i sneak in the back to avoid the front porch talk.

April 6: a bleak and indefinite future

i don't talk to anyone
i have pimples on my breasts that seem to
pus in place of milk
my stomach huddles underneath
the top of my waist band
hiding its head like a tumored ostrich
with its beak smelling of fish
it never ate
i can smell myself
downwind

from the litter box
in the corner of the kitchen
that corner seems dark and full of nothing
because i hardly remember
being there before but now
i wonder how hard
the black nuggets have gotten
and where i would be if i hadn't
taken the bus to the vet and carried
the cat taxi
over my arm like chanel

i imagine i get telephone calls but the ringing is
only in my ears only in my head
until i tip over the gaping bottle
of ibuprofen
and sprinkle a pinch on top of my tongue
i swallow them dry
so they scrap the sides of my throat with chalk and
later when i am tired
of chewing on
the pillbottle cotton
or stroking the arm of the lazyboy until its back
gleams white eroded by oil and memories
i can trace them with my fingers down my greasy neck

April 6: this is how i remember her

fish wrapped in newspaper on days too hot to eat
there was nutmeg, there was allspice, sprinkled and spilled
over coasters that floated like paper boats on her table
while we placed our glasses slick with condensation on the floor by our feet --
she held hers by her ankles and moved her toes when she was thirsty
sunday was spread out beneath the boats,
cork circles to cover the pictures with the obituaries
or paragraphs we found too difficult to read together in that season
we told ourselves through clouds of breading (we had dried the bread ourselves)
that we would wrap them against scales to weigh the proper time.
when the oil flew from the skillet she jumped
and clenched her toes in tiny circles the size of
small rings hidden in my pocket because i had forgotten the size of her finger.
the sweet tea spread as if passed out by ushers at the door of the funeral home
and i pressed my elbow into it without thinking of my shirt.
so sometimes when i spill it makes a knot in my heart
and a spectre of the smell of fish fry
slips out from between the soft pages of tuesday.

April 6: Bent Necked

Humpbacks sitting on a high branch waiting for the smell to rise
up through the hot day, pinpricks of fire on the lapping tongues of their heads
white whales prickle backed with black hairs, bending in devotions, prayers
that drop stone dead to gods on the ground. Calling to the sea-colored sky they kneel
and open their throats to what chances to escape from orbiting cold empty rock.
They wait for slick cuts down bloated bellies and glassy eyes, fogged up
like the windows of a car on the road outside town when the gods forget they are immortal.
The sea goes from blue to grey to purple and whispers in between the feathers
of humpbacks stepping from foot to foot. Doors close and lights die and
then there is nothing but the sound of the wind through their beaks
and a quiet scream for sanctuary humpbacks feel down through the roots and suck
up through their legs to find reminder that they soar with clipped wings.

Has anyone ever told you--seriously, unabashed, with all honesty--

you are prolific. I cannot even read these faster than you write them.

this is how i remember her is my most recent favorite.

April 7: like popcorn

i miss the days
when we could sit on the stairs and smell our dirty socks
or cut the hair off the top of our cats' heads
or stick our fingers in the peanut butter jar
and we would only see an overnight stay
in our room with the lights off
and sneak books to read under the covers,
tenting up the top so the street light outside our window
trickled in.

April 7: wither

my mother's house was filled with plants
that crept and blossomed and stayed green
and she would bring around the watering can
and pour the water through a slender spout.
when i was older, i bought a small pot at target
and brought it home to start my jungle
nourished by tap water and kept on one of two
windowsills. in my small apartment i knew every bug
that had crept out from the soil (too cold, too wet, too hot)
where i never saw them as long as i watched my mother water.

April 7: Thank You

we stand on stage
as some woman I've never met
thanks us for our contributions.
we are too large a mass, a squid
with too many arms to stay sill.
i am the beak. i know you are
the third arm on the right,
standing, suction-cupped as always
into your professional smile mask, so
bright in the lamps it seems real
and i shiver. i rub my hands
up and down my arms over hills i built.
i shake my hair down around my face
so i can look up through it,
a lark through hanging willows
when the sun glances down through
rain clouds and catwalks a wire rope down.
you shrug off your jacket.
my chest swells, a bud about to burst
through soil and curl open,
a cat revealing my stomach,
dough taken from the oven too soon.
you sling it over your arm
until the stage empties,
my hairs still on end.

April 7: someone else speaks

pinoy
satay
engarde
foyer
sit down and stand
betrothal

mixed up
mismatched
stirred in
and snatched
vanilla beans
in sugar

till om
phone card
morr ay
the yard
swish slap and peanut
butter

crash in
flot out
red freck-
led pout
ten times the light
in Chloe

tin can
hot cat
sweep through
stop that
frag -aisle is
clean tomato

April 8: Thin Walls

hammer i hope that's a hammer,
someone nailing in a bookshelf,
someone moving in and putting up a picture
of a smiling, white topped grandma
with a couple of missing teeth
and three grandchildren hung about her waist.

hammer i hope that's a hammer,
someone moving in and putting up a picture
someone nailing in a bookshelf
and filling up the top shelf with christian paperbacks
the bottom shelf with required textbooks
so the hard backs are in easy reach
when they sit at their desk with the
bendy-necked desk lamp craning over
to read the side notes, too.

hammer i hope that's a hammer,
someone nailing in a bookshelf,
someone moving in and putting up a picture,
i hope it's a hammer and not a bed
where a woman lays on her back and
stares at the ceiling with her lips
curling down, sagging like the fat
around her hips and thighs. i hope she
doesn't feel the heat scratch of his skin
moving over her broken up cellulose
legs and that his pelvis bone leaves hers unaching.

hammer i hope that's a hammer.

April 8: In the Market Alone

he closes his eyes to calculate what the price should be
for this thin string of silver to clasp Delilah's wrist
before, they passed the woman who sat wrinkled
and sold dirty tin jewelry from the palm of her
chewed-up hand. he felt he'd seen her before
with mangoes, not earrings, cupped between her
twisted digits, and the tin earrings seemed to gleam
back more red and orange and green because of it.
now he wonders how many of the mango earrings
he could have bought Delilah instead of this thin,
breakable silver the man dangles in front of him
like a lure with the smells of grease and batter and sewer
and mangoes and pink gum in pink wrappers and baby powder
and tart perfume on sweaty girls and shoes staying wet.
there is too much, so he closes his eyes to calculate
and loses himself again in memories of the present.

April 8: As Nice as Pie

staying after class made the walls seem closer
the posters of hyperbole and comma splice
curled in at the edges to hear the questions I spilled
onto your desk like apple slices they rocked
for a while until falling quiet and still
and the desks seemed like ghosts, unfamiliar,
twisted metal topped with wood i couldn't recognize
without shoes beneath shuffling pointing forward at you.
your shoes seldom pointed back. i watched them,
but you turned them toward the board and wrote poetry
and taught us how to diagram sentences, which made me
lonely and happy and comforted that at least there were
lines between every word if not every person
with shoes turned away.

staying after class made the room seem very warm
and your smile was what brought the sweep
of heat to my cheeks that I hid beneath my hands.
so when I lay on my bed years later with my hands
between my legs the heat and the thoughts of you
were sweet and easy beneath my comforter, close
like drawing lines between subjects and verbs
and the afternoon you told me, "you will go places.
i am sure of it." so as i sigh and feel the flutter
i point my toes toward the horizon and
let your face linger, framed by the poster of a simile:
as warm as toast, because i told you once it was my favorite.
later i scrape the last of the jar of peanutbutter and spread it.

April 8: then and now

my cat is curled up
on the blanket i shipped home from korea
because i couldn't bear to forget
the way she dashed up the street
to the piles of blankets we saw
and carried it back down to me
when i was huddled in the water as the sky
leaked light into neon signs
like the one in front of bar wimpy.
and i found the blanket only hung down
to my knees, but wrapped it wet around me
and curled up in the sand.
there are mixed memories here,
tying the drifting views
of my cat's tiny paws slipping
between grass blades on that first day
with the time i sat on the bank of a river
and drank beer and soju and had to pee.

April 8: No, thank you

i hate looking at myself
in the windows of buildings as i walk by
and seeing the hunch curve of my back.
when i straighten up: a parade of cracks
but soon i am bent forward again
and my belly hangs down to
the top hill of my feet.

I'll reply to your question in here.

Yes I do think we can use that voice. English is your language as well. The entire expression of the language is open to us, but we need to take special liberty to be aware of the culture behind it and aware of the limits we can communicate, if we are not from that culture originally. I have an interesting background, so it's not odd for me. Sometimes I want to tell people "**** my **** and take a flying ****! Thanks!" when they tell me not to do something.

Also, I noticed my stuff is too heady, I'm trying to get through a phase of deconstructing it.

April 8: and plastic kitchen sets with cheese

you remind me of dead birds and apartment advertisements
and foam clown noses left outside at the edge of the backyard patio
where the grass hasn't grown for as long as we've lived here: it's always been mud
and between the mud and the sun the ball was bleached to gray,
fading away, disintegrating into pieces as small as the one
my sister got lodged in her belly button and we trailed her to the hospital,
shadowing her tottering stuffed-nose footsteps
until she grew to sit at the kitchen table in the room with the most windows
and a scratched up wooden pull-longer table, writing spelling challenge words
over and over: pneumonia pneumonia pneumonia pneumonia
until she squeezed the last one against the side of the page.
you remind me of her, you remind me of moving out and ordering delivery
night after night because the sink is full of dirty dishes and there are
more important things to do like: rescue birds from cats and drink iced tea.
it's the slope of your nose and the big black heads that stick out from your apricot
because she had a dip in the end of her nose, too, like a cleft chin only tiny
and sweet. it was like the seam of a peach, sewn up with acne cream
she stole because i bought it for myself and she kept her coins in a crayon piggy bank
on top of her computer. it was warm after we sat on the same chair and played solitaire together.