Category: Poetry

This morning on my phone, I watched an orangutan in a destroyed forest attack a bulldozer, while two other primates tried to stop him. There was a third primate in the bulldozer, and I wonder if it was scared, looking through the metal and plastic of the cabin out at this enraged great ape with long arms. The scene looked like it smelled of petrichor and wood shavings, and probably the ripe smell of orange fur, sweat, and panic from two different but related animals. I’ve never been comfortable watching orangutans or gorillas at zoos. Through the green branches, even from a safe distance, you could see their eyes and facial expressions. Who are these tall, hairless creatures who eat chocolate spread in toast and pastries and who need extra smooth peanut butter? Why am I here, and why are they staring at me? I want to go home. Where is my home?

Spock receives a mystery card, thinks it’s from Kirk, but it’s not.

This is exactly the way it should have happened:

Jim and Spock get wasted and Jim discovers spontaneous bonding,

which precipitates an unintended cultural exchange.

This is exactly the way it should have happened:

Spock must bond with Jim in order to save his life,

which precipitates an unintended cultural exchange—

Spock thought no one was looking.

Spock must bond with Jim in order to save his life,

an incident during a disastrous shore leave when

Spock thought no one was looking.

Some things are inevitable.

Spock receives a mystery card, thinks it’s from Kirk, but it’s not.

The last thing Jim wants is telepathic proof that Spock hates him—

some things are inevitable—

and Chekov never means to eavesdrop.

The other day, I went to the doctor because I couldn’t

get warm. I would rub my fingers together, cricket fast,

rub my hands against my cold jeans, hug the heater,

put on jackets, don several scarves, and wear a hat. I tried

gloves. I exercised,

mostly.

I watched TV, saw what they planned for the wolf

cubs in their dens, imagined tall

white men with bombs crunching away from the helicopter.

I boiled, still frozen.

The appointment was for next

month, and while I waited, I drew shapes

into the frozen condensation on my arms. I chilled

beers with my hands, stood close to friends at hot ball games,

went to the desert and paved my way

through the wavy lines with my stiff limbs.

With his gloved hand, he took my pulse, recommended

rest, and told me to make another appointment

if I didn’t get better.

I left and settled

into an alcove in a park,

surrounded by shrubs and passing

squirrels, and I became her,

the marble statue in the garden.

Look how patiently

she seems to stare

away, as if waiting.

But really though, the convent

didn’t prepare me for this—

for the beautiful drag queens lip syncing on stage,

the stamps on my skin, on my oven burn,

the heat of a crowd warmed from the inside out

by LA water, cosmos, exotic drinks with rum 

that spin the room like the music

that slides against the walls,

against posters on the walls

of men with bigger breasts, and lovelier faces, and joy

so palpable I’m proud of strangers

in the crowd and on the stage, all here 

for the change in rhythm I give, 

because why keep the status quo?

New shapes, copies of infinity,

hips and unfamiliar hands,

feathers and beads and air—

fresh in the parking lot,

the blood cooling in our veins,

and I begin to concern myself

with the driver, who’s had a couple,

and the insufficient material of my jacket.

Dear diary,

last week, I made a cow

for the queen, wooden,

hollow, so she could meet the white bull

in the corral, at midnight. Dear

diary, it’s been nine months. She’s asked me to turn

the splintered shell into a crib.

I recarved it, a cradle for the large

shape under her dress. Dear diary,

two years since I made the cradle,

the king has ordered I use it

to construct a sign. The Labyrinth, he said,

an enormous maze, at the center a little,

hungry toddler with flat teeth, one who looks

at us sideways.

Dear diary, seven years since

the king locked my secrets in the tower.

My son is growing

taller. It’s time. The window is large

and our wings rest on mannequins

against the wall. Tomorrow we fly

away, a new life.

Around that time, prom was only two weeks away, or so. A butter yellow dress hung in the closet. Thailand felt heavy, a wet that settled on our skins and hair. The Songkran painted our bus with super soakers, smiles through running window streams, people in the streets, colors and splashes of balloons. We rode elephants and fed them tiny bananas; they grabbed them with polite, no-nonsense trunks. Please, don’t touch. Please, don’t sit on the crocodiles. The man stared down the long, black danger-noodle, and they danced. The man kissed the noodle on the head like I’d kiss my small cat before bed. He passed the live cobra around. Look at this dark silk rope—here, touch. At home, you were waiting to call me again and cry into the phone with dry eyes. It felt smooth, a flawless dry surface with hypodermic fangs that could kill. Once bitten, the venom affects a person’s nervous system, causing severe pain, vertigo, blurred vision, paralysis. People slip into comas, stop breathing. I was the first to touch it.

The line’s grown long
again. I’ve counted six pairs
of black, work shoes.

Every person has nice
shoes. For some reason
people insist on sweatshirts.

I’d like a Sunday hat,
to wear to church, though I
don’t go to church.

Perhaps the church should advertise
hats, as a selling point.
Being unfreckled, I wish freckles

were my problem. Two paper
cups across a table might say
to each other, I know

what it’s like to be empty, too.
The noise is constant, several
conversations congregate in the recesses

of the room like a flock of reed-voiced
birds discussing politics,
cynically. Interviewers have taken

over an entire half
of a café. At some point I’ll stop

staring at the pastries behind glass,
glazed as if freshly made,
rather than a day-old remainder.

The line has gotten longer.
A girl’s shirt reads
Game on, but I don’t

know what she means exactly.
Pre-gaming implies one needs
inebriation to enjoy padded

body jousting. What do you
say to the man with two
llamas fucking on his shirt?

Uncle Sam is on a button
on the man’s backpack and he’s angry
about the man’s wardrobe selection.

What Not to Wear—
founding father edition.
Sir, your ideals don’t

match your party colors.
Never pair flippancy with neoliberalism.
He should try a cooler palette.

The time you were adventurous and tried the crocodile dishes—the first, fried in batter, tasted like particularly tough chicken, and the second, hunks of patterned flesh plumped into a plate full of spiced, red liquid, smelled like cinnamon and tasted like cinnamon and felt half-decayed as it slid between your teeth, melted over your tongue, and slipped down your throat ensuring that you would avoid all Thai food back in the States for at least two years. The two times, three times, four times you went to Yoshinoya to eat the beef bowl, each sliver of meat attached to another by the thinnest tendon which you didn’t bother to cut. You just swallowed the one and had to decide, while choking, whether to try and swallow the second or pull the first back up. The two months without salt. The Japanese restaurant where she told you it wouldn’t taste like fish so you took a huge bite of unagi sushi. The recipes in the treatment book that looked great until you tried them.  The seventeenth occasion on which the restaurant got your order wrong and you finally broke down. All the times you spat up as a child, regurgitating things you were certain you hadn’t eaten at all recently. The bite of guacamole at your mom’s friend’s house—homemade with tortilla chips—that tasted so good you had three more bites before your throat began to close. When you forgot that the full feeling is a warning, kept stealing fries off of your dad’s plate, your brother’s barbeque ribs, your cousin’s baked potato so large it needed its own plate, until your tiny stomach swelled so much you didn’t stop crying until the Pepto kicked in. Desperately eating a cheeseburger after the low-iodine diet, and the inability to digest it afterward—trying to laugh at a Woody Allen movie and the inability to do so to past the ache in your spine. The time you accidentally drank a sip of your best friend’s beer, didn’t like it, and poured the rest down the sink—the beer that another friend had brought back from England. Thoughts of the food in the hospital room—the plastic-wrapped wheat roll, the rice, the freezer vegetables, and the roast beef, smells of the ochre marinade, saltless—making you just as nauseous as after the radiation pill made you throw it all back up. After the hospital, able to eat again and smelling the waffle cones in the ice cream parlor, picking rocky road and tasting absolutely nothing—in front of a plate of fettuccini alfredo and tasting absolutely nothing. The times you burned your tongue on the breakfast tea.