“I was interested in a coming-of-age story that wasn’t about running away from the domestic space but about burrowing and binding and rooting more deeply.”
somewhere a tiger loosens its throat or so she imagines / the rubber trees looming she lifts her paring knife to the day’s throat
They say / the faithful go to God with the love // of a child, they say the soul sees everything / without eyes. I am trying to understand // my life.
Back then I was committed to the color blue, felt moved to paint my walls, nails, furniture the same shade of teal. Now my body swells at the window with casual longing.
No one fasts just for the hell of it
At birth, my mother recites my ba zi / to a monk, and like all good daughters, // I do not ask. How can a mother / help but lead her daughter // Astray?
Or Say: a piece of rope at the top of the stairs where shame broke even and shame blame and victim bad-name got it’s nasty plug.
“The girl didn’t want a new life; she wanted her old comfortable life, though it was as worn out as her pajamas.”
We ride knife-cut roads across this back / of continent to the prairie’s torn edge / to a place where shadows limn loess
Perhaps it is now the other way around, / and I have become an almost-perfect lover, / caring little that the Gods love poets less.
Creativity, as it turns out, is especially hard when your brain is in survival mode.
She does not know if she’s an “opportunist”; this probably means she is an opportunist; She wonders if there is Judgement Day before the revolution; She forces all of her sexual partners to watch The Battle of Algiers.
rises, bloodied, and breathing and begins walking as if in hope. / of being heard.
a sunburn the shape of the settler dictator’s face on everyone who will claim /
FREE PALESTINE’s earth but not FREE PALESTINE’s skin
Let it be known this country has a memory / Let it be known the news called this / “Unrest in America” / as if for four hundred years / America’s been resting just fine
Our Lady of Scapulars, we carry you around / like credentials, like disgrace, we suffer
this insufferable heat and your packaged spirit’s / smothered by the reek of our sweat—how much closer / must we be?
He says that every winter was a cheap metal spoon// bent backward in a steaming pile of rice. So much of what he says is practice // for another language.
& on the drive to LAX /when I ask you not to cry this time, you look / at me with reverence as if to say, what came from me / is so much more than I am
I want to start over, thinks the body / to the one on the other side / her second chance / unharmed unhummed / and now unhinged
somewhere a tiger loosens its throat or so she imagines / the rubber trees looming she lifts her paring knife to the day’s throat
Creativity, as it turns out, is especially hard when your brain is in survival mode.
They say / the faithful go to God with the love // of a child, they say the soul sees everything / without eyes. I am trying to understand // my life.
She does not know if she’s an “opportunist”; this probably means she is an opportunist; She wonders if there is Judgement Day before the revolution; She forces all of her sexual partners to watch The Battle of Algiers.
Back then I was committed to the color blue, felt moved to paint my walls, nails, furniture the same shade of teal. Now my body swells at the window with casual longing.
rises, bloodied, and breathing and begins walking as if in hope. / of being heard.
No one fasts just for the hell of it
a sunburn the shape of the settler dictator’s face on everyone who will claim /
FREE PALESTINE’s earth but not FREE PALESTINE’s skin
At birth, my mother recites my ba zi / to a monk, and like all good daughters, // I do not ask. How can a mother / help but lead her daughter // Astray?
Let it be known this country has a memory / Let it be known the news called this / “Unrest in America” / as if for four hundred years / America’s been resting just fine
Or Say: a piece of rope at the top of the stairs where shame broke even and shame blame and victim bad-name got it’s nasty plug.
Our Lady of Scapulars, we carry you around / like credentials, like disgrace, we suffer
this insufferable heat and your packaged spirit’s / smothered by the reek of our sweat—how much closer / must we be?
“The girl didn’t want a new life; she wanted her old comfortable life, though it was as worn out as her pajamas.”
He says that every winter was a cheap metal spoon// bent backward in a steaming pile of rice. So much of what he says is practice // for another language.
We ride knife-cut roads across this back / of continent to the prairie’s torn edge / to a place where shadows limn loess
& on the drive to LAX /when I ask you not to cry this time, you look / at me with reverence as if to say, what came from me / is so much more than I am
Perhaps it is now the other way around, / and I have become an almost-perfect lover, / caring little that the Gods love poets less.
I want to start over, thinks the body / to the one on the other side / her second chance / unharmed unhummed / and now unhinged