it must have been the fifth...

Outside a window a stag picks at an apple core,
its antlers, tilted downwards, catch on a branch,
it stumbles, takes a breath, regains its footing.
                        A wooden sign—nondescript

"Two Men Dancing" and "Gloaming: August"

"The Courtyard" and "Double Jeopardy"

one from the spit where I watched them...

Two cop cars nose to rear...

None of us have The Touch,

Though we have felt The Touch

*

We are all (all of us

Wearing leopard-print dusters Just once,

I was thirty hands tall (like one whole horse

Standing on

                             After Qu Yuan

In my country, our insults give benefit of doubt. Nǐ yǒu bìng— 
You are sick—                                              as if there’s an

On that spirited Emmy night,
when the camera cut to you
and you radiating in red satin
said to the world
“It’s an honor just to be Asian”
I lost my breath.
Time stopped,
blindsided by this

oh longed-for, awaited beloved. she says my name
        wrong and makes me come hard. i catalog
lovers like this, coins in kitchen water. six years on,
         type thirsty into google

with the flies, small handfuls of sunlight, sensation only one degree
removed from excess.

What to press a heart to, what color pulled up from the earth.

I’m looking for my time machine.

          (Dol Hareubang, Jeju Island, South Korea)

And there you sit, your basalt belly swollen heavy,
a gentle smile playing at your stone lips. To say I
sought you out would be a bald-faced

Petty Theft

It started as baseball cards and candy bars.
Money from my father's wallet. Protein bars on a health kick.
Eventually my friends and I walked into a grocery store,
loaded up on

I steer the moon over my right shoulder, vertebrae
lodged above coyote ridge, winding plains road
I drive all the night’s hungers down. White light
clasping the devil’s backbone. Today snow

love does not begin and end the way we think it does. love is a battle; love is a war; love is a growing up
      -James Baldwin

when i say
I love my family
what i mean
is i worship
the

My brain’s a sponge: once
I slept with a playing card beneath
my pillow to stain my thoughts
bright red. Let’s not dwell too long
on the times I snuck juice and vodka
and postured for the

to survive
tenacious teeth held their nerve

1. And what does it mean to witness yourself, on television, dying?

            a. I no longer watch the news.
            b. I’ve exhausted every mirror in my home searching for my

so much of what I feel is strain and restraint, not
strength. I feel so much of my days are in want;

Here We Are in Infinite Joy

“People dance to say, I am alive and in my body.
I am black alive and looking back at you.”
                         - Elizabeth Alexander, “The Trayvon

after K Ming Chang

Late June, during the spider lily harvest,

            Meng Po sutures shut my skin

as soup marbles under. A broth that weathers

            me a body for the

Chacka

This Whole Foods smells of rot.
A lady holds half a jackfruit like a baby,
Pushes her fingers deep into the damp decay. 

We call jackfruit chacka back home (although who’s we?
I

Election Night at the Stud

On the dance floor,
               my fingertip traces his infinity tattoo

and I wish more things were uncountable,
                            although cruelty

Shrine

In the market, Rayanne arranges
breadfruit and guava on her stand.
She frames them with squat pumpkins
and green hooks of plantain. She
leans against her stool to stretch her
legs,

Tropic of Cancer

for Lawrence Stewen

On this shore, the insects scheme, sing
the hair along my body. I say I dream about

strolling where the moonlight hits the water
and disturbs it,