climb up on my shoulders
crouch, i bend my knees, hands out, ready for mass, ready for carry, climb up on my spine, crooked, wavering a symptom of how damn hard i try weight, just a minute, rain down, over brows into sight despite glasses, clarity isn't ready for commitment, glass fogs in bad weather, you like it or not hot, bury my body, tuck the soil in close to my thighs hide the collarbone, the breasts, the danger to myself, at night the princess is always left to defend her own castle, second wind flattens cattails before girls unready to die, quiet into the eye of a hurricane named after me, see how the tops of all the trees sway in the breeze i breathe?
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ama calls him
by all the names he has ever gone by tao ge, mr. chan, han ting, alex, calixto in hopes his eyelids will flutter at one of them sometimes, only "good morning" will do or a wave the correct response to these pleasantries seem unaffected by the rot encoded deeper than sense of self, language, or love when the world begins to lose its grip on my wrists will you knock on the glass, mouthing, miming, wave wave good morning wave wave good morning ignoring the beeping, the maze of tubes ransacking my skin, will you call me by all my names & wait for an answer? akong dreams of his mother
who is not dead she has an entire harvest of sunset-colored mangoes gathered up in her hands brown, the way all loving soil under coconut trees color in evening light he is in davao, shirt sleeve drenched in beer & the reprise of The Phantom of the Opera, hometown that he hasn't left yet for stolen land everything, the gnat clouds and lumber and street children, is his birthright akong tosses & turns against his mother's perfume she has dropped the mangoes by his feet and now strangles him with her lovely, calloused hands the villagers gather to watch this familial tragedy as akong labors for breath, clutches at the air once, twice chanting fills his ears Just a urine test, the onlookers say together at his feet, a little girl with two braids claps to the beat just a urine test the catheter is in and out just a urine test akong closes his eyes but they are already closed all the way my fingers scrape the burlap bottom
of my bag of tricks. days like these, the blank page chews up an entire eraser, the waiting crowd quiets, the poet in me dies, nothing rhymes there's a cactus where my lungs were supposed to be
and i think Someone made a mistake when They put it there i understand that breathing involves air but there's a desert where my stomach is and the only mystery is how thirsty my gut gets when the sky isn't falling when the ground is a sheet of unbroken glass steaming under a big bedroom eye hovering above the still wind vanes my bones beg for a storm they curve, brittle and wise, ready for fury untested as they are in mild weather my toes press into pavement straws in sand searching for a reason to fight the gale that doesn't come but scarecrows were built for waiting my grandma disappeared into the crook of her elbow
i stayed perfectly still though a better granddaughter might have followed into the rabbit hole endless, inevitable, dark as it is but such a place that makes my grandma say, "i'm so tired," is beyond the limits of my courage maybe (could it be?) my love mangoes are my favorite metaphor
for being a daughter who doesn't listen thin skinned, sweet, but messy doesn't bruise with impact absorbs the blow like she expected it never argue with her she gets between all your teeth and won't let go you'll smell like her for hours after it is always this way with mangoes. easy to break into, hard to escape from she'll turn you into a regretful thief or disappointed mother heavy on the branch with misleading weight couldn't fill a stomach like an apple would mostly seed mostly promise still unseen jetlag reminds me that it is midnight
somewhere sometimes it's in the faint orange glow of my childhood bedroom the penciled-on pink paint now apologetically covered up in lavender my body is a dollar sign twisted up in sheets but sleep is expensive i can't afford to close my eyes again another dream in which i say things i don't mean might be lurking by the curtains the mattress yields in the middle where the bed frame has broken and it tries to swallow up my twitching i let it as much as i can let myself fall into anyone's arms slide down another throat into another belly let acid peel back my skin Christmas morning i wonder what's under there if anything has changed or grown up my tombstone will read,
"died of embarrassment, clumsiness, unrequited love, writers' block, mosquito bites, fear of heights, poetic injustice, flashbacks, forgotten passwords, laughter, & other natural causes" |
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