Haven’t you heard? When your mother
lunges at you with a bread knife
it is only because she has
swallowed a hurricane for you,
her hair still swollen with salt &
tadpoles. And when you come home to
find your light bulbs replaced with moons,
know that it is just the Chinese
way of saying please. In the books
you are sky-colored & dressed in
doghide, smoke cloud bloomed by bullets.
If I could write, every do
or frame
we walked through would be shaped like
a girl. Your tongue catching bodies
the way we learn to hold chopsticks:
one pepper seed at a time. Don’t
you know? The best place to bleed
out is in the snow. The man that
watches you sleep is just a boy
afraid of letting go. & if
you find yourself full of holes, the
way they beat fish at the markets,
think of the hands, damp & cherried
with rain, that once tore your mother
out of the house
she learned to dance in.