Letter to Myself

You are still your mother's daughter.

You are always barking up the wrong tree.
Lodging lozenges down your throat; you don't even have a cough.
The tall boy with the hidden heart and half smiles
offers only limb by limb; he is not a tree for you to climb.

You've shelved your past in parades of white dusted
off addictions to love, lines, words, hearts, cats, homes;
don't build a home in anyone's hand; they will
throw out your toothbrush and clothes.

You will never finish that book you once picked up.
The ending was already written. You were never meant to know.
You will try and wear every dress shoe.
Nothing fits you. You are destiny's barefooted wanderer,

rummaging through garage sales for used parts of hearts,
lock and key in hand to the wrong latch-key boy
who grew but never for you.
You tie knots in your belly instead of your heart.

You say you remember your mother's freckles; no, it must be
that you remember her face
the bars behind her eyes,
jailed in with the wishes of un-wishing the past
jailed in with lust giving in,
losing love and
child who is never

just loved.

You find the pieces of her,
scaling your imagined mountains.
They are never taller than your
father,
your lovers.
And still,
you cannot climb them
cannot climb past
the marks left by the last traveler
resurfacing,
beached jellyfish stinging, string lacerations.
The current that runs through you is
a ring of engagements to self
a ring around the rosy,
the kind that plagues your black death heart.
You wait for a new start,
you always bend at the knees
heels in the starting blocks
waiting for the starter gun
to go off to find a bullet wound.

Bare and open,
skinned fruit
flesh sun-singed
too ripe for any touch.

No one will eat you; no one will have you.
In passing, they will graze their fingertips over
your fertile flesh,
lick their lips
and say, You would've been good long ago.

Dating

He asked me once,
"Why are you so crazy?"

"Baby, I'm not crazy."

My eyes are fishbowls with two fish.
They are always trying to eat each other.
When I'm sad, I begin to pack.

"Where are you going?" he asks.
I shrug.
"I'm not crazy."

I'm packing my things now.
Socks.
I wore no socks when I ran away from home.
Humid air dotted my bruised forehead.
Shirt.
My father sent me a plaid tank top before my 7th birthday.
I wore it in the snow, a frozen gibbon, hanging on the black knobs of
grandmother's gate waiting for him
till the day passed.
Shorts
It was winter when my mother packed my things
into a shopping bag and left.
It was still summer in her head. We were still a family then.
She had packed only shorts, 2 pairs of underpants and a t-shirt.
Books
I drew my mother and father's faces over every couple, child voodoo.
Ineffective.

Journal
The pages I tore out are called Dear Mom:

"Dear Mom,
I'm not mad, but
when you come back to get me
will you remember to bring my pants?
And an extra pair of underpants?
I wore this one inside out. Twice.
P.S. Grandma's chicken Ggo Ggo scares me.
She eats her own egg.

Dear Mom,
I'm not sad, but Dad can't make it and
Santa?
Well, I think he may have moved.
Or forgot I moved. I wanted scented erasers and pencils for school.
Never mind about the pants and underpants.
Grandma gave me hers.

Dear Mom,
I'm not worried, but I think I'm being sent to America. Grandma said you
are not my mother.
I told her, 'Nuh uh! She has a scar on her belly. I saw it. It's where I
came from.'
She said, 'That woman had surgery for something else and lied to you.'
She lifted her shirt, showed me her belly.
'See? If I had a scar for each child I had,
wouldn't I have four?'

She scarlessly scarred me for life.

Dear Mom,
The woman I live with now is Dad's wife. America is not bad but cheese
gives me gas.
I eat bananas all day. I was trying to save you one, maybe send one back to
you, if you'll forward me
your new address.

Dear Mom,
The woman, I call her New Mom. But I don't mean it. Because you are not
old; you hate to be called that.

Dear Mom,
I drew you in class today, because I couldn't remember your face. Teacher
Hill got mad. Sent me to the principal's office.
There was trouble at home. I was trouble. I'm watching the mirror like it
is television. New Mom said I was just like you.
My eyes are puffy. My cheeks too. Why do tears and fists puff your face?
I'm pretending I'm a boxer. Dad likes boxing.
It's too bad he missed it.

Dear Mom,
I'm getting good grades now. English is not so hard now. I'm writing your
name over and over in my English notebook.
Large letters look empty as houses.

Dear Mom,
I'm not angry, but
the years build and wind upwards.
A spire to the abandoned cathedral.

There are shells
of bullets or
of sea
I hold in my fist clenched
called memories.

I can either
hold them up to my ear and listen
seashell sounds, calming or

or
bite the bullet and forget.

I'm constantly packing and unpacking
all my belongings
waiting to leave
before being left.

I have my right arm stamped "For You"
my left leg stapled to the next boy I see
I call him NOT DAD.
HE WILL NOT LEAVE ME FOR ANOTHER WOMAN.

I'm not sure if it's the stamp or the way I look at him
whenever he walks out the door that makes him uneasy.

It's just.
He keeps calling me
crazy."

CVS

I shop
like a born-again Christian,
Korean mother
attends church,
repeating my list
prescription, tissues, paper.

I pass two old men in the cold and flu aisle.
Their baskets are biographies.
They are sick; they like mint tea.

The men share their home remedy for cancer
as I compare before and after
sale prices.

How do you hold your future together,
life and death placed in the same basket?

Before the cashier calls,
"Next,"
we will pray to the milk and juice aisle to nourish us.
Ask the vitamins to bless our bellies and bone with long lives.
In the confessional aisle of seasonal shopping,
we will whisper how lucky we are to pass another holiday,
how we go too long, undecorated
waiting all our lives for the perfect pumpkin to go on sale.
We will open the box of chocolate hearts.
The first one we bite into will be a cherry of our
last love's kiss.
We'll sing hymns to the Christmas lights until
we bring in the new year
always brighter than
the one before.

Purged

Purged
as truth
from the pit of my stomach,

I’ll tell you.

I had mastered the art of femininity.
I’d been on a hundred, hungry fasts for the Goddess of Beauty.

I’ll tell you this:
let’s eat! If you ever believed in feminism,
don’t talk about how a woman makes 75 cents to a man’s dollar,
then go on your date, nibble on 2 pieces of lettuce, 4 peas and
a sliver of carrot to inherit the gaze of men.

The honey-glazed, hunt-down stare of the lurid men beside you
who unlike you have never known diet as a state of being,
who unlike you never worried that marriage
was hinged on weight
hung around the neck as a harness.

So you’ve side stepped your way like a Vegas show girl.
Patch quilted your mind with wishes of Pam Anderson’s tits
Jennifer Lopez’s ass
so that your man will love you more,
whose lustful-looks merely mimic love,

know that your heart deserves more than that Oh baby-ing, or
whistle-wanting hot body
waiting to pluck love
from looks.

I’ll tell you this:
while we turn a blind eye to social conventions
middle school cheerleaders are starving themselves to
Jessica Alba’s abs.
Fourth grade girls are watching their reflections in the mirror wondering
when they will find love through their budding breasts.

Hey, as the media minded faux-feminist,
tell me. How will you protect your daughter from slim fast shakes and the
MTV shake your money maker music videos?

I’ll tell you this:
You say you want to be the modern day woman warrior.
You say you want to walk in Hilary’s highest heels.
If you want to talk about
the hardships of women,
what changes we can make,
then let’s take off these high heels.

Our lustful, lipsticked lips are luring
wrongful stares.

I’ll tell you this:
I know about this faux-feminism; it was an inheritance.
Mothers and daughters bubble-wrapped in
media madness.

I fear for my own daughter’s blindness
Fear that she may smell my fear and wear it as a scent.

I’ll tell you this:
The purge-point to bulimia is only two fingers deep.

Mother, My Most Faithless Lover

I dream still of
falling asleep to your song,
under the red light
in the dim room
yellow bed covers
dull walls
linoleum floor.

The bathroom faucet
never shut off.
It dripped forever,
and there was a bucket full of wet clothes
you never wrung out to dry.

My cold toes
were tucked,
curled in my knees’ bend
cross legged.
You held me
in your lap
just fine
then.

Mother II

Mother II

It happens that I’m tired of being homeless.
It happens that I find lovers beneath green awnings of the ice cream shops
whose faces I have borrowed the night before
as yours and father’s
whose faces I gave back this morning,
gray as fog rising from the asphalt after rain.

The smell of fast food chains all linked in one strip mall
makes me want to hold a lost child’s hand, guide her home,
feed her a handful of crisp, hot fries dipped in cold ketchup.

I want nothing.
No more streets.
Nor umbrellas.
Nor benches.

It happens that I’m tired of shy shoulders,
my unfaithful feet
still circling.

In Response to Derrick Brown’s “Conquered Ventom”

when a poet is wronged,
she is wrought with venomous vengeance;
she might spill the contents of your past
and your childhood fears
at a local open mic night.
you asked, "wanna dance?"
only because i had no legs.

you should hold children. maybe girls.
you cannot hold onto a single
woman.
you love--like an empty soda can.
sticky sweet recyclable.

you gave it to me--like pissing in the mouths of
children
sun-dried
lost at sea
asking for water
yes. the sex,
you gave it to me like this.

the tremble between
my wet, aching thighs
were warning signs;
the richter scale read
a perfect 10.
fucking you
was drowning in a
surreal packet of lies.
sliding down
a slice of lime
naked with welts of paper cuts.
you stapled my hopes
with promises.
then un-stapled them,
sending me back to the copy machine.

your penis is failed white hope.
your penis is fucked misspelled in the last round of the 5th grade spelling bee.
your penis is a room full of school girls in mini skirts and training bras, knocked up,
lined up
for the morning after pill.

untangle me from your outreached limbs attached to that mutable muscle,
from that fetish-fiend, rusted-knife infection you call your heart.

how could you not tell me they used to use your father's semen to populate hell?
and how could you not tell me that your father was belial?
your heart is an open sore wound of a leper, oozing on for hours, dripping mucous unto stranger's shoes.
your caustic remarks are not "street."

you've lost your wit and charm along with your heart.
our distance is safety. everyone should be safe from you.

i would like a fuzzy, pink, stuffed bunny
with your cock buzzing between her lips
to remind me that someone else
is sucking you off right now.

over the phone
you ask, "are you ok?"
i nod.

the blank calendar misses her dates.
but most of all, the holidays
and all the dated contents:
pictures
movie tickets,
love letters
poems.

how long do i wait
covered in your street stench
til your voice no longer
hums pressed to my ear?

i am as worn as a whore's doormat.

when you said you wanted to keep me,
i didn't know you meant keep me
from loving.

You are a sea of lost causes;
St. Bartholomew couldn't save you.

You’re a masterful
heart cannibal.

Eat your heart out
as you ate me out.

You’re a tomb of lovers who were lost at war.
My lust for you plagues history's corpses.
You made my body love's cadaver.

So, you’re doing what your brain is telling you.
not your heart.

(Oh, really?)

Your words slither across my belly and
down into my sex;
for life,
I will be infertile.

There was a bloody revolution
in my pants;
your didactic dick
called for a coup d'etat.
Call me comrade when it’s over.
Fitting.

I see through you. You are a fucking mess
and I am the second law of thermodynamics:
I manifest a tendency
toward your decay and disorder.

I should have known better
then to have asked for a ride; you committed manslaughter.
You forgot to open my door, my dear.
I’m road-kill in the giant parking lot.

You fucked me in the frozen food aisle.
The cashier told me it was the only way you could get it up:
with the frozen artichoke heart.

Aren't you tired of waking up next to
strangers in the bruised fruit aisle?

I’ve made a new tab on my porn site
called pussy explosion:
There are videos of us
Every time you make me cum,
my heart explodes

Mr. Ticking Time Bomb,
I wait for your explosion, too.

On my worn knees,
ankles bound,
mouth gaping open.

You couldn't do it better if you were a priest,
and I,
a small boy seeking salvation
through your second
coming.

The fuck fest
in my bed every night will be
in your honor.

Instead of lubes and condoms,
I will wear a slut's wet suit
and slide in and out
of men's lives
thinking of you.

You fed me
toasted hope bagels.
You turned me
inside out, wore me out
as a Halloween costume.

Trick or treat.

Go ahead and feed me a fistful of candied,
bloody glass shards;
you know i will swallow whatever you give me.

I'm a putrid sea of shit storms for you.

I'm trying to flush and move on, but
even the toilet paper is mocking me.
the foul awakening each morning is this:

even in this stench

I’m

Still

Waiting

For

You.

Learning

One morning,
she woke
without the lemons in her heart:
the sour patch is now a bright orange,
sweet pumpkin patch.

She woke
inside his skin,
head turned awkwardly
against his smooth,
bare shoulder

facing his breathing.

Instead of saying,"Thank you
for entering me
and my life,"

she asked him to stop snoring
and laughed into her pillow
wondering why
he smelled
of home.

dedicated to:
권 태모

thank you

i'm prone to squeeze
the very last drop of my malignant mind.
to bleed every limb dry,
every mutable muscle
wrenched, dripping out
thoroughly
deepening in burgundy
dark pools, white tiled floors
watching myself diminish.

then you came;
all you said was,

"i want you to be happy"

as you held my hands in yours,
pressing the flesh of palms
to your lips.

i am on my knees now.
praying to
find you

seeping your childhood into mine
how we grew the same
how we taste the same

how your skin's seas crash into me
breaking upon rocks,
trickling into streams
water on arid land.

how we wrote our childhood voices in silence
and grew between walls of words unsaid.

i wished for you once
when i was young.

the stars mistook my wish.
why have you come so late?

dedicated to:
권 태모

Residents Inside my Head

My cheerleader asks,
If I’m on jv this year, I make varsity next year, right?
And the year after and the year after that, right?
What happens when there aren’t teams to cheer for?
Then what?

My truth says,
One child knows it. She is mute and invisible.
She wears a purple sweater with matching socks and a bow.
She sits in the middle of the classroom.
Her face is streaming.
She wants to tell you.

My doorkeeper sits with the door wide open,
with a miller lite in one hand
with a lit Marlboro in the other.
He is in someone else’s home.
He listens to the family’s voices telling me
what went wrong in my childhood.

My happily-ever-after is eating her poisoned apple.
This is my destiny, she says.
She lies dying in her most luxurious gown
still waiting to be kissed.

My loneliness counts the clocks ticking as tears.
She sleeps to them reminding herself that
they are not heartbeats of a lover, though
she is always touching herself to the ticking.
And my kindergartener?
It is always nap time when I find her.

And my mother?
She turns out all the lights to save electricity after five pm.
It's forever dark, but there is always cold rice and warm water.
My father has his back to me.
He is so sorry he cannot cry.
It's just
always raining.

And my heart caught a cold;
it is how she lost her voice.

He is Calm He is Rock

I want to grow his heart
Until it breaks into
Cherry tomato serpent vine.

I want to plant his mouth
His tundra eyes
And stream of smiles.

But he comes then leaves
Leaves faster than he comes.

He’s grown in a terrarium.
Under halogen bulbs

I want to scale his skin
Feed him mice.
Watch him swallow as I do.

But he comes then leaves.
Leaves faster than he comes.

I don’t ask him to stay;
it isn’t me.

Ice Cream

i want to taste the pink of your lips in strawberry.

or melt into the coffee of your flesh.

or find myself in frozen marsh-mellow mounds of

the rocky road you led me down.

your mint chocolate chip breath is just sweet enough;

you will never need to brush your teeth;

you are always minty fresh.

you fed me crunchy, frozen heath brittle

with your vanilla bean scoop within

waffle cone walls losing its crunch.

or you fed me spoonfuls of swirled caramel lies.

you bit the tip of your the fudge-cicle

and offered me the rest.

i held it, waiting for your return

watching it melt

sticky unto my hands and arms, following veins like trails

to un-named campsites of my forearm, dripping off my bent elbows…

i wanted to be the chocolate chips embedded in your vanilla,

covered within your cookie walls.

but you never bit.

i am forever crumbling for you.

for what it's worth

i want to eat my words.
and your heart.

i want to free those giraffes in the zoo.
name them after you.

dana
dana
dana

is always a boy giraffe in my book.

i want to be barefooted
and naked and

and
bake
in your kitchen.

i want to try.

i want to shower you
with what i have.

i want to shower with you, in you.

i want to rewind.

i want to forward.

i want to pause.

and find you

everywhere.

i want to be naked in all your pictures.

i want to be in all your porn.

i want to write poems

so you will always have coasters.

i want to not fear you like i fear birds flying south.

i want to shine your smiles.

i want to watch you throw out trash

and know you'll be back.

i want smoke outside your window

and watch your curtains wave.

i want to

read

while you watch sports.

i want to press my face into yours

and laugh,

because you look funny without your beard.

or

because you have a beard

and it tickles.

i want to find your headaches.

ask them to leave you for good.

i want to find you matching socks in the morning.

i want to be your matching sock.

i want to make you sweet

(potatoes.)

i want to find you in my sleep.

i want to fix everything

and never leave.

i want to take the lint out of your belly button.

i want to laugh at your large feet.

i want to run in your streets

and bring you coffee.

only after i get myself one first.

and only after you call me a jerk

for not bringing you one.

(i thought you were still sleeping. it was only noon.)

i want to scratch your back while you fall asleep

(i want to grow my nails just for you.)

i want to

never be sorry to you again.

We Hadn't Touched in Months

the grapes in the shade
outside the window
are raisins now.

the kitchen fan never stops.
my toes are numb nubs,
breaking off unto
rex porcelain tiles.

my face is stretched out
like a neck leaning,
gleaning for sunlight.

you reach across the table
where my hands lay
limp on the burgundy cloth.
the water glass
was drunk from your gaze.

Everyone is doing it.

You think,
I know everyone was doing it
but me.

Leslie with braces
was doing it.
Nikki did it with a boy she met
in detention called Christian.
Mara said,
Andrew’s cock hangs
pointing half way down her
inner thigh

You think,
Gross.
Or maybe it’s hot.
You aren’t sure.

At home,
you practice
looking sexy,
dropping your strap
“carelessly,”
grazing your own skin,
pouting your lips.

From Teen Vogue,
you ordered a
“How to Seduce Boys” pamphlet.

The number one rule was
“Play hard to get.”

“Give him your number.
When he calls,
don’t pick up.
Tell him you were out of town.
You will always be out of town.
Flirt shamelessly with all his friends.”

You do it,
imagining yourself as
the woman you want to become
who is sleek and beautiful and sexy and thin,
large breasts and lush lips
whose voice purrs in men’s dreams.
You want to be the woman he falls asleep to while loving
the woman he wakes up next to.
Wishing for you.

Your mother
calls you and your sisters for the “talk.”
In front of her was the Korean Times.

China is overpopulated.
She said pointing at the headline.
Sex is for reproduction.
Since China is overpopulated,
just adopt from China.

No one ever tells you what it’ll be like.

You learned
with your first.

You kiss and explore
the other,
gliding between lips
over tongues.
Teach the other
when to breathe
when to press in closer.

You pressed and pressed
danced your lips
hips hands pressed

and wondered how you fit so perfectly
and how it felt like a volcano
or dew drops

unhooked and unzipped
and clothes fluttered passed
like moths from summer porch lights.

What has this to do with love?

How a stranger’s gaze becomes
flattering and repulsive at once
or how wet you get when some guy
you should have let go long ago
says I love you.

You cross the lines,
blur the obvious
blend the lines of normal abnormal
disguise yourself as virgin whore
demure, then lie with everyone you see
and wonder
how you got so confused…

He conducts symphony
in your belly.
You lie close.
It is just his eyes you feel,
how they set ablaze the soil of your skin
how no one tells you it’s ok.
or not ok

How your belly swells.

By then,
your father is no longer your father.
Your mother does not look at you.
You’re sent away to a distant relative’s,

nine months later
returning
with your baby who you must name
Little Sister.

ipod

My Ipod has learned my feet’s movement.
I am in love with the ice cream man who sleeps at the wheel.
My neighbors are agnostic priests; I pray daily to my shoes.
Wikipedia.com is drawing conclusions to my life’s thesis.
The postman is Bukowski drinking and betting against me.

My dresser hates the way I look in her clothes; I’m perpetually without clothes.
She forbids me.
My heart has grown heavy so I put my breasts on a diet. Now they are holes
Dug in deeper than graves where I bury fingers, toes and nipples.

I crossed the river on foot
Only to be caught under the unfinished bridge
With the taste of ice cream on my skin.

I went to an eighth grade winter wonder ball
Dressed in my most brilliant sundress.
No one asked me for a dance.

I dreamed I went to Regie Cabico’s pool party
Dressed as a school girl’s mary janes.

Lifting my skirt, I offered,
Put the condoms in the freezer. Let’s try to have babies in-vitro.

My ipod has learned my feet’s movement.
My lover is the ice cream man; he is diabetic and licks himself to sleep.
My neighbors are agnostic priests; I’m their new messiah.

My feet grow roots like leaves sucking air from permafrost.

Love Talks and Slow Jams

I.
The girl dances, circling her hips
Her belly rising, falling.
The boy plucks, plays guitar
to her taut calves,
paper-skinned,
knees loose.

The girl is a crock pot
with dark stock, and thickening roux of the past.
Shredding meaty moral sinews.
She serves herself to him in a large blue bowl.
He eats her
Filled, dark
Full-bellied.

The girl feels light,
Released.

II.
She watches other boys
Feeling giddy and
Flirts.

The boy shrugs, kicking dirt.
Inside, his intestines are
Eels slithering through his rib cage.
His body hunches over
Wrenching,
Worried warts bud the walls
of his stomach
down to his groin
now knowing
understanding
its growth.

I feel weightless and free
The girl says.

I cannot stand, I cannot keep my knees
From kissing, the boy says:

This must be love.

Quixotic

Over the phone,
he was kissing you good night
though you did not ask.
A month ago,
you imagined growing grey hairs with him,
sleeping to his breathing
till your eyelids grew heavy with age,
till your hands grew into spotted, pink petals,
till your top lip grew vertical lines
meeting your lower lip
now thin, from years of hard kissing.

Instead,
you woke to his cold feet.

So
you learned the art of forgetting.
Scraping the taste of his neck
from your tongue,
growing a callous on each fingertip,
hard as buttons
from not touching.
Not touching
the brown paper bag
the bruising, blue plums inside
the shiny wood floors
the white-washed walls of each locked room
the dirty fork with only two tines.
You smudge out the tears
naming them,
“Not good enough.”
You mutter to yourself,
“One day
the mustached man will comb out
the landmines in his heart; it is not my job.”

For DJT

Even Now

I promise myself each morning
that I will not want you.

I will not

will not
stare blankly into the mirror
watching myself
become (a) stranger.

I tape pictures over windows
so that I do not look out.

I enclose myself
in this room,
a womb of icicles and rain.

How it trickles down unto my bare back
arched over your memories
still trying out
your touch.

How slowly,
over my flesh,
your fingers
irrigated trails...

(I’m in constant revision.
Rewriting your words.)

You dug so deeply,
ingrained into me

(The way you extend your chin
outwards, and press your lips together;
Or the way your eyes squint
to hold back obscenities you
are too polite to say though you
flaunt your im-polite-ness.)

This desert now aches
for rivers it never knew of.

Already, there are names of banks
and fish
and trees rooted.


I do not remember how it was before.
Arid. Safe.

I will not

will not think of you today.

As I drive by your favorite ice cream place,
Cold Stone. (Like you.)

I don’t look. And it is just that
that makes me think of you.

How I turn away to avoid
Looking.

Your eyes,
Were never fixed.

(This night is
filled with noise
in someone else’s arms.)

Even now
your storm
keeps me up and wet.

For Dana Tompkins

Black Tuesday

The nights taste of missing people and milk.
I wander the streets sweeping wet grass, to keep flowers from dipping,
to gather the last fallen leaf.

Winter-frosted grounds mirror the sky
With hang-gliding clouds.
I’m content the flowers are dead now.
They fit the heart of love emails sent as attachments.

Each winter night, the air tries on a gale; it takes me home.
Sometimes, it snows…
And grass stops growing.

Then I whisper that I love you.

On days like that,
children chide parents,
sell innocence for pants and shoes to keep warm.

Each day that I love you
The stock market crashes.

there are whispers of your warmth
on my shoulder and neck
like welts from lust.

i tend to call it what it isn't.

i tried on shoes of every color.
the electric blue pleather pumps were
the most bruised.
so i tried them on for size.
of course, they fit.

it won't be long before you are at the bottom of the sea,
a seaweed tangled stone
feeding fish
algae.

i hope you are gone soon.

so i can take off all my wet clothes
and dry myself
beneath the lanterns of your heat stroke.

you are so mad now.

i am afraid of you.
i am so afraid of you.

i’m sorry. i’m so sorry.
when we don't find words fitting

what will you wear to our funeral?
how will you know what i'm called?

the open casket party
will give you dead people makeup
and embalming fluid
as party favors. they will come in large, green tote bags
resembling a leaf.

it used to be so easy
to let the words slide down.
sometimes,
the jagged ones nicked at our ankles.
(we still believed in the other, then)
we called them our babies and placed them in strollers
named them thor and mufasa.


tell me again not to ever speak to you.
tell me again so i can make sure
that i will leave
for once.

i cannot sit in your room of walls waiting for the cracks to finally fold.
i cannot sit any longer
carving our initials into my skin
as reflections of your voice-echoes.

i'm walking again through your doors.
and out and out and out.

i'm trying.
i'm still trying.

Chinatown, New York

We met on the streets of Chinatown, New York.
He was a beam that held up my sign.
I couldn't see his face. It was in the sky.

I swore against his smile; he was so beautiful
a flower shouted obscenities at his feet.
I painted on anti-heart armor all over my skin.

Even then, I wanted to love him.

He sent me love songs over the phone;
he couldn't sing a damn,
but his father played guitar for us in pictures
and his mother never recovered.

He wore my smile on his palm;
whenever I frowned,
he covered my mouth with his hand.

I stitched secrets into the soles of my feet.
I walked on his back and shoulders
while the secrets seeped out and traveled to his head and heart.

Even then, I wanted to love him.

I want to place his head against my belly and breathe,
ask him if he remembers being there.

He likes the Yankees.
Drinks chilled beers.
Smirks without knowing.
He likes cold air.
Foam pillows that wrap his head.
And peanut butter.
He loves peanut butter.

Sometimes, he asks cookies and ice cream out on dates.
A lucky girl who is sitting nearby might get a taste.

He will cry with you.
But never for you.

He won't be shy to show you the polar bear and penguins that reside within him.
But he is so shy to be warm.
I want to knit him a sweater, ask him to wear it and come play a while.
I want to sing him the songs he plays in my head.
I want to throw out our old records and find him
trailing along the backs of my thighs, asking for a glimpse.

I would ask, see anything you like?

For Dana Tompkins

In the End

it hurts everywhere i cannot touch.
"blue is the color of the day," is it?
then paint me all over.

(you undermine your own ardor.
though mine, too, is
tampered with.)

is it evidence
that we cannot
exist?

your words are
muted.
where your confusion lies,
i make my bed,
lie in it,
wave my arms in circles
looking for you.

you entered me
as gently

as a child opens his melting popsicle
correctly so. though.
wrong flavor.
wrong place.
wrong time.

i'm sorry.
for the roadblocks before us,
but weren't they always there?
why did you dream of me
then share
then let go?

i too, was weary.
i too, was terrified for
knowing.

(i don't know how to want you;
i don't know how not to want you.)

how far should i run
to hide myself
behind the laughter?

begin the transfusion of utter
chaos into my arms and breast
for the times you made me
full from just being?

where were you
when i was able?

my mind is clockwork
still.
it remembers without
knowing.
you.

For Dana Tompkins

His lips moved
over mine with the words,
"I'm sorry."

Though his eyes said,

I did not mean to crack you
wide open

cavernous.
flesh.
singed
with lust and
blued from
bruise.


He watched me tear my lips from my face
streaking red,
down my chin
into his mouth
where I rest
buried.
lust
into love
love to
rest.

if I could, i would cry.

I would carry the face of all his past
I would.
and re-enact each moment he could not look past
that which he burrowed into himself
screws into arms as hinges
of a shut door.

(For Dana)

lonely

i'm lonely when you are asleep.

you are tucked away into that world i cannot belong to.
your empty eyes flutter, like leaves after a storm, remembering.

you pry my hands off and shudder; you are right. there is a breeze.
from my shoreline, you are pangea. i was the tip
that broke off.

build me the civilization i know nothing of.
reign yourself king
as i start my revolution
to wake you.

leave me.
i don't want you here.
i can't have you
breaking and
entering.

if you hadn't noticed,
this house
is empty already.

it's just,

i've forgotten to change the locks.
where did you find the keys?

Sexy

Do you ever wish upon stars?
Well, I do.

And I wish
I was sexy.

The day I become sexy,
I will mount and ride
every chair in this room.
And instead of you saying,
“What was your name again,”
you’ll moan, “MMMMM! OOOOHHH!”
And I’ll say, “Mm-hm. That’s me.”

Or when we see each other in the streets,
we won’t say, “Hey, what’s up?”
We’ll just take off our underwear
and trade.

I will be as sexy as
the song you make love to.
No, not the one you lost your virginity to.
Not that one,
the one you masturbate to.

Sexy is the cure to
the high school mathelete’s nerdom.
Sexy is the cure to
lonely nights,
the cure to awkward adolescence.

I assure you,
when I become sexy,
even the girls who love to hate --
they'll want me.

Instead of calling me a slut behind my back
for pleasing their boyfriends
in the dingy diner bathroom,
they’ll say, “Gee. I wish she did me.”

When I become sexy,
you’ll re-think the word, “love-handles.”
And OH, I know love handles.
 I see myself daily in the shower,
grab them and think,
“When I become sexy,
these will be fuck-me-harder-handle bars.”

When I become sexy
you will mistake love for lust
and lust for me
and instead of “I love you,"
you'll say, “I wanna fuck you.”

When I become sexy and we touch,
the scent of pure, raw sex
will rub off unto you and to whomever you touch.
So we’ll all have massive orgies:

a room full of women with succulent tits,
piercing nipples touching themselves
to a room full of men touching themselves
to porn.

And we’ll all cum at the same time,
the echoes of simultaneous orgasm
will deafen our unborn children’s ears
and the quiet afterwards will feel like
silence after the snow
while all the women,
we'll cuddle with each other and
all the men, they'll fall asleep.

Sexy will be the one night stand
which is really love at first sight.

In the morning
when we wake in the others’ arms
with that startled look in our faces,
it wouldn’t mean, “Oh my God. How much did I have to drink last night??”
It would mean, “God damn, Ima go brush my teeth and fuck you again. I’ll fuck you for life.”

When I become sexy,
words like raunchy and smutty
will be synonyms to sweet and romantic.
And when you touch my skin,
you’ll harden like the rock
that was once your heart
and love will be second nature,
unquestioning, no jealousies,
no insecurities.
 Cuz once you are inside me,
you’ll wanna stay for good
and cum for life
and this will be
the only place you’ll want to be inside.

(For DJT)

fingering

i’m fingering the exit wound
of your bullet.
wondering why i never felt
the point of entry.

how the hole is just big enough
for me to fit my
index finger into my own flesh,
just a quarter of an inch or so.
how you stare at me, wide eyed
unable to speak because
you didn’t know i too,
was flesh and blood.

For Dana
August 22, 2008

Mother

I remember you.

I remember your freckles and smile
whenever someone tells me,

“I like your freckles.”

You did say good bye before leaving
for good.
Only, I didn’t know it was
for good.

I dream still
of
falling asleep to your song,
under the red light
in the dim room
yellow bedcovers.
dull walls.
linoleum floor.

The bathroom’s faucet
never shut off.
It dripped forever.
and there was a bucket full of wet clothes
you never wrung out to dry.

My cold toes
were tucked,
curled in my knees’ bend
cross legged.
You held me
in your lap
just fine
then.

You are my most
faithless
Lover.

Nothing Fits

Nothing fits.

I swallow.

Coffee

like it is a cure.

I wade in you.

Wait for

forever,

the number

printed on my ticket.

They just called

“28.”

And coffee gives me jitters.

(Bug.)

I tap all thirty toes.

Or they are fingers.

When I was little
my sister
was little, too.

She and I got our hair done
at the same place,
at Mrs. Park’s
whose daughter
was still going to hair school.
She gave us perms.

We looked like
electrified Q-tips.

My sister
had soy milk skin
everywhere--
her legs,
her face,
all except her hands.

They were brown
and bitten at the nails.
You could always see
the shiny, pink flesh
of her fingertips.

We used to
sleep together in one bed
when we were little
and she would make me laugh,
imitating me,

the way I laughed like a Giant Man
at age seven.

My giggles were explosive,
50 wing-clipped bees
stingers intact, freed from
a golden-capped
mason jar.

Once, way past bed time,
she made me laugh so hard
I could hardly breathe.
Seven-year-olds can’t contain
Giant Man laughter.

My mother and father,
disobeyed, disrespected,
grabbed us out of bed
still in our nightgowns.

She went first
her milky legs flailing like drowning arms
down the brown, carpeted hall.
They dragged us by our Q-tip heads
to the living room
where the loud, blaring TV
swallowed whole
the cries.

I begged then
and rubbed my hands repeating
I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

But my stupid, Q-tip head sister
said nothing.

She got taken into the bedroom.

There were
screams in pillows
and her Q-tip head went into walls.

And something else must have been happening in there,
like a pack of wolves tearing into
the weakest one
or a twisting off of a canary’s head.

That night
reunited,
She said,
nothing.

I felt her face
swollen, hot and sweaty
her eyes wet, puffy
sealed shut.

A single plump grape
slit open.

I pressed my lips into her
pulsing ear.
It smelled like rusted tea kettles.
I felt her Q-tip head for bumps

Counted them
whispering
"Hana, deul, set"
till she laughed
very quietly.

my parents were lovers once

he
pressed his lips into her cheek.
smelled her.
Believed
greenish blue scent
existed.
she
grazed his hand.
Understood
infinity.

they
buried hearts
deeply into the other
and
waited for spring.

then
i
had come.

by then
the soil froze
ontop.
thick layers.
concrete,
unbreakable.

i
rose
crooked
through
concrete

head
like trigger
aimed at
lovers
since.

Mindful

i will be mindful.

i will think of you whenever i
fuck another
and cry you are not there to
watch.

i will find you
in your weakest moment
when your kneecaps are blown out
and you’ve fallen down three flights of stairs
your face bludgeoned twice
by each step
bring you one bandaid
and smile.

i will eat your heart medium rare
boil your fingers, bone in, as stock
add butter and flour to make
roux for gravy.

though you are not here now,
i remember.
mindful.

My Aunt's Visit

She looked at me with sad,
pity-filled eyes,
the ones you give
small children who lose their parents in
the mall.
Light streaked dirty brown faces,
lollipop in one hand,
sticky, snot soaked sleeves…
She looked at me.

“Oh, how you’ve grown…”

Her eyes said
you
who grew up without your mother…
you
still look normal.

Normal. Like
I ran away from home
at age 6 because
Grandma didn’t let me spend my New Years money
and who was she? Not my mother
to keep me from spending
10,000 wons on candy.

Normal. Like
that day I was so angry, I became a grown up
and needed to
get the hell outta there.

Normal. Like
I caught a cab.
“How old are you? Where are you going?” the man asked.
“Six. My mother’s.
It’s between piggie supermarket
and a large white house”
He didn’t know where that was.
Ignorant man.
“You don’t know what city and street?”
He asked.
“You don’t know what city and street?”I asked back.

We finally found it. I remembered
the name of the rotisserie chicken place
beside it and he knew of it.

I got out, paid him. Thanked him.
I found my mother’s home. The same piggie mart.
Large white house beside it.

And she had moved,
The neighbor said.

When my father left my mother,
I blamed him for finding new love.

My mother,
she saw
my father in
my eyes.

could not forget…

betrayal.
how it
doesn’t end
where
it starts.

She packed a few things in a paper shopping bag.
She said, “Visit your cousins on your father’s side
once more. You will miss them,” with a smile, she said this.

And it wasn’t a
visit.
It was a
stay.

And from cousin’s house to cousin’s house
to grandma’s house, I moved
while my mother
moved.
Away from the piggie mart.

Normal.

She looked at me with those sad, pity-filled eyes..
“Oh, how you’ve grown….”

miss you.

a little.

like I knew a song by heart
then
woke and couldn’t remember
at all
even

how to
sing.

War

there was a war.

it began in my mind,
the words of my mother
“a lady is only a lady if she is chaste”
the battle cry.

i
am
a
lady.

i know i’m supposed to
wait
hold out
cherish
forbid
pray
keep

my knees
tight.

there was a war.

it continued on my body.
the words of you,
my lover.
“you’re beautiful.
you’re mine…”

yours?
beautiful?

as you grazed my lips with yours
a battle was lost.
lady slipped,
retreated
as you
planted kisses into
my neck, breast, belly.

“wait, wait. i can’t… i ummm… shouldn’t…”

lady gains ground.
you send in reinforcments.
“i love you. i want to be inside you..”
love? me?
so it continues.

i cannot
resist
the taste of your
skin
sweat

you
are deep.

saltysweetsmooth.

i cannot
resist
the sound of your breathing

cannot fight
this war waged on
my mind
consumed
by you who
with each
stroke,
blow
conquer me
whole.
as you offer up your
soul…

a cigarette burns in darkness.
red glowing.

Aftermath.

Where is the Line?

I cut out half of my heart and half of yours.
We went down the street,
sold it,
bought an eightball.

I pawned your voice, I sheared my hair.
They threw in a little extra.
It was worth the few lines.

All night long,
happily, I enjoyed the spoils
but as it ran low
I ran lower,
Sunk deeper.

You mouthed, “Wanna go get more?”
“Uh-Huh.”
I left.
Found it.
“I’d like it, but I haven’t much to offer..”I
I began to tell them.
“An ear, some change…”

Their eyes drifted over my body.

Then
Finally,

“If you suck my dick…”
“Eww. You’re gross,”

I came home.
“What happened, baby?” you asked.
“He said to suck his… I didn’t. I didn’t get any.”

You raised a brow. ”We got morals, you know…”
“I know” I said.
You wrote on my breasts with your pretty fingers.
I kissed you.
We cuddled.
Couldn’t sleep
For days.

Walk-Ins

I didn’t walk.

I caught a cab from work
excited to be early
for dinner
for once.

(You said you were cooking.)

I opened the door.

you

were already eating

(someone)

Not realizing I had walked in

She
screamed your name at the top of her lascivious
lustily
licked
breasts.

I tore out my eyes
Walked away feeling like

I too, had been
Eaten.

Perfect Fit

The boots fit him perfectly,
not too snug,
not too loose,
like they were
tailored and measured
to fit his feet
and only his feet.
Black, leathered—worn at the tips
and a few casual scuffs
at the right places
that let one know

his habits…

the way he sometimes
kicked the street curb
when he got mad
just slightly,
careful not to get it scuffed,

but he did

and perhaps he knew it would.

He knew scars were inevitable.

He told me once
how much those boots
meant to him.

They were a part of him…
“Like the way you are,” he said.

I fit him perfectly,
not too snug,
not too loose,
like I was tailored
and measured
to fit him
and only him…