I am counting the number of days
since I last talked to my mother;

not to worry, we have not been okay
my entire life, so this is not anything new

by the stretch of the imagination.
It’s funny, that phrase—imagination like

a rubber band, and a million versions of us
in between going farther away as you

stay in your end of the deal, and as do I.
Mother, I wish you used the same material

to make my umbilical cord, so even
after my many falls, I could snap right back.

But you did not. The cord was connective tissue
and errands and the relief of not having period

pain for nine months yet the impending
astronomical event of having a whole new

body to feed, to recognize as your own,
a spitting image of that ancestral buildup

you know well: the never making something
of your life, the token of You and Papa’s

foolishness, barely thirtysomethings yet
fates already sealed. When the doctor

cut through my only tether to you,
no one knew from then on I would be

on my own, and it would take seventeen
more years for me to know that. I am

counting the number of days you will
waste thinking there will ever be

a way to ******* back to you.

My father,
the man
who invented time.
My father,
the latecomer.
Life is like that.

Everything is symbolic
when depressed.

Taking a bath becomes
metaphor: rejuvenation.

Waking up: a gift.
Morning coffee: elixir.

Taking the trash out:
a twelve-step program

towards cleanse.
But garbage is garbage.

And you are you.
And physics, chemistry,

psychology are just words
explaining the phenomenon,

but apart from the phenomenon.
The phenomenon you,

in the dark, in a cage,
writing poems to extinguish

the void. Like cleaning
an oil pill with bare hands.

Gunk and grime slipping
through fingers. What luck,

though. Colors might
Slither through. Occasionally.

And I know that is a symbol,
too. I’m sorry.

Everything is symbolic
when depressed.

He has black eyes
like voids.

He has black hair,
prickly, like grass fields

inked with blood
from animal ******.

An extra set of ribs,
which he developed

after variations
of downfall.

He is big and tall.
Imposing, heavy.

But he knows
how to be weightless.

He is grisly.
And then he is light.

He consumes you,
and then he's residue.

A blank aftermath,
sin without consequence.

Then he reappears
as a promise

broken before
it's made.

He tastes whatever fire
tastes like before it's

officially fire,
the taste of verge.

Sweet but delicate,
the taste of almost.

The taste of nearly
there but not yet.

It burned.
Graciously, it burned.

Coming out of the last
film screening, the empty

mall looks like an abandoned
cruise ship. There's the lingering

sense of brief occupancy, in the
same way plastic toys are lodged

in the sandbox after parents
have fetched their children.

The shops are dim, empty.
They're on break now, preparing

for next morning's
language of want.

Glass doors are locked.
Objects, once for sale,

are inacquirable. Price tags
are sheltered in the quiet

specter of dark.
How I do leave this.

Where is the exit.
I need a way out.

Is there anybody out there.
Someone to guide me.

Look around. Some few hover.
There are people still here.

A man at the snack bar
closing up shop.

Laborers downstairs, fixing
tiled floors.  

The guards. And their
transceivers humming gargled

whispers. And me, a spectator
of the way things are after

everyone's gone. I am built
like this, I think. The after

hours, the empty. These feel
holy to anyone who wanders

around vacancies. Hoping to
discover a place inside the place.

A field trip during midnight when
loneliness doesn't have anyone it

can flirt with, so it eats its own
body and desires itself.

In all this emptiness, I look
for something small. A human,

seeing me, sensing I'm lost,
and coaxing me toward a

narrow exit and out into the
open world, where I'm even

smaller than before. Outside,
I think of inside. The massiveness.

And the people still in it,
bracing themselves for another

12 hours
of this tomorrow.

Their backs heavy
with the burden of
one more evening
shared without knowing
each other's names.
Smoke from their
cigarillos billowing
thin, floating in the
room like ghostprint,
steam from the
carcass of an affair.
A small lightbulb
and two shadows
barely moving.
We're talking two
boys, two bodies
on the bed.
Swimming.
Sinking.
Sailing.
The faucet drips
faster than the wall
clock ticks.
I count.
     one drip, two drips
There are too many
things I want to ask him.
But after *** there
is only endless pause.
He lies there with his belly
rising and falling.
I time my breaths
so that his stomach
is up when mine is down
     three drips, four drips
On the bathroom mirror
there's half a fingerprint.
I wonder if someone had
wiped the other half.
or whoever left it was
incomplete.
     five drips, six drips
I like the sounds you
bring out in me. The
way I'm primal with you.
A creature. An animal
enduring the whiplash
of almost having all of
you, and all of this,
whatever it is.
     seven drips, eight drips
I used to think we have
*** because we like the
anguish of fleeting
****** contact. But now
I understand. There is
a sacredness to the way
we don't want to acquire
each other. That the
passion burns in a vacuum,
away from distinction,
from names. I'd want more
soon. I know myself.
     nine drips, ten drips
But for now, this will do.
I twist the faucet close.
And wipe the rest of the
fingerprint.

I clean wounds with animal spit
so I inherit a lust to escape
human capture. But what happens is
I take in their power of blind loyalty
and approach the incarcerator wielding
the softest gun. I fall for boys
who teach me how to mend my
anomalies, and when I'm renewed,
they find I'm not damaged enough
to keep fixing. So I'm free but I miss
prison. I miss following the cowbell
that leads me home. I forget the past
it took to crumble me. My own shadow
haunts me when I step into the light.
So I hide in dark places to keep him out of sight.

Imagine I’m just a voice. A voice without a body. So now you have to ask, where is the voice coming from? Imagine you don’t want to ask where I come from. You don’t want to accept the more challenging questions of hearing a voice from a vacuum. So you accept that I must come from a body. Now imagine what my body looks like. Let’s start from the deepest layer, where it all begins: Poprocks. Sprinkles. Skittles. Pebbles. All the sugary grit underneath. Candy bomb flavor, sweet like carnivore blood. Sweetness, the start of my body. Then we get to thinking about bone, soft as sponge, wet as electric posts during a typhoon, breakable under natural tragedy. But blameless. Sugar and bone. Then veins: uncut confetti. Rainbow spaghetti. Canals of bloodspeak, channel of time, of heat, of elixir. So Sugar. So Bone. So Vein. Then you have the heart, made of chocolate and pounded crickets, plus the corpse of queen bees. The hive emptied their wombs to give you your sugar, and they go to your heart to die. Their resting place is your alive, the miracle machine protecting the tether between sane, sedated and over, ended. So now we have Sugar. Have Bone. Have Vein. Have Heart. Imagine the alternative. All those are lies. I’m just a voice. A voice without a body. Where is the voice coming from? Or you can always go back to the body, even if you don’t understand what it’s made of. Not yet. Sugar, Bone, Vein, Heart. Vigor sown, slain — depart. Body, I butcher, loan for shame to start. Consider the voice is alone, but alive, and the world completely dead. The voice lives to tell its perfect heartaches, the contortions of the body struggling to be itself turned into vibrations, sounds, moaning, exhalation. I’m just a voice. I’m just a body. I’m just words shifting between multiple properties and materials. Moving fast, then slow, then turning invisible and visible. Until you accept that I am and stop looking for where I am, what I mean.

When I'm excited, I turn young
and cry wine blood, in my tongue
bitter and slick and arousing
like the bleak colors of international
pain. I wear a necklace forged from
the calves of men from the moon,
I invite moaning thunders in my room.
I am perplexed. Why did I waste my
youth pretending I was old. Why didn't
I offer my body as springboard for parasites
to court the song of decadence from
between the slippery crotch of mountains.
I am now with age and yet without age.
I've been seen. Touched, too, and combed
and stretched and smote to coarse powder
now riding the wind where we go off violining
down the perilous slopes of people's
roofs. Time, take me back to a place I
didn't know was waiting for me.
Time, take me back to fix the failure
of language. I know. The past is a cemetery
of spasms. I know. The present is a heartburn
in progress. I know. Only in the future
can I see the work being done.

My boy
stick your tongue out
even if no winters
could ever arrive here.
Don't wait.
Come and go
As you please.
Earth is a hotel room
of strangers
rehearsing abandon
with ease.
When you get cold,
bet on me.
I can lay
my body down.
Fitting to yours
like crooked teeth
biting the ridges
of a saw.
I promise, it's
a soft bite.
Trust, that's all.
And I'll try my best.
But please.
Don't ever ask,
Are We Here

A funeral pyre.
Tonight our bodies on the bed.
I will never tire.
Mapping what isn't being said.

To be shaped by love, know first
How it destroys.

To know how it destroys,
Recognize love as a physical act.

To recognize love as a physical act,
Consider the body's limits and transgressions.

To consider the body's limits and transgressions,
Probe it for signs of anomaly. Of creatureness.

To probe, start by using your fingers to poke
Regions where illusions are cooked, like the groin.

To locate the groin, slither your hand from mouth
all the way down until you feel dirt.

Once there, dig. The mush will feel soft and wet and grisly
And delicious. Like exile. Feel around for a thin chord.

Once you get your hand on this chord, pull. Pull very hard.
Like you're born to unstitch. Or turn off a light. Or flush.

Your body will split open like a thick *** of paper bills
fresh off a rubber band hug. And your remains

Will flutter like a flag. Notice the bone marrow in bloodspeck
jangling in wind chime language to announce an arrival.

Your arrival, maybe. But what is left other than your body splayed
open? Notice your meatshop bargain delicacy. Limbs as vivid

As a freehand sketch artist's depiction of alive. It sounds so beautiful,
Love. Especially in Springtime.

In the days leading up to my ******,
I saw a message in the form of a tattoo
On the back of this guy I was having *** with.
It was a picture of a skiff too far from its port
Yet not close enough to know for sure whether it was
arriving or beginning to drift away from dock.
When you're having ***, everything is symbolic (?),
so I took this picture as a demonstration, delivered
by kismet or something like it, of the way I seem
to dither between mooring myself to a pair of eyes that see me,
—flesh, not for what it is but for what it could be: sweating animal.
Dangerous animal. Animal to be forgiven—
and escaping, a spray of foam there on the crest
trailing its ebbs and bobs, dispersing
as it ripples and fades flat. I don't know anymore.
Who I am What to be What to like How to dress
Whom to befriend When to use whom What prayers are for If they work.
Suddenly I stop the *** and ask this guy, Why the tattoo?
He turns around, kisses me, fondles me, cups my breast,
almost squeezing, turns me around, penetrates me,
and lets out a moan so sinister it was
nearly love.

Lying here, my back pressing
On your back while sleeping
And breathing. When we sleep
We lose control of the rules.
The body drives itself: submit,
It says. But are you there? Maybe.
And where is that exactly?
I am no expert on place.
Though I know I feel
less of me when you are there but
Not there. That's okay. Here but not
Here, that's where I am, too.  
More often than you.
And more like this,
Me waking before you, will come.
All that needs to be done is wait.
And wait is the only unbreakable promise.
To you, I promise to be whole even when
I'm living in the interim between here and unhere.
Even if I'm a resting carcass penduluming
From one end to the other. This is why
I go away, you see. I wish the answer was simpler.
I want it to be simpler because I can't
Lose you again.
Nothing compares to the percussive
heart assault of descending into
your mind. Or falling into you.
Your chest
Rising then falling,
the print of ribs underneath like gift-wrapped cages.
That's really what falling is.
Together
even in the lapse of alive.
In this Vulcan moonshade, all I can do is
adore you while I wait for sleep to come.

I can’t sleep. It’s 4 in the morning.
I’m thinking of disappearing.
Not running away, but actually
wishing to be gone. As in the body
has had enough replenish and wants
instead to be a vacuum.
As in the body is
the only place that
has no interim between
detonating a bomb
and the residue falling
like featherweight acid hail.
Looping forever like
a memory without suffer.
No absurd pain
of shattered bones, no healing
required.
Do I want this?
I want sleep. It’s 5.

The truth is, my love does not, after all,
await me in a different world. All those nights

looking up didn't pull him closer, as there was
never anything to pull to begin with. The planets

wheeled along their given orbits, tethered snugly;
bodies unwilling to cut the grapnel, a beautiful order

and quiet dance. Stars kept exploding as I waited
for me to be beautiful. Stars hot and menacing.

Each movement a wager to rupture the fabric of time.
Maybe it is not that I'm made of stars, as the saying goes.

Perhaps nothing relates me to it.
Sadly.

But its chaos is my forward.
Its tails are my wishes.

Starburn plasma, galactic spasm,
why does starlight show me boys I can't fathom.

The neighbour is looking through his telescope
now, unbuttoning his shirt, snatching moments

to take swigs of cola. I wish I could be him.
Live in his mouth. Take his voice. And stay

quiet forever, or as long as it takes for stars
to swallow nearby stars. If that's even how it works.

I’m sorry if love didn’t work out.
There are other forms of worship.
Or maybe that’s why it didn’t work out.
You made him into a jezebel.
He wanted to be skin, bone, breath,
touch, sinew, sweat. Not God.
So now you’re stuck with an imprint
of a person you barely gave time
to settle in — how could that happen?
Residue even when he walked on air.
Sourmouth lingering there when you
close your eyes. Every letter of his name
spelling a fragrance that betrays pure-grade
everlasting peace. Your heart choking on its
own spit. His ***** inside you hardening
into a lair for a nightmare still brewing.
I’m sorry if I never held you the way
you wanted to be held. Sorry for starting
aerobic sessions of always wanting
more. For expecting you knew how to repair
a body addicted to electric shocks.
I told you. Didn’t I? I promised ruin; you pushed
unblinking. I wanted someone to invent
a new period of day between morning
and nighttime, but the only thing we ever
came up with was dimness.

Before midnight.
His breath turns to smoke
in mid-air. Sorcery.
I try, too.
Inhale. My lungs fill,
swallowing cold.
Like fingertip pressing on raw meat
fresh out the freezer.
The chill spikes, envelops
my body. Like my spine
is out.

Then, exhale. But it doesn't
Turn to smoke.
Instead, vapor.
Instead, mouth still open.
Instead, vanish.
In this suspended wait
He touches my back
and instantly I stop being a person
and weigh only as much as
dust mites, or the
germs in air corroding steel,
or the air. Probably the air.
Most likely the air.
His air?

I would like my breath
to turn to smoke.
Like Him. And with Him.
Instead, I learn to lose.
Instead, midnight finishes
its dark role, the light appears,
and the city before us
says Die.

Bark and blemish. Toads
ribbiting amid ***** dark.
Poison underneath lip balm,
prayers and price tags
scattershot amongst pared
rosebuds. I feel like explaining.
But I can’t. Just imagine
the sun peeking above,
morning starshow, skinmelt.
Fingertip whorls
pinking with sheen.

Spin softly.
Touch pebbles like your
finger will sink by mere impact.
Melt right here, in this place.
Not there, inside the heart
full of porcelain turtle doves
and twigs. But here, in my hands,
where a map of surrender is
eating itself.

As fast as fire
burns animal skin, as fast as
phantom secrets slither through
crowded teeth, I will answer the door.
And you will appear. Though dripping wet.
Though missing parts.
Though fallow heart.
Mine, then ours.

All we do is deconstruct,
this isn’t love. This is
microscopic examination
of potential disasters.
This is you building
an escape hatch before
there’s any reason to flee.
The weight of your hands
on my underbelly feels
like frisk. What’s there?
What did you find?

after Ansel Elkins

Carabao **** isn't permafrost,
temperature, disdain — climates
stirring into a tornado soup
of force, melting, seclusion.
In the heartbeat of gulls,
the waves gargled froth and
spat on charred limestone.
Then the grass beneath our
wet feet writhed in the
slice of wind atop the hills
of Hiyop, in Catanduanes
where roads go unmoored from
their skiffs like violin
strings curling under sharp
slide. You can invent a new
word to describe transformations,
but these will never catch it
in the act — the moment
vibration somersaults into
howl, when swinging grass
is louder than jetplanes
then suddenly quieter than
prayer. I like to dig my thumb
into the soft marsh, dirt
occupying the folds, creases;
labyrinthine pathways of skin
blanketed with Earth.
At this point the mountain
knows me;
and I dare to know the
mountain but come short, reaching
only its narrow berms,
pockmarks,
and ****-ridden sheath of
dry flowers cooking the
words to a song of its
people.

These were occasions.
A dispute about my body
hung in the public space
like an errand. All of the sadness.
Down to residual guilt.
The sheer force shredding,
splintering, performing
perfect, finite drama.
It amused them. It amused
me, too. Laughing concisely,
succinctly. All of the sadness.
Bearer of barren beauty, peddler
of disguises. A chance encounter
at night with animals unlearning
howl. Maybe it is the way it is.
When I explode, I am both
material and immaterial.
Both promise and time elapsed
to surrender it. One day it’ll get simpler.
The pains more easily described.
In a way it’s just a story about love.

So you can be a bird
and still love rain.

Body, body.
Take into account light.
Falling closer to mist, feather
wait becomes wait becomes
wait. The jelly in each pocket
of spine brews ancient songcraft
for swimming, so in water you
stay with air as it allows, like
wings against gust. I wish for a place
like this for all of us. For Isabel, Charisse,
the other names. Return to cinder.
Abuse and obey. We're faster
than symphony, in torture saying things like
pelican, gingersnap just so tongue
slithers around mouth like a wand
brewing spells.

I'm not making promises anymore.
Not accepting tiny requests at the moment.
This happened because somebody
taught me how to lament the limits
of love. I thought the pleasure I got
from sit-ins with you was pure.
I looked at you through ****** sizzle,
sometimes outright panic. You seemed
a candidate for *******, and also
precious. But why not more.
What is wrong with me.
Why do I make you wear costumes
like extractee, validator, jezebel?

Why not more.

How did I learn
this love. A love like licking the ooze
dripping down the decanter instead of
cleaning it?

So I need some time. I've flown wrongly.
I thought wingspan was all it took; ******
lift, drag made it go.
Let me learn how to choose you,
how to Look at this man as man again.

after C. Sandberg

It's hard to know you now.
Classic sadness, wide open.
Words beneath driftwood
flayed on top of cornflower blue

Ocean.

Remember I was afraid
it might never be love
But now it scares me that
Love is all it is.

Do you see me
as conquered or had.
Here's how I see you.
Imagine how ants see.
They won't know what
stairs, bridges, and ledges
are for. Everything valleys
low or high, endless surfaces.
Sprawled and
likely untreadable

Ocean.

I saw a dead
bird on the ground
while walking home.

How bad had it gotten,
I thought, for someone
who could fly
to end up here.

I wondered if I should
leave it be and walk away,
or say something.

“I didn't know you,
but I hope you
had a great life.
The things you must have
seen up there.”

Then I continued walking
again. I don’t know why,
but I thought of
the way my little sister
says “computer shop,”
how lovely she sounds.
The loveliest sound on
the planet, for me.

My valleys bleed blue. They rhyme under only
The language of summer, coarse and sticky.
A droplet, spineless trees, baked mahogany.
A piece of clothing soaked in water
hangs at night on a beam, begging for mercy.
It's been many years since I had
A clear head. Tonight I watch the sway
then swallow the sway, and the sway is in me.
It feels like magic foam fluttering here, or
kids hopscotching and the noises they make.
Do not question now, only wait. It ends when it ends.
Do not catch up now. A handsome sky pauses
Your song to try and say, dance without it.
You can. It is there, the sway. Even in summer; in coarse,
sticky summer.

Pretend you’re dead
after risking it all.
You’re on your stomach
sprawled on a moor.
Someone approaches.
Limps forward, more like.
He’s dark, and being
hounded by bees.
Pretend you lost everything
after betting on him.
You’re on your back
in an empty house.
Someone opens the door.
They start beating the carpets
with a bat. You hear puffy thuds,
like rust prongs landing
on thin cotton against concrete.
Pretend light enters
after injuring yourself.
Someone checks for blemishes.
His fingers are lava hot.
His voice so cavernous there’s
echo and delay.
It terrifies you, what this
Man might do.
You shed skin for the day
and return to the kiln. Then you fall asleep
to the sound of creaking gates.

It happens when
we go quiet
and then quiet
hangs in there
a bit longer than usual.
I look away
and think
—will it ever be love?

I lost track of time
& fell short of a lot,
like I fell short of
a body that could be
happy by itself.
& I fell short of basketball,
calisthenics, boyhood. Where
growth should be was misshapenness;
where rapid should be was idle;
where scrutiny should be
was massacre.

& I was terrifically sad
yet deemed not officially depressed,
though in front of the mirror I would
see bathed in motor oil the reflection
of my genitals, which is made of
calfskin and bruise. I also tried
various other things, like
licking my armpits, talking
to a tree, snorting
ammonia off public urinals;
every sample of grime I tried
to touch. Maybe just
to see if cleanse was a finite
thing, and if I was nearing
the end of my supply.

& I fell short of buzz cuts
and *******. Also, fighting
after school and legitimate
swagger from a legitimate
boy.
I looked too long
at differently colored lights
and stared too little at
women I was meant to
impregnate by some order
of prophecy — or the privilege
of *****. I trimmed
my nails each week and
waited for my beard to
grow. I didn’t own
any robes, and I didn’t
drink alcohol. I also
trusted too much and
ended up on the last
waves of a beautiful song,
jumping at the right
moment before siren
becomes pause.

& I fell short of bones,
breath, and humanly powers
of affection, and I waited
for someone to explain how
everything worked because
the gospels put the world
in a jar and threw
them between fire and cold
air. I would step inside
churches prepared to listen,
then at the pew I would
get lost in the tar pit
of my subconscious.

& I fell short of being
a son, a brother, a friend,
an avid decipherer of
the poetry that lands on
my palms and eats itself
if I don’t eat it first.

& I fell short of saving
the world every chance I got.

& I fell short of distinguishing
love from pity.

& I fell short of the
day a promise was supposed
to unfold
in the brink of disaster;
and it just so happens
I was asleep when miracles
occurred under my blanket,
and so to me healing
was just waking up to
an alarm clock.

& I fell short of days
I was to remain
in place as the planet
anchored itself to
the rungs of my rib
and flattened like a
gum under my command.
I was my own God, my own
whisperer of lies. I tried
to see beauty with
these eyes.

Each day, syrup.
Each day, sedation.
Each day, escaping lament.
Distortion was the
language I fell into
and bounced on.

& I fell short of
this poem, which I had intended
to make perfect sense.
Maybe to some of you
it will.

It is late at night somewhere
plain and dusty as he grabs my hips,
pulls me in, and kisses my
stomach. I touch him back.
Cheeks first, tracing all the
way down to his upper lip,
Then my finger circles back and lands
on a fallen eyelash
on the bridge of his nose.
I try picking it up but it won’t stick.
“It won’t stick,” I tell him to move
away from the flickering light.
I pinch it away from his nose and hide
it between my thumb and forefinger.
“Make a wish,” keeping the hermetic seal.
When he opens his eyes and smiles at me
(I like it when he smiles that wide, the canines and all)
I make him choose a finger. “Up or down?”
He taps my thumb. I open.
The hair is wedged between the whorls of my forefinger
— it means his wish won’t come true.
He gives me a sad, sad look.
The wind blows it away from
my fingertip. He pulls me in again,
my rough denim sliding up against his
thighs, spread open. I lose balance
and out of sheer reflex I grip his shoulders,
bare and drenched in night sweats. I wipe them off
with the cuffs of my jacket.
I brush his bangs to the side
and slide my finger across one of his sideburns,
which feel like new toothbrush bristles.
He asks me to exhale directly onto his eye.
He wants know if it would turn his vision foggy,
like when exhaling on glass. I tell him to shut up.
I tell him I want to ride a taxi home for once,
even though it’s just blocks away from here.
Inside the taxi, he barely looks my way.
He’s propped close to the window
blowing cold air and drawing *****.
I feel a need to check the time.
I feel a need to put his mouth on my mouth.
Then I think of wanting rain, of wanting all sorts of disasters
to smite our naked bodies as we slither
up against each other on the last floorboard
floating on top of this flooded city.
But I close my eyes instead. Trying to guess
what his wish was.

Mother taught me flight.
Father, hover.

I learned haunt, whine,
bother,

From looking at men
stripped down to their tidies
in those Avon magazines, I found out
I liked them. Look at that paunch.
Also that crotch. And the studio light twinkle
on skin & eyes.

I looked at the *****. You have to know:
this was no sin. I covered my head
with lace antimacassar as I traced
this man’s junk with my fingertips;
I was covered.

Save for that,
I did right by rules,
most of the time.
Scraped knee, split lip,
didn’t cry at those, no,
as so ordered.

We never tell girls this, but did
you know us boys have a rite of passage
supposed to be kept secret? It goes:
Your father takes you to a hardware store.
You ask why, and he only says “this is day,
the mark of the man.” You nod.
He takes you to the aisle
with all the blades:
shears, scissors, awls, ice picks, whatever.
He lets you pick one. He pays for it.
Father takes you home, gives you the cutting tool
of your choice, and tells you to go to the bathroom,
face yourself in the mirror, and
“aim for the tear ducts.”

It’s kept secret because
it doesn’t work. Not always, anyway.
I’ve heard about other boys that missed,
both eyes damaged.

Not all, not all.
My gentle father didn’t:
he bought me Flu Game Air Jordans,
the one with maroon slithering around black.
Boys always got expensive basketball shoes.
I suppose he loved his boy, is all.

Father’s not that bad. Mother, neither.
Only clueless, maybe.
One time I came home too happy,
head-drunk thinking about this schoolboy crush,
and they never knew.
The first time I jacked off I felt the entire sky
strike my pelvis with a typhoon fizz,
and they never knew.
During prom a boy slashed my heart with a
scalpel (his cutting tool?),
and they never knew.

You can’t teach boys some things,
like how to whisper to another boy
when the light is out.

When he moved into the new apartment,
he chose not to open the boxes right away.

Thrilled as he was to find new spots
for old things, he waited until it rained

to see if there would be any leaks on walls.
He waited, and waited, but the rain never came.

Without anything to touch, to play with, to arrange,
he spends days sitting on the wooden chair, the one

caked with paint drips. There, he ponders about the new place,
about when rain would finally come, and he imagines it

sounding like fingers tapping a hollow instrument, or perhaps
pat pat patting like a rabbit hopping toward shelter.

It comes one evening as he sleeps. Droplets
bulleting the tin roof. He does not wake.

In his dream, two men come rushing inside his home:
one slides a gun down his throat. He asks what they want.

The gun-wielding man doesn’t answer. He looks squarely
at him, on his knees nearly choking. The other man

is hauling all his boxes out of the new apartment, leaving
only the dusty outlines where they sat unmoved for months.

Finally, the man slides the gun out his mouth, shakes the spit
off the neck. I’m just new, why me? He asks.

Don’t ask me, I’m just a robber, the man says.
He takes off, slamming the door so hard the hinge breaks.

When he wakes, the rain has stopped. Still in the interim
between dream and real life, he checks if the boxes are still there.

They are. The windowsill is damp.
Outside, under the dim porch light,

he finds tiny puddles on the soles of his sandals.
He strolls lightly before the iron gate, and around him

the faint glow of light from neighboring windows,
the muffled voices of people on TV,

The rare wind who can’t decide
whether to whistle or chime.

Inside, he opens his boxes and fishes out
every hidden thing.

There is a place for each, and while there is something
to be afraid of, it’s not nightmares about thieves.

Leave me alone maybe means
go away yes but be here
in one call. When the ground beneath you
shakes keep going but turn back when
mud stops being thick.
Avoid getting too lost.
The unknown place after the reed
is off limits. Maybe

I put up the chainlink
because I want the trespass.
But that

way we only go so far.
The hope is that
you’re still an animal
by the end of this abuse,
unquestioningly

returning to the long-haired girl sweeping land with her herding call.
There in a blanket of mist, she stands barefoot and unmoving like a scarecrow.
She moors the cows to her side of silvery dawn.

—unquestioningly
because what is there to ask?
It is known to work, the ancient
Scandinavian song of lure.

‘Cause this is what happens
when you hand yourself
over to somebody else
& you’re alone in your head —
the least where you want to be
— wanting to find even a sliver
of evidence that they ran away vs.
you pushed them away & which
is worse. I am not yet tired of
remembering ruin. I want my
eyeballs soaked in a coffee pit.
I want the three seconds I admit
I need rescue to last longer before
I snap back & hit my face hard.
I want freedom to choose not to be me.
I want to be reborn as a motionless
centerpiece in a street with skyscrapers
so high they cover the sun. I want to
wear stripes & I want toy guns in the
compartment of my imaginary
2nd-hand Lexus & I want my food vacuumed
off the floor with a metal detector. I want
paper skin & dotted lines around my neck
& collarbone as if to say hit here, or find
the missing panel. I want to learn all forms
of worship & the names of all gods male
& female one-headed three-headed
featherskinned slimy able to breathe
under water can hold lightning can **** son
can shoot laserbeams from eye
can run like a horse & act like a man.
I want to touch a full moon with my bare hands
& I want to do as I am told & I want to
focus on my own paper & I want a sudden
stroke of genius to fly away like a plastic
bag before the tornado blows the roof off
our heads. I want to control the climate
& tilt the world a bit more downward
so Antarctica gets more nights. Somebody
whispered in the wind the secret of walking
& I think I already know what it is.

Under the train station from across the road
one musty midnight after a late dinner, I saw him.
He was alone. He watched jeepneys pass by. He
stared at the road. He remained still when
the other workers walked past him.
He held a 7-up or maybe a Mountain Dew
by the bottleneck & brought it to his lips to drink.
He was sitting on a stool too small for him
& so his legs were spread open.
He put his free hand on his knee, in between
fingers an almost finished cigarette.
His work suspenders glowed under the
plastic fluorescent light of Althea’s burger shop,
& beneath he wore a red shirt that
fastened his torso tight. When it was time to
ride my jeepney home, I looked at him for a moment
before getting on, & it could be that
he looked right back. When we
moved forward I tried looking again
but saw he was looking somewhere else.

Manila, 2018

In my house the men
wear breastplates for fun, and
the women race heavenly
on the speedway, the soles
of their feet caking with sand.
Yes, my house has a speedway.
If you close your eyes for a moment
it feels like a beach minus the tangerine
minus the birdcalls

minus the summer spit
frying old skin.

Dead roaches pool flat and limp
down the garage, the air
smells of tungsten and thick rain.
The river, she says, they’re
covering it up. New walkway.
Where would the water go, she says.

Then,

pulling from the tapestry of her
memory shelf. There are board games,
stationery, unused journals, bracelets,
earrings, a $25 Precious Moments.
If only I said,
Are you sure you’re giving these all away.
If only I said,
These probably have a lot of sentiment.
She would reconsider.
And I wouldn’t hold these fossils
of thinking about buying, then buying,
then lending, then using, then storing,
then forgetting, then finally
discarding. Falling into
the vacuum underneath
the lining of the heart muscle in charge of
letting things go.

Her daughter asks her to keep something.
Her high school diploma. She thinks about that.

The ride back home was bone-chilling per the rain, and
the driver babbled about a ****** encounter.

The road
damp, the windows ebbing with fresnels.

I pull my fingers and I watch Earth whir
past us like a conclusion unread.

España forgives the people trying
To find their way during Holy Week.

We go the wrong way,
and still end up here,
home, together.

apologizes
to straight boys whose perfect *****
have proper places.

Tight
in there, pulling
enough teeth
to doorstop the
night ghosts, who sing
songs of taking you.
Too dead then,
keeping secrets of
that time when
the mirror almost
sprung out a hand
to slap you awake from
self-loathing.
Here you come,
years later
on the floorboards
weightless.
Now that you’re made of light
only the shadow gets splinters.
Enough with your body, Carl.
Enough limbs have sunken
into gracelessness.
Enough, enough, enough.
Enough for reserved wounds.
Stop writing the instructions
on what it takes to become unforgiven.

In half the spine still a spine,
longing for its missing parcels.
Your body will rest
in the middle
of its punishment, but
still no tailbone.
Incomplete, you did that.
Now learn, Carl.
Pay prices.

There was love here before.
Some animal on a plank.

Didn't hold for very long.

Rain came often. No one saw.
Puddles formed and dried
at the same times.
Because there was no Occurring.

A restaurant chain
had opened up a franchise
in a stopover, alcoved
by gasoline parkways,
sheeted in neon.

I found it that night
on my way.
Great food.
Great place.
A time to ****.

Strangers cast curious smiles.
Some ask questions about
where you're headed.
I wish we knew
when small talk
butterflies into
big talk. Then we can know.
This is serious.
Someone will learn and,
if I'm lucky,
try on my plans if it fits.

The air conditioning whistles and howls.
Some stereo sounds: a horror show
about doctors malpracticing in purpose.
Gore gore gore.
Filthy good. Feel cranked.
I walk to my jacket and open the door,
sounding the bell.
Night greets me back
its smells.
Menthol and ****.

I am headed north.
But this was great.
Nice time.
Cheers?
Cheers.

I surrender to your chest
and press my face against it,
as soft as wool
clipped from a sheep
who couldn’t say
I suffer.

I dread the day
I’ll make you say
I’ll leave you. But that is
what I do. I find
angel boys and postpone
their holiness.

I teach these boys
there’s a space
between blood and bone
to store prayers. That
the whistling pressure that
sequences our next heartbeats
are disappearing acts.

I make them
piggyback on me
as I kneel on all fours in
glass shards and make them say
they like it. They learn to.
They ask if
it could be them kneeling
in pain next time. It is
around this time
when I call it quits.

I said I delayed holiness.
But some of them
Never claim it back.
There’s a river of discarded objects
under the skin of someone
who’ll die for you,
and those they want back.

Between blood and bone,
prayers are stored, yes.
Yet for now, the chest;
rising and falling,
my face against it.
The lung beneath you
a universe-ordered shape
as perfect as a handhold
dovetailed into prison rails.

Beautiful angel boy.
So soft and warm.
Do you hear how loud
it gets
when the moon pulls Earth
and Earth doesn’t say
I suffer.

But it was all
while in fugue, even
as a neighbor stood there
barefoot, the trilling cicadas
barely heard. A climate
rippled the calm like a
faint heartbeat
beneath damp ground.
I knew these people;
the sort to meet in stopovers.
Briefly, modestly, passively.
They carry conversations
by vibration, not talk.
Withdrawn moans,
grunts, edgewise glances
more potent words.
One night, I touched
him. He needed
to be touched.
To be so far away
to forget warmth, how?
He touched me back.
I allowed. His body melted
onto the floor, leaving only
a lit cigarette. I unlatched
instantly, like a derailed train.
His body gathers; the marrows
retreating to their proper places:
blood, bone, muscle, skin
assuming back a shape.
The town held a quiet night
the way newborns are held.
No one needed to know.
He will forget.
I will, too. The cigarette
belched a thin trail of smoke
until its fire ran out.

Concept:
youlovemeback.

The ingredients of cleanse
make their way
to your house.

There is

a

strobe,
two stones portioned off
a Ziggurat,
a present thing —
like wheels,
a teardrop,
nail clippings.

My father
would trim his nails
and bury them —
as seeds.

Stared
at that ***
all days and evenings.
Monsoons and
summer heat echoed.
Time circled back and forth.

Sometimes,

I would gargle
father’s beer and
spit into the ***.
Maybe it needed
Acrid, it needed
Strong. It needed
Disgusting,
Toxic. It wanted

wrong.

I turn 22.
The ***
Disappears. My father
too. Militants
took him away,
or so the chatter goes.
He wore Chinos, sun-dried
eyes, a hat.
Mice ate
the matchsticks
used for kindling.
The Queen Termite
Gave birth to more
hungry little ones
under the sink.
Dark, musty,
collapsing.
Memory, time,
fingertips. Thyme
rhymes

with mime,

I copy my father.
Trims nails.
Plants.
Waters.

Concept:
trytounderstand

This was only the nourish
he could give. It was
a copy of the nourish
his father could give —
Or so

The chatter goes.

Gather the stones.
Get the strobe.
Pound the nail clippings
and

an enzyme flows
Through, like tape recorders whirring
as they wind back to
play recorded confessions
one more time.

Free baptismals
at the church service
for hurried teens.
Free shirts for
the Insufficient.
Free lessons for
the young boy
who can’t read women.

Free at long, long last.

Concept:
fixtheheart

I see with my eyes closed
the warmth of your skin
if you just stop punishing
yourself.
And since we’re here,

I press on your shoulders
like boulders sinking and
tearing the earth’s surface once
they reach ocean’s bottom.

Is that why you flinch
at the tap?
Is that why your bruised knuckles
rap over the mantelpiece
and you snap, like a twig
stepped on by a fallen bird
learning the difference
Between fly and drop?
Won’t you let me
close the gap
between used items on your
mantelpiece and
other ones still wrapped?

I don’t do this all the time.
There is no occasion.
But since we’re here,
since we’re in front of
a fireplace, I look for an opening.
Something, a hole,
a soft mushy layer on
your body not a glacier
like everything else.
And I wait for it to melt.

Since we’re here,
maybe it’s time to
trust me.

Remember that?
Saturday.
When we woke up
before the alarm rang.
You told me that
when you were a kid
your cousin said,
“You’re supposed to tear
through the wrapping paper
when you receive a gift because
that builds the surprise.”

I felt some massive force
pull me out of body, an astronaut
****** out of an airlock when you said,
“I’ve never tried that.”

You remember that?
Of course I do.
Why’d you mention that?
I want to.
Since we’re here.
We better.

God said,
are you ready to process the hurt.
to stop keeping your pain there.
I said,
where is it, God?
Where do I keep it?
I feel it seep into my marrow.
I think it’s a cola fizz
erupting in my throat forever.
The heart inflating like a rubber glove.
Did you wear my heart in your hands, God,
as protection from twigs and splinters
when you collected
soil and dirt to give Earth earth?

You overthink things, God said.
Then show me the design.
Lay it all on me.
I can’t, God said.
If I do
you’ll discover why we **** up
the people we love.

How do I get there.
How do I dig it up.
Is it even dug?
Is it cocooned, vacuum packed,
locked inside a vault
in a lava pit?
Passworded?
Iris-scanned?
Police line do not cross.
Is it that gruesome.
Does it exist somewhere
between denial and delay?

God smiled.
And said
There.

There? What?

A sly God.
But.
I had a guess.
Could it be?

The locking mechanisms of pain
is pain itself?
But that’s too simple.
I couldn’t believe that was by design.

11am. A disaster waiting to happen.
A pearl of sweat dances down
my fat belly. I scream at my mother.
I scream at my father, who flees.
My mother’s face quiver
like a defeated child’s. Then I remember
a picture of her. She’s cutting
my birthday cake, in her work clothes.
No gloves.

Love your pain
like you’re going to lose it someday.

I’m tired of the polite
****** boy. Sick of the agreeable,
pristine, nonburping, nonfarting
carnival setpiece toy. **** the
manic-depressive psychopathic
angel. The timid, submissive
sleepover homeboy, the blow-up-doll
for rent, the 3am *******
***-dumpster hyphenate.

Imagine me, a child.
The gayboy anyperson
willing to go the extra mile.
I assure you,
this wasn’t the dream.
How you push my buttons
like a vending machine.

I ******* to you
because you’re sad.
I come lick you
because we’re okay.
Always okay. The word.
The sound of the word.
The utterance of the word.
The utter lie of the word.
Okay?
Maybe to you I’m
a toilet-trained twentysomething
who’ll receive and dispense
on command.

Maybe we are done.
Maybe I can cry in peace.
Maybe you still have a way
of curdling the milk
in my stomach from far away.

I pray one day
to **** you out.