Blur.

copper thin

i am suffering with 4 cents
gargled and unmoved in the back
of my throat. ravishing, hunched,
stagnant saliva drowning
in its own water,

trying to recall the taste
of tainted minerals
and the silk of her shirt.

lay back, she says,
flesh and buttered cotton
buried half visible against the horizon.

dropped another penny
through my ear,
put her head up to mine,
and waited to hear the plunk.

ribs are the strongest,
but they are useless as forks
devoured by soup.

and my stomach?

she jokes it is endless.

peak

you do not think,
balancing on a folded plane
to land on the collarbone of your sister;

and pull her close
to the rain spit on pavement,
out of her car and
tight hair and
every pin that is
barely holding her up.

you offer her your glass of milk,
a squirt of honey—
ancient generations reminding the recipe,
but it’s all saturated fat, carbs,
sugars that used to sink delicately
but now shrug into guilt.

come back to the mountains,
you say, but no one’s
used to the steep trail up.

settling

i am catching up on
sun’s blood and
letting her dry in my hair.

when i am sick,
she spoonfeeds me dew
and watches the window
sweat in desperation,
finding solace elsewhere.

we have learned to braid
our mouths in code-knots
and experiment with
language’s lies.

my sun will show up
tomorrow morning
at the edge of my bed,
perhaps.

nothing has disappeared somewhere else.

Neighborhood Sidewalks

How does it feel
to smile with no mouth?

We remember idle conversation
and the silhouette of a pondering head
and how subtracted muteness tasted different.

Think of summer of ’08,
knocking Barbie heads together in slushy syrup fingers
until all we could do is muffle our suffocation into the carpet and
breathe Marvel’s crimson fizz, glass, freshly mowed grass,
lifting up rocks and following the beads of ants
and pretend we’re the dominators
even though we don’t dare poke them.

We exchanged horoscopes with our pupils,
and mine read, “You are bubbly this week,
so make it your own,” but I’d wait
to watch your face tilt until
the shadows molded correctly
on to your face of approval.

(You never read yours.)

Now, with the distance from here to Georgia
only half of reality, I cannot flick off the pebbles
you’ve kicked up from running ahead,
nor store them in my pocket
because inspecting gravel is inspecting the future.

I’ve sewed up my own fence of teeth,
chewed on enough rocks to remember
that it makes my gums bleed
and familiarized the desolation of vowels
in the process of healing;
but along with the rest of my body,
they have nothing to observe in front of them—
no cardboard substance to block the sun or my shadow.

documented: xv

this was what some of you may call a ‘quick write’, except with every 45 sec-1 min., a miscellaneous word was thrown at me.

amour de soi, self love, origin of all passions. now, here i am listening to a woman with an accent i could hear sing all evening long. stalling. you know, they tell you to let your ink spill, but i let my ink pee. you know that feeling of rushing to the bathroom, stalling, perhaps, a butterfly taped inside the door— but it’s not there. you pee anyway, continuous like that pissing ballpoint pen. you look at that butterfly again, taped against a drab chrysanthemum shade, a different background this time, a bouquet. a man, a serf with hazel grey eyes and youth withering brings this butterfly, perhaps dead, this bouquet, presents it to his lover; his lover, an egg at home, waiting by the door and tasting dust in the back of her throat. she has a yolk— his goal is to penetrate to that glistening yolk, but Lord knows, she’s young; his fingers are thinner than the sausages fed to the dogs or rabies. wait for the day she drops herself on the floor— and this time it isn’t gravity’s fault. it’s her bones yearning, calcium thinning as the lark in her throat catches a cold during winter solstice and dies. lady will pluck her vocal chord, a Spanish guitar that was her father’s— because hope shakes and decides that she can never conquer her own dominion, but everyone else’s. the girl stalls; she tastes a ringing, but there is no bell, for it’s broken, unless it’s the one in the parlour, her grandmum’s— an egg less fragile than her ma, why, who knows? she vanished in the steam of the 10:30 am train, her wisps of hair blurred into the thick mud coughing up underneath the lines of infinite wheels—go—go—go— they don’t call it peer pressure. someday, they think think of when they’ll go towards heaven, up a ladder, meeting gabriel, never catching a glimpse of the daunting Father— his eyes were softer than daggers, but the results more deadly. what? God? Father? how do we always slither into religion anyways> God, oh, and don’t use his name in vain. we can’t watch the moonrise dead, he says to her. her egg warbles inside, and her lark asleep.

Out and Over

The birthing of a poem was
not as laborious as it was thought to be,
nor was it a teenager’s aimless fantasy
about a staggering heart, trying to be Poe’s niece
but not realizing, hey, that can’t be right…

Ask any proud parent who’s in a prison for a splatter of minutes;
they’re sure their kids cannot feel the stress of calcium
yearning away skywards; doesn’t hurt,
they shake their heads and giggle away the consonants
until sleep renders them a dumb tongue.

I am on my sheets, at a specific point
from someone coffeehouses up,
and they’ll never know I’ve conceived
a phrase of words—beep—
a prune dyed pink, with the nurse,
swaddling herself over this fledgling
like an ant anticipating its honey.
I snatch her back and run.

With the IV tubes creating an outline for roads,
trailing behind, my daughter will curve her feet on
and speak through dull graphite and
the smell of a ballpoint pen peeing itself.

I’m not yet finished,
and neither is she—
we’re dissolving McDonald’s friends
and trying to decipher a metaphor in its carbs.

procrastination will never be its own master.

home is where you put your mouth

how does it feel
to smile with no mouth?

she patted my cheeks
like the layers of dough in bread,
pinching them,
but as time multiplied,
so did its height.

you got hope because
all hope’s gotta do is
do what she does best,
or worst, you say.

i know, i say.

i know because
quiet is refuge,
and refuge desire.

open sesame

open seed;
her busted fetus of death’s frail womb
and moisture drops soil’s dehydrated tongue,
a quiet resignation, understanding,

is some triumph on the other side
where the picket fence, traitor,
glances in whatever direction he
hears noise.

&

we exchange our horoscopes
with our eyebrows,
and the mini universes beneath them,
circular and budding
as medicines and poisons.

&&

you are not shimmied away
by the sand’s magnetic force
nor stand with planted soles
on stone foundation.

you are lured
by wind’s woe of distance.