"signals," "stars," and "notes"

I had someone once. He spoke the Queen’s English, lived in a house built by timber hewn from his property. We were layman lovers, easily able to make cracks about the poverty of the crescent moon but

I know in heaven they are unlimited and free...

"Tight coils come / up floating in / my husband's peppermint..."

We can't feel how fast we're falling...

"Rebuilding the Colossus" and "Ardor"

DID NOT SEE

NOT THAT ONE!

SEE? 

COMING! 

DIDN'T ONE? 

HOW DID YOU GET STARTED IN THIS WORK?

In this story I am meant to tell you of the men I met in parking lots. It is night and it is will be raining, though I do not know the science behind the

             after Ruby/Hilary 

For just 
fifteen seconds

out of my twenty-
six years living

I imagine 
myself 

a white woman

bones breaking
in a new way

my

if it were untrue, I might have been
less mad; I am the best of drivers

tiger mother, paper tiger, full
of slant, piss and vinegar

that occasion of our first big fight,
he connoted with a

two seasons of sabrina,
the teenage witch
under my belt
i’m feeling powerful

i sign on AIM after 9pm
dial up noises are wands
just a secret crush

it’s always nice,
talking to you,

Cliché

I’m your favourite cliché.
Go ahead – 
  paint a red dot on my forehead,
    push it like a button,
      wrap me in a sari,
        round and round I go.
Make sure it’s
  – bright

it’s hard to explain how tired I feel       each day
my autoimmune disease attacking my bones
at the hip joint and spine       I limp down the hall

to the water fountain where I joke but am

let us use the Fibonacci sequence to understand
why 10 coffins became boats atop the surface of Alum Creek on Christmas Eve

and why Mamaw spent all of 2015 saying bell-bottoms were coming

She lives with her mom

two states away

and I wish this was all

I've failed to teach her. 

rsvp

for sacha

you’re a bound cloud
mist locked down    skipped
across the lake, I can tell

I woosh your eye’s pallet
missing calls      flatten
hunger      a slow drawl
boy  with

Luxury

This September the cool
air has come quickly
and I’m in love with how
it crawls into my belly,
smooths its long creases
on the bones of my esophagus.
What a luxury — to feel
   

daughter

Her mother sometimes talks in her sleep
while she, so it’s told, whimpers or stretches.
Her brother twitches restlessly through the night.
He’s got finer hair and stronger teeth,
their

CHIAROSCURO

-

Your hand and its physical touch
fuschia as you brush

The inside
of desire and nothing

I'll say it
on the skin of your tongue

Name and unname
your eyes and their

sour

i wanted
in the way
that want follows

bedraggled
a half moon
of bites

it starts
like this
slowly

rara saw
FIRE FIRE
in my eyes

hard to describe
to you who
no longer

On Shaving my Legs for the First Time

the offending hairs that sprout from dark skin
like unwelcome ants that toil through the night

hairs that signal virility on my father’s chin
draw taunts

an immigrant love letter

this is a love letter

     to jasmine rice     and soy sauce     in the ethnic aisle     to the crisp

     melting     of duck skin in my mouth     you taste     the

I WRITE PANIC

into the locked kitchen
cabinet, china chipped
& sticky. i write
myself into a bottle
of vodka, sloshing
in waves of bitter
padded tongue.
i write the morning
green &

crying boyfriend

feels like me and god are fighting
they don’t want me to do anything

getting my period at midnight
my poems are like prayers

god doesn’t want me to stop learning
maybe i