There was a time I had a flower in my mouth...

"Splendido Splendente" and "Salt and Pepper or Salt and Vinegar"

I've got the alien walk down...

You make me want to write bad poetry...

"Elon Musk Is Moving to Austin" and "Good Joy"

"sorry to ping / i just want to know who was too good for who..."

"High School Kids and Gonorrhea" and "Bearclaw Asshole"

"Get Low" and "Fire"

I would fit in perfectly in the belly of any claw machine swelling with plush toys. Imagine: me & the duck with the very pink cheeks & the pillow-shaped corgi that’s all heart— wouldn’t we

Anything I speak, I know to speak a second time: My brother 
is dying. My brother is dying. You are not my sister 

tearing through an Italian restaurant, blistering
with what I have given her

more intimate with the fit of a Gildan 
shirt versus this thing hovering some 
distance over my head always threatening 
grey blonde grey depending on mood
secrets held in pinprick dots

After the announcement & its sunder, 
              I flood the afternoon light into knots. 

Pocket a maiden name, banter into twilight & 
              its constituents. Mend the

There were no innocent bystanders,
except a herd of deer, unable to perceive
the color orange. My method consisted
in having a plan, but I was letting the dirt
do my thinking—I’d had it around so

In a hotel room in the 90s, a Japanese man hired by the Opera to repair Chinese-made violins is crouched over a mess on a grey rug, thinking: maybe I could turn these 12 violins into a house and

The triangle of a fish head cut open along the center seam, splayed like a butterfly, blanketed by pickled peppers, Chinese red. Stinky tofu sold by a homely granny in a leaf-littered alley, fried

Autocomplete

such a good boy you
fluffy little algorithm patched
with paws and droopy ears
bringing me sticks
always wanting
to play fetch
I throw a frisbee
into the woods
and today it

Against the grinding fever of suppressed 
song, against a muzzle’s searing, sound 
is a muscle.                 The body’s rebuttal, 

a kind of clamoring                             
held

I was too shocked to scream
at the roosters to stop crowing, their throats
                robust and practiced in a language I find myself

disarming at all costs. In my first few years
of

my family and I moved 
from Japan to America
and found solace 
in hunting mushrooms  

the kind we sought 
are called matsu-take, 
the highest grade
selling for a grand per kilo 

I do

— after Frank Ocean, “Nikes”

You would have laughed 
at the sight of us: bodies twisted,
one foot in the air to show off
a new pair of Nikes; iPhones ringing 
with warning about deep

I am afraid of a heart
above a head, inversion
willing erasure, the body
surrendering to gravity, violence
a chance some call skill
but only because a girl is great
when she risks

Lagos gods

"the gods are exemplars of human striving" —Wole Soyinka
 

Festival aura fills the atmosphere
i rejoice for you                     moyo fun e
i rejoice for myself            

Darling, stop being stupid, 
she says with all the tenderness she can muster,
which is not a lot, when I bring up my ex. 
At the dining table, in the gaudy rust of sunset,
she alternates between

Here Comes The King

I was supposed to live at Dad’s the next day, but the Cardinals kept adding innings to innings and who can miss a game like that, the way a city like St. Louis breathes a year

We were allowed to be alone in the stadium, an object which is infinite. Prove it.
I can’t remember if we took the bus. More likely your dad dropped us in traffic and the civic door thunked on our