rest, girl
rest, mother
rest, red disco queen

rest, white willow singing
rest, wind chimes
rest, redbone dog

rest, black sky
rest, yellow moon
rest, opaque stars

rest, *** on stovetop
rest, toes cracking
rest, boy typing

rest, sister
rest, child
rest, soul

rest

the sun machine
is coming down

rest

the children are
watching fire

rest

the thunder is born
with the night

rest

you too will know me,
sister
you will catch my wind
it smells of

tea tree oil

Watching her cook was like watching
a duck in water. Making use of the old
utensils and cookware of the hotel kitchen
she made a meal with an eclectic mix
of elements she had pondered over breakfast.
Sauté, mince, sear, season:
these words flowed from her lips
like a second language in time with the
steady chops on the cutting board
and I was mesmerized when she
moved in perfect rhythm from stirring
the mushrooms to flipping the
sweet potato hash into the air;
tasting and adding more olive oil
to marry the idea on her palate to the
reality on the stovetop.

Wimbledon’s playing on the TV in the living room. Dad and I are watching on the sofa.

In the kitchen, Mom cuts carrots and cucumbers with a long blade. She slices the vegetables one by one. Orange pieces. Green pieces.

I glance over Mom chops up the carrots and cucumbers without a cutting board, taking each long carrot and cucumber and slices it with precision, as though she’s a professional like the film with Natalie Portman and Jean Reno.

But she’s not a little girl and she’s not a Frenchman. She’s like a mix-in-between, like the asphalt in our driveway and the grass sprouting in between the cracks.

Dad is a computer engineer. He used to be an artist. Used to study technical drawing in a university in Saigon.

He met mom when he was working on a play. She was the lead actress. Shakespeare had said, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages.”

He’s right, but right now I can’t tell what act I’m in. Dad focuses on the TV. Watches Federer and Djokovic, his eyes, darting from left to right like the mood of a young boy that crosses back and forth from light to dark, and back again.

Blade in hand, Mom makes longer and deeper cuts across the cucumber, cutting away the skin, leaving deep cuts in the vegetable. Dad turns his head towards her, his neck cracking like the forehand swung by Federer.

He clears his throat, softly, soft as gas leaking out from a stovetop from a studio apartment, like the scene in Fight Club, a match about to be struck.

Mom sets the blade down on the table, and bites her lip. Her nostrils flare. I press down on the couch arm, and stand up, my head bent, my eyes wandering to the doorway.

i seized the day
and ended up in seizure pains
where a heated fever reigns
and eats my brains like beaten eggs
feverishly fried
on a stovetop of lies
where you drove off the side
of a cliff and broke off the ties
and that's it i quit
i've dusted off my hands
and trusted your demands
til i was crushed like a cardboard can

Dancing on the mangled
corpse of Jupiter, we recall
nothing but revelry. I wonder
about God and summer and
poor boyish ignorance.

There are eggshells in my hair,
or maybe they simply are
my locs. Snapping like shedskin,
left and right, they are an offering.
Divining me, divining you.

Pan-fried resistance,
Your tongue beckons
I am a celestial body
blindly hopping galaxies;
Devour me.

The chilly camp-like home where I was staying,
had no running water, in winter all shut down,
but had—amplitudinous electric.

I must have been thinking extra sharp that morning,
when to electric stovetop I came; soon had boiling
Cumberland Farm’s bottled water
in a copper *** with four brown eggs.

With careful timing at last I took the four eggs out
and with the heated water applying
Barbasol and razor, so I shaved.

Please take care to not spill a single drop
of soapy water into the winterized drain pipe,
I heard in my head my sage sister say.

I discarded the contents of the ***
into a snowy patch.

Good morning, and happy happy, I sang.
I hefted one oak log onto a dying fire.

Two of the four eggs I ate,
saving the last for leaner days.

So complete--eggs
and hot shave breakfast.

there are some things,
that just smell so good:
corn freshly shucked, potatoes roasted in campfire coals, carrots fresh from the ground, then washed   and stovetop roasted
basted with butter
and lavender honey.

the nape of my toddlers neck,
that clean fresh hopeful little boy smell.
coffee, straight up, freshly brewed
caramel warming,

passionfruit, strawberries, citrus any type, zested. freshly planed fennel curls, mint crushed for a mojito, roast lamb and rosemary gravy.

the smell of planed wood in the palms of my man's hands as i kiss them. frangipani, coconut tanning oil,
earth newly rained upon. popcorn popping, chocolate melting,
jasmine, orange blossoms,
a grove of pine trees.
warm gingerbread and mulled wine.

salt tang on the morning breeze.
the smell that lingers after the lovin.
garlic and ginger in a hot wok.
salt tang on the evening breeze.
prawns all sea salty and
a crisp cold beer.

sandlewood and citrus aftershave lotion on your smoothed cheek.

nectarines, apricots,
a yellow juicy peach,
freshly bitten.

apple scented shampoo daphne & lilac my nana's smell,
bay *** newspaper print and palmolive soap,
my pop's study.

rose petals crushed.
earl grey tea,
toast just before burning damper and cocky's joy
crisp fresh linen warm from the sun.

so many scents, so many smells...
these are my favourites please feel free to add your's, as long as it's clean
and above board.

The funding of my own little massacre,
my own precious little war crime. My smoke
is everywhere. My father coughs in his sleep.
My mother gags, hangs her head out the window, sick.

My cheap *** before and after cheap ***.
I chat up some high-waisted pastiche on Alberta.
She tells me collage this and that and looks
so lit up and skinny, it's a dream.

Where I go to brand myself. I have this image
of a spark on my arm sitting stovetop red,
sinking into the skin, losing color as it digs,
turning to grey and then nothing like the drowning
of a comet's tail in atmosphere. My burns look so good
in the pale dormitory bathroom shower light: so baby tulip
and teeth, so how-I've-made-it-through-the-wringer.
Christ, I should be a film, look at me: so bent and bright,
such a cute boxer, such a prize fight.

i swallowed the
bathroom mirror whole
threw an entire bag
of lemon drops
into the highway and
danced on someone else's grave
in a failed attempt at
self-acceptance.

it's hard
to shatter the
saccharine sweet
taste of personal hate
sticking to my hands
like half melted wax.

i've almost
given myself permission
to fail
but not yet.

hasn't it been
stovetop memories
a couple haircuts
and one hell of a year?

scratch the back of my
neck
in a halfhearted attempt
to forget
and i'll take up burning
aluminum pillows
like i took up
loving myself.

I am electric.
All the time I feel it
Sparking just under my skin.
Sometimes it settles like static,
And sometimes it rages like lightning.
But I am always too small for it.
It doesn't live in me
It consumes me
It becomes me.
I feel, therefore I am,
And it is great and terrible.
God was a child,
With a fork in an electrical socket
And I became.
Sometimes someone will try to know it all
Try to be the one who holds all of it
And wonders about nothing.
I have learned that people who try to define me
Burn.
I have learned that being near me
Pulls emotion from them
Magnetically
And that in my purest form
I am neither good nor bad
But I am most certainly
Dangerous.
Electricity doesn't discriminate
It flows.
It's easy to be too much
When there's no end to you.
Slowly, I learned to step back,
To pull away.
There is not a little shame in knowing you can fry someone
By accident.
But no matter what,
I will make your hair stand up.
I don't mangle people,
But I at least leave them with a distinct feeling of strangeness,
Like having the tree right across the yard from you get struck by lightning
And feeling the hum.
It is a fascinating, unsettling, addictive feeling,
And I've seen people lust for it
And I've seen them flee from it
Headlong.
I've held back my fingertips
Unwilling to make them stay by shock treatment.
I have met people who were
Walking dead
And I have shoved them backward
With both hands
And heard a heartbeat restart.
I have met people who reached for me
Like a child for the hot element on a stovetop
And found exactly the same surprise and pain.
I have known people who
Stand close enough to singe their hair
And hold their palms up to thaw something inside them
That has gone cold as ice.
And I have known people whose fingertips
Drew all the lightning to them
And left glorious, hot scars on my skin
Handprints that never cool.
I have short circuited
Looking into eyes that pulled every molecule of me
Charged
Into my beating heart and made me a dying star
Folding in on myself.
I come with a warning label
Because I shout hazard signs
To anyone who will listen.
I try to be gentle
But being high voltage is as much a high
As it is a burden.
I can **** or resurrect, depending only on the direction of the wind that day.
I can light you up
Or I can ******* you
And I don't ever know which it will be.
I am so alive that I can't hold it in,
And I am so chaotic that it's like a disease.
I am electric.

In my head
I imagine the future to be
Lipsticks lined on a marble counter
According to color and mood
And clothes warm from the dryer
Because they didn’t cool in the car
And heartbeats under bedsheets
Imported from Milan
Where no clothes are scattered
Because we always remember
To hang them, properly,
(The way we’re supposed to).
And in my head
You wear a sweater
And I brew tea
In an electric kettle
On a spotless counter
In a kitchen scrubbed clean
Except on the stove
Where a smudge of chocolate
Here and                             there
Reminds us of
The night before
And you see me clearly
With curious eyes
And I see you exactly as I did
When we first met
On our third date
When you asked me
If I would, please, finish your plate.
And I imagine the future
And I adore the order
The absence of terrifying smudges
Of chaos
Against a marble façade of
Rosy (or pink. or sparkle.) perfection.
I crave the
Nights spread over soft, warm sheets
That I call mine
And warm lips that wake me
Only when the sun is just right
So I see the mischievous sparkle
In your half-closed eyes
Before you tickle me awake.
And in my head
I long for this,
For the perfection of a
Practiced hand.
I want to build myself
Like my mind builds worlds
With one smooth stroke at a time.

But I do admit
As I lay in jersey sheets
That I do quite like
The way the soft lamplight
Falls over my cluttered bedspread
And how my books are stacked
One
Two
Three
Against my bookshelf
Rather than inside it
(The way it’s supposed to.)
And I am fond
Of the sheer lavender cloth
Thrown haphazardly on the lampshade
And tied with a purple cord
From a graduation I can’t clearly remember
And have every desire to completely forget.
And I will rise
On an overcast day
To the cold lips of sea air
On sheets made from
Recycled materials
And I will stand on aching bones and trod
With a limp and a frown
To the stovetop kettle
And I will brew tea
To the gentle hum of the fridge
That was here when I moved in
And I will be wearing
A robe with no cord
And a face with no grin
But I will look to the sky
And see the sun promised in the
Nebulous lining of the silver clouds above
And I will smile and
Stretch my arms
And see myself clearly
With selfish, curious eyes
Amid the ***** pots and pans and I
Will find peace
In chaos.

My scars are simple, silly even
The result of shaving mishaps, stovetop altercations, mosquito bites, and the subsequent relentless scratching of said mosquito bites
These aren’t real scars
But I’ve seen true scars
I’ve seen that girl
The one whose mouth says she’s fine but whose eyes disagree
I’ve seen her, I’ve known her, and I’ve seen her real scars
Scars that aren’t simple
And not even close to silly
And intently watching her, I sit upon a wish:
That I could give her my scars instead.

Despite the Bakelite ****
etched with a range of degrees,
the vintage Wedgewood oven
has only two temperatures:
warm and nuclear ash.
But **** it looks good—a sleek hulk
of white porcelain and polished chrome,
a 1950s Cadillac parked next to the fridge.

When the house is dark
the fluorescent stovetop
glows like a dashboard
illuminating candy wrappers and road maps,
and the kitchen soon stretches to landscape.

I wander in, whiskey in hand, and stand
on a road cutting across a darkened field.

Below cast iron burner grates
pilot lights flicker and burn:
blue seeds poised to blossom
when the Bakelite dials turn.

I reach for the bottle
and the kitchen ignites
into a meadow of larkspur.

Fragrant flowers
mixing bourbon;
I drink it all down,
let the blues drive.

I am the stovetop
your mother warned you
not to touch when you were five.
You did it anyways, of course,
because you wanted to see if
you could survive the pain.
I remember you telling me
that story on our third date
after I told you I've never met anyone
I didn't end up hurting.
Masochism runs in the family
you said. Wreckage runs in mine.
When I was five I put aluminum foil
in the microwave just to
sit and watch the destruction
it created. When we met, I knew
we wouldn't last long.
Fire and ice together never does.

If hating the both of you is a sin,
I’m already in hell.
Been living in hell since the day
you came with Kit in your stomach
and me in the backs of your ***** Vietnamese minds.

First, you think gay people are
nasty, *****—wrong.
Second, you saw that Facebook photo of me
at the pride parade and now you think
that I’m gay,
that I’m nasty, *****, wrong.

And third, you showed him that picture
and now he doesn’t even want to call me his son.

I’m not sure of what I am, but I am sure of one thing—
that I don’t want to be your son if it means
living up to your standards, beliefs, misconceptions and predispositions
that are as ugly and low as the Communist oppression
you think you left behind.

                                                               ­      I only live up to America.

Toss my number on the stovetop and burn it—
Burn it like a ******.
Burn it like Chinese incense.
Burn it like your millionth cigarette bud.

**I’ll burn like the Fourth of July.

and so the melody went: C, A, G, E, C, A, G, E, C, A, G, E
and he was locked inside it
and his heartbeat was in 9/8; a rhythm he struggled to move to
and it set his veins to boiling temperature
and the blood bubbled like soup on a stovetop
and the vessels burst like a boat in a storm

                                                                           ...until he found the key,
                                                                           that unlocked the CAGE.

We were stuck all night
in quicksand light
and talked for fifty three tequila
hours, from bench to bar, to
dusk lit park, to the rust and arch
of the Golden Gate Bridge—
death watched us from
windowsill alleyways, between drying
sheets and shirts, and men’s
underwear, while life
climbed down the fire escapes
to greet us.
You smiled, with your eyes—
illuminating the still
second hands of streets clocks,
and the whole
infinity of Time between.
We lit cigarettes in pedicabs
unspeaking, vibrating mind
telepathy at midnight between
imaginary African angels.
And your smell reminded
me of an art lined fireplace
I once knew in Buffalo, with no fire
burning, but a window lighted
neighbor *******, while
the Main Street sirens howled.
And we don’t know each other
anymore, but
I still remember the You,
who broke down crying
in a light green kitchen, trembling
before a dirtied stovetop, and
ending on a bed—
missing a life
you couldn’t remember

after anne sexton*

12/3/2015

Here is a vivisection,
my dull operation,
  cutting into my epidermis,
pulling out maggots and rat pups,
scuttling across the scalpel,
Armillaria inside of my tendons
this itself is: a deposession,
a sort of pneumic
   inquisition, the
paucity of the gold striking someone
   sick running down my shoulders
quadriplegic in motion,
  temperament boiling
hissing now stovetop unattended
foaming at the mouth falling into the hot ,
  moving and finally
over the edge the foam sick bile like
Sliding onto the voided floor

stitch me back up.

i. you are at once absent and present

mourning dew on tobacco leaves
transgressive pleasure simultaneously
deluding and eluding me
i remain an equation incapable
of comprehending infinity

tantalizing fantasies splashed
like water across a stovetop
simmering on contact before evaporating
with my unconscious thoughts
trapped within half-forgotten dreams
restless in unending nightmares

a cosmic drift of psychological
rifts in a psyche sundered by
the fault-line ruptures
of cognitive dissonance earthquakes

there's no stitching up
the severed seams
or recovering the effervescence
of innocence lost in our ascent to a rooftop
to treat with bliss in the midst
of the moon's ambivalence

ii. you are at once absent and present

i thought the stars danced for only us
that you put them in the sky
so i could study nebulae
with the same five senses
i'd use to explore you

the stars looked on
voyeurs surveying
the crush of our bodies
listening to the rush of lust
leaking past flesh flushed
with explicit elixirs

we found the philosopher's stone
became ageless in those moments
drunk on alchemical toxins
poisoning our blood-streams
souring the precious draught  
of friendship we'd cherished
for half a decade

the taste of your alcohol-breath
still taints my tongue
lungs billowing like corpses
pierced by carrion
a larynx choked with regret
while you smoke your cigarettes
incapable of going back
yet returning
ad infinitum

iii. you are at once absent and present

So here I am.
I swore tonight I was going to die;
the movies are over,
there's nothing left to show,
nothing left to teach.
I have no purpose.
Numbness cascades over me,
the cat scratches
stovetop burns
and splinters
are nothing more than peripheral sensations.
So why am I still
hesitant?

To taste the red burst of rippened tomatoes
that catch a summer's glee whose
shouts run down airconditioned malls of daffodils
to reach butterscotch ends

To catch naive dewdrops on their final wave
-- gleeful regardless of their fleeting demise
on leaffy budettes as they hitchhike on blushing shins
that touch for just a second

To receive the cricket's call
and hang on their every word like
how the stars do on the night sky velvet
hung taut to stop the dreamer's upward freefall

To reverbrate down hymns
and ***** pipes whose rust subdued
by caramel oaken spirits and
cigars rolled with rebellion

To watch the twinkle of eyes
that unroll before me cinemated
like the rhythmic  popping of corn seeds
and the anticipation of childlike hands

To surf the last yawn and sigh
whose ebb and flow crash on
pristine beds -- that soothes and prickles the ears
where the mind remains calm and restless

To sit with 4am and drink
tea or coffee (whichever it desires)
and have hours of conversation before
its teary depature

To the pilgrims' call of the first train
The satisfaction of staying vigil
simmers in the insomniac's stovetop
that seems to be low on gas

The need of slumber seems trivial at most
for dreaming has never known the diffrence
between being awake or asleep
or could this just be my mind that flurries
like jackrabbit thumps and heffalump nightmares
and honey dripping down my boyish chin
and mother napkins and lush lullabies
that whisper "go to sleep"

I did not engineer

Nor attempt to construct

The human soul

No

Not I



The mere idea seemed frivolous

Damnably gelatinous and

Above all else

Impossible to comprehend

How silly it might turn out

Indeed I thought this



I did attempt however

To make a spicy jam

One evening at the

End of Winter I believe

Lovely time

When this,

What I consider the beginning of a debacle,

Began



I threw together

Bits, and things, and twigs,

And professional spices,

And Illicit words, and

Brown sugar,

And old tea,

And harmless fun

And Puppy Dog Tails,

And I’m allergic to snails,

And something that I called Steve



It could have been Tom

But it looked like a Steve to me

Despite its arguments that it was

A Barbra through and through



I stirred and fiddled and sang

To this black and thin glop

I indeed attempted to call

A spiced jam concoction

That was tap-dancing in circles

On my stovetop without permission



When, no I know, the usual happened

I became bored

Yes

Yes Indeed I did

Bored

Thoroughly

Bored

Bored

Bored



Where was I?

Oh yes.

Bored



Bored of this

Damnable,

Jammable,

Fred Astaire

Not spicy jam



So I left what would become

The self-engineering diluent,

Now a vicious, viscous, and crude thing

That would become the human soul

On the back burner  

While I cooked some pasta instead



I prefer pasta

It is delicious

Not like that mistake of mine

It continued to be a mistake of mine

It was not pasta,

It was not spiced jam,

And I never remembered to throw it in the Hazmat bin

Whoops



For a year

I believe

It could have been a week

A very long and tiring week

Or seven years

When I heard the back burning

Singing back to me

About apples with a crisp bite

About fireworks that misfired

About drug needles used to sew together sanity

Was this too spicy?



With its two voices of

Hospital dust

And

Captive applause



Oh my,

This couldn't possibly

Taste good

I believe whatever this has

Festered into without

Adult supervision,

I believe it might be beginning to turn

Like milk and wine



I bottled it in a wooden bottle

And left it on the stoop of an orphanage

To find a good home

I wonder if this not spiced jam

Has found a good home

Last I heard

They all went from it to They

And attended Engineering School.

Skimming the surface of your sweetness
Creamy rich creme brulee
with a je ne said quois kick
Skin of sprinkled seasonings
Looks like art
In all sensory scintillation
Delicate dashes
Deliberate divinity finds
A splash of savior savory
Boil up smiles
Bubble over in rounds
Popping sizzle
Of a new recipe spark
Invite chance to the table
And me without manners
Fumbled elbows atop a table
Unrefined as an innocent palette
Fear finds fruitful fools as I
Always want another taste
Insatiable sensations
Shake me
Never the same
A want to swish you in my mouth
So you know my words stir smoother sound space
Than my mind lets on
Imagine a ticking timer
For me or you
Cant just swelter in the smell
Saliva sweat on hot stovetop
Tease your texture between teeth
I find gritted in a past
Of al dente pasta
Not quite my liking
But always filling
How hard to be full
Of a hearth of health
When i've been so long
Waited on by baited service
Couldn't help but take a bite
I got hooked
Reeled in line to choke on breathing
Luck lifeline
To see release
Catch a nibble
Insist I taste
Your full flavor
Ever evolving buds
Dissolve new resolve
From tongue
Of trepidation
Swirled in soufflee one day
Tiramisu on through
To courses I never knew
In glistening garnishes
Playful plating
Dining halls of hope
Glazed eyes
Fancy this feast
Mixed anew
Set you a place
Its fit for two

I busted open the door,
breathed in the **** smell
Floored by the busted bottles,
used to beat females
Beneath me, was a body,
her bust exposed as she lied on the floor
The liquor must of licked her, it missed her in her misery
How’d she get mixed with pimps, and unsavory misters?
Money.
Funny,
Dead presidents solve most mysteries
I see north of me, broken pictures and light fixtures
They say demons do their deeds in the darkness,
These ****** damages defile as they fill in, this apartment
The AC, broke, like empty pockets,
The place equivalent to an icebox
The ice on my wrist
at home in one way
But cool things will get you shot,
You can’t strut on these runways
I take some steps, I hear the wood scream
Similar to when he laid her down in the sheets
I find *** and a *** of crack cookin on the stovetop
The trash has McDonald’s wrappers, his diet a disaster
Bras of five different women on the floor
Probably people purchased at clubs, to do his ***** chores
I can see his finances are a mess, but his spirit is what’s poor
Pores are sweatin, as I hear the walls of my past confessing
THIS IS HOME
This is where I was raised, actually no, where I was brought down
Baby mamas in rotation like my favorite mixtapes
My mind like what a place, ain’t no way I’m a stay
He had his life all backwards, and I could never set him straight?
I walked into Man’s Hood, I’m just glad I escaped
But the women still abused, and the drugs he uses
God, I’m 20 years old, this a lot on my plate
I feel called to fix it, maybe that’s why I’m back
I came for my bags, but the baggage attacks
I hear a cry, a child breaks out in a whimper
A skinny lil boy, probably missed too many dinners
A son of another woman but my brother the same
How can I make change if I run away
THIS IS HOME
I wipe his tears, tell him, it’ll be okay
I stayed for that night.
The future an unknown