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