​I think my backne is coming to life
I’ve only ever known living things to complain, anyway
and those pissy pus-filled monsters are as bratty as they come
They borrow my sweaters without asking
oh, and they cry a lot
they cry on my sweaters
I didn’t realize pimples could have so many feelings
but they do I would know they’re
all over my sweaters
 
I like to imagine that they’re a metaphor sometimes
like their rosy complexion is the touch of prophecy from a hand up above
but this lasts only as long as I believe in God
so it’s more likely that they are noisy tenants
on my skin that never pay their rent
Reminders that even if I cloaked myself
with the skins of the night sky
all the moons would find something to scream over
disappear themselves into black holes mottling the swarthy fabric
yarn unraveling and twisting on its own strands
 
I feel like a cross-dressing warrior
wondering when my insides will reflect my outsides
Backne is both devil and angel on my shoulders
One compelling me to cover my spine at the BBQ
for fear of all that exposure
and the other reminding me
that those who love film wait for it to develop
trace bodily constellations across my back with a thumb
mark my memory with their tongues and
they won’t be talking about my backne
because it is mere accessory to a bigger life
 
It was never like this in the dreams
Somehow, I was always either the fairest of them all
or the beast guarding her tower
no one said that I’d be more like Halfling
Some upright thing stuck uncomfortably between
the form of girl and monster
her mind a ghost
her body a root suffocating underground
as backne grows like overripe purple fruit
threatening to feed gravity and fall
 
or, like baby birds cradled by tree arms
throats hungry
their orphaned wings
prophesying flight

How many Asians does it take
to shut racism down?

Trick question.

Everyone knows Asians die quietly.

While dancing through admissions systems not designed for us
​as the world runs on railroad tracks our grandfather's backs laid
where does the train go today?

The one time we raised our voices
was when they prosecuted us like "the Blacks"
like our skin wasn't stitched into the golden hide of history enough
Wanted to be America so bad that we
colored our racism the same
lines barely capable of containing all that negative space
The violence inside of us forgetting
that in the end, Peter Liang's blood would've
been an identical stain on that starving, naked floor

Woman
as if I need a man to be

woman without a man is wo
in Chinese, this means
Me
Means permission to be a person
that I gave to myself
I
Wo
Means waking up to thunder
and heat rumbling from black tangle of hair
no one could force my hand to shave
Means making my own forest out of flame
and the smell of it coaxes ravens to flee
the wolves sing a hymn
as the logging industry is razed to the ground
my eyelashes the moon that winks through the elbows
of smoking branches that are
both altar and lamb
both the sacrifice and the betrayal
 
and the forgiveness
 
and the holy
 
Wo was here before the 30th birthday
was here before the man
here since the first old maid
Wo was woodsmoke in belly
was blood in dirt and through the veins of leaves
that gave shade and wilted under it
Wo gave and took it away
took and made two of herself
 
she married her
 
the sky cried for days
 
there was a fire that the logging industry razed to the ground
the ashes turned into a flood
all the leaves wilted
and the altar was bloody
on the 30th birthday, someone wrote a bible and it was wrong
they forgot about the ravens
 
the ravens saw this happen
 
captive, they are known to speak
 

And then she became the epistemology she can't stop talking about with herself

Little kid asks if God can be God and His own mother
Bible study teacher says 
this is a silly question
explains
God is bigger than your brain
we can't claim to know His shape or motivations
or how He pushes a bud into blossom
or how He swallows up the blood of an entire nation
leaving behind only fashionable coffee shops and fading shrieks of graffiti
know simply that He does
It is beyond the tender slips of minds to conceptualize 
so niggling and impossible a thought as why?
The child cries,
How, then, if we are so small and unknowing
ignorant and baked under our own sun
can we presume to know as much as His existence?
Maybe the holiest creed 
is not knowing
is never knowing
or ever proclaiming what does not a have a name to proclaim

Upon her saying this,
all the lights went out
the room somehow crawled smaller
The child is afraid, but never so sure of her unsureness
she worries that when God comes
she won't believe in Him
​But maybe the child is God's pinky
maybe the child is God
and her pinky is an acorn
and her fingerprints are the forest
and an acorn is smaller than a forest
but also somehow bigger
balancing on the folds of God's pinky
and God is a child
and the child isn't you
​but she was yesterday

This morning I woke up in someone else's arms
my skin bubbled away from the chokehold
even as every bronchiole tugged me closer
begging for a whiff
just one
my hair was falling off
and every artery slipped and pooled, noodle-like, on the sheets
that were white yesterday
teeth crept back to their roots
fingers crawled into oddly pouched knuckles
my spine curled into an interrobang
caricatured in mock surprise
that my hands were trying to kill me again

I.
Imagine stepping into my hollow tank 
your toes splaying against the smooth tile steps
you're wearing your best dress and a 
full face of makeup
Ketchup will never again plop onto the pale lace
mascara will never run again
The Experience Machine will never allow this.
So step into me.

II.
The technicians circle you as you ease 
your whispery bones into the tideless liquid
placing electrodes on every spot that betrays a pulse
This is the beginning
of an endless dream
the best you've ever had
You feel like a funny little astronaut 
as they pull a respirator over your nose
you imagine rocketing to the moon
there is a spaceship and enough freeze-dried ice cream 
for you to always have extra
I slosh with promises as you twitch your muscles 
into a calm
A whir begins, signaling a woman without a face to
clap fluffy headphones over your ears
unbidden, you start the countdown in your head
you 
     glide
          under
The door has latched shut
but you don't notice
I trace your heartbeat ringing through my glass walls
​excitedly
your ears straining into the deafness
Step into me.

III.
You wake up in silk
there is a tray of gouda, palmiers, and your favorite tea
simmering in a porcelain cup that never cools
or shatters 
there are real elephants on your porch
your porch stretches like a football field and 
it's the prettiest football field and you imagine 
you'll have time to learn the rules later
you imagine you are already the star quarterback and
you make up all the rules
I am stringing together dandelions and Christmas lights
that will sing for you if you touch them 
and you will touch them
Step into me.

IV.
maybe you'll swim later in the blue lake with soft
white sand
or the streets that have never seen a hungry knife or hail
you don't want to remember what those are so 
you forget the analogy you were making
I hug you closer it is almost gone
Step into me.

V.
you decide that you will nap
you aren't tired, but you close your eyes anyway
maybe you'll dream about your life before
maybe 
you won't dream at all

VI. 
A billion miles ago, another little girl gets lost in the Experience Institution
the lights have dimmed in the cool room 
the scientists have all gone to sleep
she skitters away from a beep in a machine and stumbles into me
peers into my glass panels and sees
pale lace and a full set of lashes
and Christmas lights 
runs the other way
looks back
​only once

All my life, strength came from the ways 
I could keep my fists up
hide my sides with barbed brick elbows
protect my nose with a zipped-lip smile that said
I'm just trying to get by
so thank you
for not testing which of our bodies would break first 
upon each other
not knowing that there were more ways to
hurt a girl than a stoning
or a crucifixion 
for the world spoke sticks and stones, I thought
But words are what built me
see, I was lonely before I learned the language of human being
so I traced the alphabet of a book spine
licked scraps of people I wanted to be off the pages 
and let them breathe through me
I should have known that people made of ink and paper
burn eventually

When you said I was a wolf,
a stain, and that you hated me
I bled.
For the first time, I saw red and it was not at all what
Shakespeare said it would be
It twists me to be talked about
and the more I crumple, the less I feel like
the wings of a paper plane
and more like a rough draft
suffocating in the trash can 
Maybe blood slipping from my lips 
could stand trial to prove my humanity
Maybe if you knew I was capable of sleep
you'd stop seeing your monsters reflected on me
realize it was my shadow you were afraid of
not these fingers
not these teeth

I've been dissecting your misunderstanding
for awhile now
I walk with a straight back 
wear a quick smile and Converse humor 
on my tripping feet 
I weigh 103 lbs, they call me skinny
I laugh and say I'm just light enough to fly
after all, with wings you gotta know a thing or two
about self-preservation
modesty is preferable
white is best
easier to bury when clad already in mourning
but for all your looking, you missed a few things
I walk with an iron bar up my back 
because if you fall, they'll kick you
The smile is to distract you from the eyes
that can barely see through all the water
Converse shoes don't replace the layers of skin
whipped straight off my body
I may be light enough to be skinny,
but to fly you've got to fall and
if you fall, they'll kick you

But you'll crawl by and you
won't even know
ever ask
ever exorcise the spite blinding
your eyes you'd sooner
watch the favored one fall 
and kick her
like, she won't miss a tooth or two
she's too busy counting her lucky stars
as if the stars come out anymore
and the nighttime stretches on forever
I've never wanted a story to end this bad.
I used to love reading
pages flicking forth and back and forth
like wings, falling and rising, inventing flight
I used to read my favorite lines over and over
but you've forced a script into my mouth 
and it's saying terrible things 
in your language of sticks and stones 
I'm a bone you've 
sucked the marrow from the insides of
You know, there won't be any left for the
mushrooms
if you give my all to the dogs

I wish I were the wolf you made me out to be
then, maybe, we could have just
talked it out

Don’t cry
you tried
your best
 
Never
ever
tell
 
Secrets are most fun when brought to hell so
put your thoughts back on the shelf
you ain’t going anywhere
 
You’re
going down
with
your pawns
 
Aren’t you
glad
I
ain’t coming
 
Too late to look back now
you have carved your coffin or were you just
planning it especially for me?
 
Oh, please.
 
You’ve overestimated your worth to me
You’ve made a mistake that don’t wash out easily
So now that it’s just us
what do you have to say?
Don’t you know that games have rules? I know
how you like to play
 
[Nick]
 
Secrets
burying you with secrets
You write only secrets and
now they’re wronging you
 
[Nick]
 
You’ve overestimated your worth to me
You’ve made a mistake that don’t wash out easily
So now that it’s just us
what do you have to say?
Don’t you know that games have rules? I know
how you like to play
 
Secrets
burying you with secrets
You write only secrets and
now they’re wronging you
 

There is something shady about legumes
which leads me to think they must
be good for you
but still, I can't bear to slide their little 
torsos down my throat
It feels kind of cannibalistic how
forgiving their sandy innards are 
as you break into their skin
patterning your teeth with them
like a beany kaleidoscope
Second grade ruined the exercise of eating
when I wetted some Bounty in the laundry room
tucked my lima bean in and found
not a day later, my bean began to grow
unfurling a little green pinkie 
like a peace offering or early lesson
on the hazards of puberty
When I saw this reaching and needing for light
I didn't understand how
anyone could stand to digest something
so obviously alive

I am listening to an end
when mechanical silence slices the artist's
voice into emptiness and
the room is awash with salty
waves of nothing but the unfeeling
snip of my nail clippers 
My brain is a metastasizing 
bramble bush of indignation
This was not a matter of bad transition
into another song, no,
this was a bad transition into its own end
I felt that the oaky croon deserved better
than an unpunctuated sentence
     leaving me only with the hot deprivation of wanting 
     and crashing into nothing but eggshell expectations
before realizing
this was the first time I felt something
the entire damn time

I got to thinking in that pause before
     the female warble of the next queued up 
     body jauntily erased the quiet
that there must be some meaning in nothing then