties. Ecstasy.
Hennessy. Dancing
around each other. Bluntness. Blunts
rolled to keep
thought after thought
from roiling
like wind across water—
coercing shapelessness into shape.
I put on my best face.
I was glamour. I was grammar.
Yet my best couldn’t best my beast.
I, too, had been taken apart.
I didn’t want to be
fixed. I wanted everything dismantled and useless
like me. Case. Wheel. Hands. Dial. Face.
And the News Reporter Says ‘Jesus is White’
She says it with a smile
Like it’s the most obvious thing in the world
So sure of herself
Of her privilege
Her ability to change history
Rewrite bodies to make them look like her
She says it the same way politicians say racism no longer exists
The same way police officers call dead Black boys thugs
The same way white gentrifiers call Brooklyn home
She says it with an American accent
Her voice doing that American thing
Crawling out of her throat
Reaching to clasp onto something
That does not belong to her
I laugh to myself
What makes a Black man a Black man?
Is it a white woman’s confirmation?
Is it her head nod?
Is it the way she’s allowed to go on national television
And auto correct the Bible and God himself,
Tell him who his son really was?
What makes a black man a black man:
The way reporters retell their deaths like fairytales
The way their skulls split across pavement
The way they cannot outrun a bullet
The way they cannot inherit privilege
How can she say Jesus was a white man
when he died the blackest way possible?
With his hands up
With his mother watching,
Crying at his feet
Her tears nothing more than gossip
for the news reporters or prophets to document
With his body left to sour in the sun
With his human stripped from his Black
Remember that?
How the whole world was saved by a Black man
By a man so loved by God,
He called him kin
He called him Black
Now ain’t that suspicious?
Ain’t that news worthy?
Ain't that something worth being killed over?
Professional Spanish Knocks on the Door
At first we don’t answer.
Knocks that loud usually mean 5-0 is on the other end.
Señora ábrenos la puerta porfavor.
Estamos aquí para platicar con usted.
No queremos llamar la policía.
The person on the other side of the door
is speaking professional Spanish.
Professional Spanish is fake friendly.
Is a warning.
Is a downpour when you
Just spent your last twenty dollars on a wash and set.
Is the kind of Spanish that comes
to take things away from you.
The kind of Spanish that looks at your Spanish like it needs help.
Professional Spanish of course doesn’t offer help.
It just wants you to know that it knows you need some.
Professional Spanish is stuck up
like most people from the hood who get good jobs.
Professional Spanish is all like I did it you can do it too.
Professional Spanish thinks it gets treated better than us
because it knows how to follow the rules.
Because it says Abrigo instead of Có.
Because it knows which fork belongs to the salad
and which spoon goes in the coffee.
Because it gets to be the anchor on Telemundo and Univision
and we get to be the news that plays behind its head in the background.
Reasons for Staying
The October leaves coming down, as if called.
Morning fog through the wild rye beyond the train tracks.
A cigarette. A good sweater. On the sagging porch. While the family sleeps.
That I woke at all & the hawk up there thought nothing of its wings.
That I snuck onto the page while the guards were shit-faced on codeine.
That I read my books by the light of riot fire.
That my best words came farthest from myself & it’s awesome.
That you can blow a man & your voice speaks through his voice.
Like Jonah through the whale.
Because a blade of brown rye, multiplied by thousands, makes a purple field.
Because this mess I made I made with love.
Because they came into my life, my brothers, like something poured.
Because crying, believe it or not, did wonders.
Because my uncle never killed himself—but simply died, on purpose.
Because I made a promise.
That the McDonald’s arch, glimpsed from the 2 AM rehab window, was enough.
That mercy is small but the earth is smaller.
Summer rain hitting Peter’s bare shoulders.
Because I stopped apologizing myself toward visibility.
Because this body is my last address.
The moment just before morning, like right now, when it’s blood-blue & the terror incumbent.
Because the sound of bike spokes heading home at dawn is unbearable.
Because the hills keep burning in California.
Through red smoke, singing. Through the singing, an exit.
Because only music rhymes with music.
The words I’ve yet to use: Timothy grass, Jeffrey pine, celloing, cocksure, light-lusty, midnight-green, gentled, water-thin, lord (as verb), russet, pewter, lobotomy.
The night’s worth of dust on his upper lip.
Barnjoy on the cusp of winter.
The broken piano under a bridge in Windsor that sounds like footsteps when you play it.
The Sharpied sign outside the foreclosed house: SEEKING PUSH MOWER. PLEASE CALL KAYLA.
The train whistle heard through an open window after a nightmare.
Sleeping in the back seat, leaving the town that broke me, intact.
Early snow falling from a clear, blushed sky.
As if called.
Exile
And worn my melancholy with an air.
My tears were big as stars to deck my hair,
My silence stunning as a sapphire ring.
Oh, more than any light the dark could fling
A glamour over me to make me rare,
Better than any color I could wear
The pearly grandeur that the shadows bring.
What is there left to joy for such as I?
What throne can dawn upraise for me who found
The dusk so royal and so rich a one?
Laughter will whirl and whistle on the sky—
Far from this riot I shall stand uncrowned,
Disrobed, bereft, an outcast in the sun.
UNSTEADY
Hope staggers in like a drunk
to the last bar open. Lays down a five
and groans However much can this get me.
Reeks of cigarettes and bleach.
God, he is uneven and shaky
but his eyes are steely jade,
his pulse throbs sweetly
above his eyelid. The crowd
thins quick when the news
comes on, but I’m swooning
by the jukebox as another country
crooner belts out woes. Hope
flicks a Zippo, can’t get it to light.
He keeps trying. I like that about him.
We Two, How Long We Were Fool'd
We two, how long we were fool’d,
Now transmuted, we swiftly escape as Nature escapes,
We are Nature, long have we been absent, but now we return,
We become plants, trunks, foliage, roots, bark,
We are bedded in the ground, we are rocks,
We are oaks, we grow in the openings side by side,
We browse, we are two among the wild herds spontaneous as any,
We are two fishes swimming in the sea together,
We are what locust blossoms are, we drop scent around lanes mornings and evenings,
We are also the coarse smut of beasts, vegetables, minerals,
We are two predatory hawks, we soar above and look down,
We are two resplendent suns, we it is who balance ourselves orbic and stellar, we are as two comets,
We prowl fang’d and four-footed in the woods, we spring on prey,
We are two clouds forenoons and afternoons driving overhead,
We are seas mingling, we are two of those cheerful waves rolling over each other and interwetting each other,
We are what the atmosphere is, transparent, receptive, pervious, impervious,
We are snow, rain, cold, darkness, we are each product and influence of the globe,
We have circled and circled till we have arrived home again, we two,
We have voided all but freedom and all but our own joy.
Danse Russe
If I when my wife is sleeping
and the baby and Kathleen
are sleeping
and the sun is a flame-white disc
in silken mists
above shining trees,—
if I in my north room
dance naked, grotesquely
before my mirror
waving my shirt round my head
and singing softly to myself:
“I am lonely, lonely.
I was born to be lonely,
I am best so!”
If I admire my arms, my face,
my shoulders, flanks, buttocks
against the yellow drawn shades,—
Who shall say I am not
the happy genius of my household?
Excerpt from "I Can't Breathe"
Trying times all the time
Destruction of minds, bodies, and human rights
Stripped of bloodlines, whipped and confined
This is the American pride
It's justifying a genocide
Romanticizing the theft and bloodshed
That made America the land of the free
To take a black life, land of the free
To bring a gun to a peaceful fight for civil rights
You are desensitized to pulling triggers on innocent lives
Because that's how we got here in the first place
These wounds sink deeper than the bullet
Your entitled hands could ever reach
Generations and generations of pain, fear, and anxiety
Equality is walking without intuition
Saying the protector and the killer is wearing the same uniform
The revolution is not televised
Media perception is forced down the throats of closed minds
So it's lies in the headlines
And generations of supremacy resulting in your ignorant, privileged eyes
We breathe the same and we bleed the same
But still, we don't see the same
Be thankful we are God-fearing
Because we do not seek revenge
We seek justice, we are past fear
We are fed up eating your shit
Because you think your so-called "black friend"
Validates your wokeness and erases your racism
That kind of uncomfortable conversation is too hard for your trust-fund pockets to swallow
To swallow the strange fruit hanging from my family tree
Because of your audacity
To say all men are created equal in the eyes of God
But disparage a man based on the color of his skin
Do not say you do not see color
When you see us, see us
We can't breathe
The World is Too Much with Us
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his weathèd horn.
Music From Childhood
You grow up hearing two languages. Neither fits your fits
Your mother informs you “moon” means “window to another world.”
You begin to hear words mourn the sounds buried inside their mouths
A row of yellow windows and a painting of them
Your mother informs you “moon” means “window to another world.”
You decide it is better to step back and sit in the shadows
A row of yellow windows and a painting of them
Someone said you can see a blue pagoda or a red rocket ship
You decide it is better to step back and sit in the shadows
Is it because you saw a black asteroid fly past your window
Someone said you can see a blue pagoda or a red rocket ship
I tried to follow in your footsteps, but they turned to water
Is it because I saw a black asteroid fly past my window
The air hums—a circus performer riding a bicycle towards the ceiling
I tried to follow in your footsteps, but they turned to water
The town has started sinking back into its commercial
The air hums—a circus performer riding a bicycle towards the ceiling
You grow up hearing two languages. Neither fits your fits
The town has started sinking back into its commercial
You begin to hear words mourn the sounds buried inside their mouths
The Second Coming
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Homonyms
I. 태우다 ・(T’aeuda)
-
-
To burn or singe by fire
-
To carry, give a ride, pick up
-
I burned you. You grew up
burning, bundled on my back.
Petulant petal, jaundiced thing,
plucked from my amniotic rib.
I had you suck the milk
of dandelions to take the yellow
from your skin, sliced antlers
rendered to wretched tea
to temper your bloodied
coughing. I dislodged
your limbs in hopes
you’d grow to something
lithe and desired, the suggestion
of a girl. And you did
until your girlhood grew
dangerous as it does
for all girls. I’ve been sorry
ever since. You burned
on the coattails of our
immigration. Signed
your tongue on America
until no tongue was rightfully
yours, until you came home
disgraced having pissed yourself
instead of asking to go
to the restroom in English.
But I wasn’t ashamed. I burned
you gently in my arms, burned
you all the way home, away
from the laughter, burned you
against my breast to safety.
And daughter, you will not
forget these aches you learned.
If you have a daughter,
you will burn her too.
Carrying Our Words
We travel carrying our words.
We arrive at the ocean.
With our words we are able to speak
of the sounds of thunderous waves.
We speak of how majestic it is,
of the ocean power that gifts us songs.
We sing of our respect
and call it our relative.