Nyack, NY: a naked man sits cross-legged in the middle of a road with a dead dog sprawled across his lap, next to him there is a woman with an empty mouth (no ice & no teeth). Nyack, NY: I am not one of them. At night I hold scissors to my feet the way bottles were once held to my young newborn face. Mother, Mother, in 1995, 19 years later, did you think I’d be in a hospital?
White Plains, New York Presbyterian Hospital, Westchester Division: there is a boy there who loves football & tells me that the two of us were born like twins. I have never seen a football game in my life.
White Plains, New York Presbyterian Hospital, Westchester Division: there is a girl who at dinner time hides the bread rolls in her fleece, her fleece is purple like my father’s face was the day he proposed to my mother in a restaurant in Woodstock, NY.
Upstate NY I do not cry. Upstate NY I am folded into mountains like the comforter of a child, it is summer & my stomach expands like boiling eggs. During the egg toss I break the egg in my hands like a crack of thunder & my partner gets mad at me & I do not move,
like a boy I do not move. I kiss five boys in 12 months, & for each one I feel like I am kissing my hand. For each one I feel like I am kissing sidewalk or a magazine & I want to apologize. I let each one of them bite my tongue until I can’t feel my stomach. I never want to feel my stomach again.
This year I am deer this year I become barbecue this year I am Christ I do not go to church & until tonight I forget to remember my grandmother.