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.