So you can be a bird
and still love rain.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

God is looking at you

asking, what are you up to?

somewhere in there
sounds like a kid
searching for another permuta-
tion of himself, some
semblance of a would-be he won’t hate.
that’s me, I’ll never run out of pain.
this genteel ache,
this conclusion, has nothing to do with choice.
there are some who’re born broken,
those unobtrusives with chapped lips, glancing up for
drones that might pick them up
then throw them to another Earth,
those who like getting into strangers’ cars, laying their head on the
dashboard that’s softer than their bed.
they on cold nights like to whisper to God: ‘we
don’t like this experiment.’ we are more
than warning signs of civilization in peril.
dead and gone.
don’t refuse exploitation; that’s how we still feel useful.
don’t the characters in some books make rooves out of leaves? too
dogged to prioritize shelter, though. too
drugged to maintain another thing
doomed to crack and crumble. just never enough time.
days flow by like silk into a sawmill. In the
dark we try to see if we still stand on strong ground, or surface tension.

such is
the rhythm. feet damp with cakemud. in
darkness we see stoplights turn red, sometimes yellow.

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.

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 hope you can forgive me.
When I said I am,
I meant I seem. And when I said
The Earth is round, I meant
It looked round. You don’t
Believe much in science. You think
There is no chemical response
when I tell you I’m depressed.
Sorry — I seem depressed.
Literally, a flower is in front of your face,
And you question it.
Here is a flower. No —
I hold what seems like a flower.
When an earthquake occurs, you’ll say,
Those movements felt like an earthquake.
It was, and is, an earthquake.
You can’t deduct truth from a situation
Using language. You can only be precise with it.
Oh, be. You hate be. To be, an anomaly
In communication. What is be? Assume a state?
Turn into another thing, far different from the
Previous version of yourself? Be concocts
An idea of an abstract future. Is. Are. Be. Was. Been.
It won’t matter much.
I’ll be leaving you.
You are an *******.
You don’t seem like one —
You are actually one.
I am stating that as a fact. Pontificating, if you will.
I am tired of your *******.

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.

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.

For you,
the world.

A blanket
of time.

A surge
of dread.

In
your eyes.

For you,
the world.

The pillars,
the rubble.

Welters of war,
inner and visible.

Science, politics,
art. Leak

light into
the blossom

of
quiet.

For you,
the world

intends, supposes,
intimates.

Gives
collapse.

Gives
wait.

Gives
awake.

For you,
the world.

Your bruise,
the weakened heart.

The trust
lended.

The breath
spent.

For you,
the world.

The mere thought
already catastrophe.

The blow
blow blow

The hot to
the touch.

The want
of supper,

The membrane
of a promise.

The objects
of desire.

The properties
of fire.

For you,
the world.

The hurry
up!

A panic
call.

The I’m
better,

The I’m
nothing.

Bless the
touching you.

Bless the
fooling you.

Bless the
pick up,

the not knowing
What to do.

For you,
the world.

We
watch

Then turn
our heads

To stare
at the speed.

I
puncture.

You
puncture.

You
outlast.

Pinch your
throat

and say
Amen.

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.

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.

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 keep forgetting. There
was a commotion in 1995 when
a bird flew inside a house to
eat Chia. Then, a truck killed
A boy’s pet dog. Leaves flew all around,
and a cockroach kingdom
feted underneath our road, in
The labyrinthine sewer systems.

These are my questions: who records
the super intimate crumbs of human moments?
Do they even matter in the blip of time?
Where are the books that failed to sell?
When a woman looked at the painting, it moved her.
What happens to that painting when she dies?
Will it look back at the woman staring and remember
A profound solace?

The music of 1995 latches
to the memory of a given, limited
demographic. But they had other things going on, too

at the time

Humans similar to them collected their bill payments
and sold them meat and sandals.

A fabric of time
taut, invisible

It streamed down naked with pollen. People of 1995 inhaled and sneezed it.
Where did it go?

It’s 2017 now. A stranger with fireworks looks me in the eye.
What do you think of your birth year.
The people that came before, who moved and admired
the Systems, the Comforts. As if each time they spent
Looked like a wholly different world to the future observers.
Just that, **** happens — and there’s nothing
you can do about it.

But maybe there’s one thing.
We can talk about it, yeah. But only
Say it in words, mime that whole timespan in pictureform,
Or mimic some simulacrum in moving pictures.

Once a fossil, always so, emotions.

By design.

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.

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.

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.

I.

If I wait by the mirror and
See my calves half-pressed underneath
My elbows, I’d turn into a portal. To warp
Headfirst into the frosted underbelly
Of sugary insults.

II.

You should expect her rage
Any moment now. She will stamp permanent
Burn marks across your entry points.
You will be barred from accessing
Yourself. The only choice at this point
Is to borrow a backup ghost of you.
You will live in a secondhand time. Lended
In after-phases. You will miss it: your hair,
Your old fur, your eyelids, your ****** fluids.
There’s a chance to return.

III.

I run my fingertips from clavicle,
Chest, belly button,
*****. I feel the head,
A tempered muscle.
I feel my neck cramp,
A choking sensation.
I raise my left leg, bring it to
My mouth, and fry the hair strands
With sweat. They can then become black chalk.
Valid chemicals to mark off
My genitals as a forbidden area.
No more search for the carnal.
No more lurching when
The tailspin sends firecrackers down the
Mouth to reduce itself. I am now
A humble biology, and I can
Be defined by you, any way that
You want me.

I press my ear up your belly,
I hear a falsetto of cities; a mechanic
Wrenching mugs.
I tap your sternum, I scratch it, too:
It sounds like a car running on an empty tank.

IV.

No surprise;
There’s no healing.
The disc of the world parades
Like a funeral.

V.

During siestas, the feet unlatches
From the limb, and they tread toward
Their own Mecca. By the time you
Wake up, they’re tethered back, having already been
Into the womb of their promised treaty.
They walk in rote patterns, taking
The integrated human into different places.
Then you wash it with soap and sunflower seeds,
And try to ***** it with a nail file. It is tortured, but also fulfilled.
They press into cotton, finally,
And they have served you.

VI.

The knee is a vault. See
How there’s no joint? See how
there’s just two huge bones weaved between
Sheets of muscle? A gate.
The knee is a cup when taken out,
A bunot spun from a palm tree.
What does it hold?

VII.

Some bed.

I kiss your eyes; they’re hot like the sun.
We ****; magic.
Now, in this aftermoment, we are well
Aware of our shared worth; the emptiness
Of one filled by the fullness of the other.
Or maybe it’s less
absolute than that?
Buck-naked, blankets doused in sweat, we
Attach, coil, and lock like Rubik pieces. I understand,
at that sheer momentum, the planetary involvement of
our animalistic response,
that *** can be priced.
But not this; not this time; not with
Us two scratching our calves with
Thickened skin.

Will you leave?
Will this recede?

VIII.

It will last
For others only.
I need more than that.
The hunger, the blessing
Of your carved upper lip,
The bouncy, fractured
Underpinnings of your rib. It is my
sole Purpose. I am born
For your pleasure, and you
To make me starve for
Feeling.
We transact. This is holy.
It has to be.

The nature of man is one of impulse
and deceit. You can see it in his life
through time. But suppose,
merely suppose,
there was another way to measure
man’s life aside from time. Will his efforts to deceive
be seen as something else?
Will his impulses then come from somewhere else
more defined, less shapeless? Will his colorless workaday
life have overarching purpose?
It felt false the first time,
living life as a series of consequences following another,
like a story development in a newspaper.
It’s not about perspective.
Nor is it about reflection.
I’m looking, I’ve told you already,
for a way to look at life
besides cause and effect, A-B-C;
besides punishment following sin, sin following intent,
intent following motivation, and motivation
following need.

There could be another dimension
where all these, the spent life, make perfect sense.
Where the shapeless nausea of every day
form the pastiche of a more understood self. Where
the ***** nuances of error are highlighted, mingling
with the big abstract things.
But for now time is simply passing by.
Perhaps this is just right.
Perhaps the unknown must stay the unknown.
Because what does an answer give, really?

An average egg is around 40 to 60 grams.
That is the measurement. It is still an egg,
not the result of an egg, not the weight of an egg.
A measured egg, a reflected egg. An observed egg.
Time arrives and turns the egg into something else.
And at that moment, the first measurement suddenly becomes
false.

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.

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.

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.

I like
pressing your lips

on my palm
as I push your head
against the wall and
hear you
whimper.

This is the only
way I can say
I love you
With you
not refuting.

I feel like a failure today

Dancing around in my underwear



Open the fridge: junk food.

Don’t want to eat it. Take it, eat it anyway



Are you my conscience?

Tell me where my wrists are, then.



So it sounds like I’m

Stuck. I’m too good at life to feel depressed, but



Here it is, like a medal that finds itself on my neck every morning

Heavy on my ribcage.


It's either crippling sadness or abnormal, sudden fits of joy.

No balance yet. Furrowing in the middle is messy.



Zero friends. No boyfriend.

So bored. For the first time ever



I laughed while jerking off

Because what’s the point



Of pleasure.

Neverends, pleasure.



I open an unread book, then I

Close. Open another. Close again



Watch TV for a while

Wash my face



Look at old photographs of

My mother.



There’s this one. Me, a child.

My mouth singing to her hairbrush, pretending it's a mic.


Then another, me about to

Eat cake



And my mother

In work clothes



Smiling for the picture, cutting

The cake. I wonder how



Much she bought it for at the time.

I wonder



What people thought in the ‘90s

When they see a girl with short hair



Bringing cake home, holding

It by the string, suspended



Like a present.

It’s a nice photo.



It’s one of the nicest photos

I’ve seen of my mother.



Today the sun is out

For a while.



Maybe sunlight can help

Me feel anything



Other than dread.

I lust. I falter.



I put the junk food foils in the trash.

I feed the birds and, I praise



The Lord.

Sorry, lord



The breadth of your kingdom

Is lost in plain, bored me.

When we lose
There comes to be a reversal process;
a rapid prototype souped into bitten rhythm.
And then you collide, like
light particles melting film to form
some replica of an inner war. What is it
about trying; what does attempt do –
Pacify? Resize? Boost the morale
of twentysomethings clinging
to past participles like the sting of a bee?
What can you do to stop the ache
of feeling like ****? What is there to grasp
when no light appears?
But then a day comes.
It’s all fine, with friends, with music, with
anything other than self-flagellation.
At which point I fight the fight not to stay
a mere summary.

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.

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.

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

I. Entrance

We gather at the quay.
I accuse you, you present the evidence disproving me.
It goes this way for some sampling of forever,
until one’s neck pops, loses vitals.
Clinging to muscle, marrow.

This wharf, an apocalypse story, has become
a trusty habitat. Only nights here.
Sometimes when the moon gets closer, I tap you.
Tell you,

‘How beautiful, how bigger.’

But you remind me:
bigger moons mean higher tides, up to our shins.
It becomes more difficult to wade, walk.

This is what I fell for, your eye for consequence.
What did you see in me?

We start coming apart soon, we hear it from miles away.
It nicks at us via vibrations and frequency,
tap water dripping, scuffing sounds beneath the floorboards.
I notify you immediately. The occurrences of anomaly that speak for us.
I encourage its meanderings and delay. You want to sit it out, too.

So we sit. In a time-tune tick-tock launch-dock gallivant.


II. Exit.

I am merely dangling from your rope, this is
The Image; tied to your *******.
We have managed to keep it that way.
Until I learned the pendulum effect and swung away.
Swung away.

Your purchasing power will work on a new, polished person, I’m sure.
I can’t, anymore.
You harvest me, but you don’t distill me.
I sleep in a silo, I talk to ghosts. They tattle tales—

History lessons


III. Escape Hatch

The sound, the nuisance, the indication, develops a raspier voice.
The vibrations eat on the pollen of our delay,
and at one point
we combust.
Alarms go off.
People get to work.
Normal sequences play out.
I think of you, then I can’t.
Soon you’re a phantom atom in a fog, diffusing slowly.

It will end with an engine dying.
In receipts with faded ink. Movie tickets.
A broken cinema chair will remind you of it.
But that’s fine.
Some say there will be nuclear waste
one has to dump somewhere, some vacuum without portals.

But we make portals.

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

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.

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.

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.

I can’t believe I’m interested in this guy who
Took a selfie. Inside a ******* art gallery. In
The bathroom, because what?
There was nothing to see?

I asked if he wanted to get out of there,
He did. We went out, to some
Uptown clearance shop.
I saw a book by Joan Rivers.

I took a picture of the book;
Just some of the many illusions of rescue.
These days, nobody wants
Joan Rivers in their lives. And Khaki cargo pants,
Or classic momma-did-this braids.

You, a boy the same age as mine,
Might love me. Almost. It matters,
Even if you don’t remember, the words you said
To me, about my specific beauty. I’m a toothpaste
For vegans; an AZERTY keyboard, or an arthouse film
Only three people will see, but I am worth seeing,
Even if I’m niche, boring, and particular.

Because you said, mumbling in
Your sleep, that I had eyes beneath my bangs,
Which were Licorice black, with
A baby blue pool at the center like a still vacuum.
I already loved you, but really,
What I loved was the way you talked about my
Flaws in illusory grandeurs, granting
My oafish, ungraceful heart and body accolades.

Did you just want to have ***? Probably not,
I mean, look at this whole situation – I’m
Not exactly one to feast eyes on. I’m a wreck,
A dumpling mash of chopped cardboard and
Dead skin. So no, it wasn’t feral.

The thing is, though
I have wanted this love all throughout my
Life, which isn’t a long time, considering the universe ends in
What? A few billion years? And I already feel that end.
Tomorrow, we’ll be 25. Then in five years, 30.
Then 10 years more, 40? The rest is just
A blurry jetsam of reduced memories, and looking
At photo albums online, wishing
Your friends were still alive. We are officially
Dead now, thanks.

The thing is, I feel like
It’s never gonna end when I’m with you,
When I’m ensconced in your consciousness.
The truth, with your name included in it,
Is better than my regular truth, which is
Just painfully boring.

I said this to you last week, and yet,
You dismissed it, saying that all I want
– All I want –
Is stimulus and biological response.
But ******* very much; I know my body;
I know what I ******* want.

I don't need you anyway.

There are other people who might want me
Down the line, I just haven’t met them yet.
I just haven’t learned enough social
Jostling, or romantic politics
To get myself served.

Then again, finding the words
“Requirement” and “champion of his own interests,”
As the foremost concepts of my profile
On your personal journal really ****** me up.
Sorry to have broken your privacy, sorry to have
Entered that forbidden dimension. I am just.
So. livid. That you don’t realize I’m a thousand instances
Of constants in the story you’re weaving, leaving me
Out everytime.

And the thing is, I just can’t do it.
You took a selfie, alone, in the bathroom
Of an art gallery, and I just waited, outside,
Super dark (because it was also an art show)
With other people in line.

When you came out, like
A precious, untamed neanderthal looking
For light outside the cave, I was happy
That I was a touchstone in the dark, horrible
Place of cluelessness we share. I am a blanket of comfort
In this closed space outdoors, in public,
Where monsters are more willing
To eat us alive.

When I saw that picture, though,
You, mustache, brows, bags under eyes,
Adorable. I knew you were happy being alone,
And that I was a side quest
That didn’t took much energy, so
It was fine not to ruffle some feathers.

I knew what I want
As we went home, I knew.

I feel,

like I always have,

The stubble on his chin
Bristling my underbelly like grass blades.
My warm skin melts it into moth wings that eat
Our shared sweaters in the closet space
He vacated three years ago,
When it was just fine to shout his name
Across the hall to make sure he ate dinner already,
To make sure the tickets were by the lampshade,
That the headphones were borrowed by his friend early that morning

I remember,

like I always have,

The way steam forms automatically
On glass panels when heated,
The strange shape of your voice,
The two strange shapes of your voice:

The first for me, was lovelier than the other-
It was the voice who asked how my summer had been.
The soothing, corrosive voice, telling my ex to *******.
It was a voice found in the thin aisles between Peruvian priests
When they come together and think they haven’t sinned.

The other voice was thick, turbid, and button-nosed.
The way asterisks quickly fixed typographical errors.
The sultry, commonfolk, arcane voice that I love so much.
It was heresy.

I’ve heard gems form at the mouth of deep reserves, and I’d like to pretend
That’s where you are
That’s where you went
That’s where you are hiding
And time comes when you return
Gem or sans gem,
I’ll put your chin, like I always have,
On my underbelly.
Like a infant who deployed
Without cutting their placenta open

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.

Sa dilim.
Minsan may kailangan magsalita.
Hindi, kahit yata konting kalabog.
Hilik? Dighay?
Utot? Basta may tunog.
Para hindi palaging hinala lang.
May nagmamasid, umaalingawngaw.
Palakad-lakad.
Saka na yung dapo. Haplos. Saka
Na yung pisil, yakap, kagat.
Kung may tunog, okay na.
Ay, andyan. Andyan pa rin pala.

I clear my throat, because that
is the thing one has to do to not
sound Gay. The vocal cords will vibrate,
come awash with a thin liquid film to evince
the Tough Male Sound Format for five seconds, so
I can answer yes, and no, and say
how are you, how have you been, what’s your name to
anyone who does not know, to anyone
who must not find out. When I talk to myself,
It is heard, though: The high pitch, the twang, the flirtations.
It sounds honest when I’m alone, singing in the bathroom when I ****.
When people are with me, I keep it
like a password in my wallet.
So it knows two things:
Hide and unleash, and honestly? It is getting tired
of knowing it has two voices for each.
I sound like a ***. There’s a jump in my As,
a wider opening of the mouth when I do my As,
the teeth showing with As, the identifying lilt,
the **** **** **** of a laugh, the longer tail
of end-syllables, the Mms and Ohhs not enough grit:
All embedded sound files that can get me killed,
that can make me see that I haven’t really stepped out
of the closet; I just opened it, and I can close it each time I like,
each time I find necessary,
like the wallet where I keep my password, like my mouth when
I say keep the change in the borrowed voice of
an Alpha Dog Anymale.
I was inside of my home one time, though.
Clasped in my religion of boundaries.

And then it started raining,
water droplets pelting rooves and shingles and wooden planks,
clapping
on the boardwalk where plants sit.
Closed my eyes. Funny.
the rain sounded like a crackling fire.

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.

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 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.

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.

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 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.

He cut his hair, 21,
because at 13, he thought
it would be the end of the world to
don a skinhead. In the end, though,
his scalp looked okay.
It tickled his palm, touching it.
It felt like a baptism
to have been wrong.

/

Books with no pictures started
appealing to him, 14, when he read
about a highschooler who played tennis,
and a fellow highschooler who attempted suicide
because they got to him, stunned him.
This book was lost one day,
and it felt like the world ended.
A language was embedded there that
seemed to belong to him exclusively.
But it was time for it to be somebody else’s.
Someone needed to own it. Then lose it, too.
It needed passing-around, so that it could evolve.
It might return someday, all tattered and shopworn.
Will it feel the same?
Maybe. But perhaps it would be him who isn’t.

/

He imagines, 25, a life somewhere else.
He’s tired of punctuality and order.
The older he gets, the more
it seems control is mere illusion.
It terrifies him to accept that
at some point, he would have to jump.
He would have leave behind everything,
everyone. A major overhaul of the self
is bound to hurt orbiting objects, but it takes
an explosion, maybe, to begin like
It was the first time.

/

The pain of self-hatred
will never leave. It has distorted
the way he perceives, the way he accepts,
the way he welcomes. Hugs
will feel like something he has to do.
Tears won’t come at command.
Excess will seem ordinary.
Horrors will be regular intervals of stimulation.
That is the burden of not knowing
How to save yourself.

/

He will wrestle with time one day,
argue, bargain with it.
But it’s not something
that gives, only occurs.
Maybe he has to stop thinking
he needs to give.
Like time, maybe he has to
let himself occur.