scrawl

i feel so desperate
when i see how many
notebooks i have left
empty

Demeter

I told her I would eat a thousand nightshades to keep from waking,
that I would take nettles, fresh and stinging,
and chew until they broke to liquid.
I said I would kiss her eggplant ring.
But she sang her morning song and released the window’s shade.
She said she would take the sleep from my eyes
and there would be no winter-spring,
no delay, only early arrival,
and I shuddered.

Yellow Dust

Yellow Dust makes these runners
run with white masks over their mouths,
safe from the river's smell that covers
the track, but not from this wind blowing south.
They look like surgeons rushing to an operation
as they breathe in their own heavy release
of stress, excitement, anger, or self-satisfication -
whatever makes people run these days when nothing seems
to chase them, except for those unseen things,
which there is no mask, no cover, no amount of speed
that can shake away those feelings that cling
to, that stick to, the heart that pumps
the monotone motion of arms swinging
in rhythm with desperate feet that cramp
but still run foot over foot over cramping foot.

Equivalence

I am a star—

Soon I will explode.

A Benadryl Dose

I'll cut the clover with surgical precision.
I'll suck the sap, venom in your wound,
and make you sterile. You think everything is close
to weeds in the neighborhood subdivision Willow Tree,
this backyard hill of snake skins, crab apples gone
to worms and newts with half-tails.

The most terrifying thing is a wasp's nest
above the front door. You stare at the cones
and see them raising on your skin. We both jump,
hiking our feet to our knees, as we search
for our lost dogs who have wandered
in the unsold lots, wild places
where people take their dogs
to shit so they don't have to pick it up.

An owl hoots and the buffalo farm is long gone--now a tree nursery--
and I say we must end this mad world of mad worlds and make it clean.
You come home and find a snake trapped under the garage door.
After you brush your teeth, you lift your shirt and see
a line of bug bites around your waist. I trace the path
and wonder what is hiding beneath the couch cushions.
You grab your shirt from the back and pull it off in a fit.

In the morning, news of the high pollen count and the possibility
of tax incentives for people with mustaches make you feel dizzy.
We both like the idea of a nap on grass but we
must strike the snake heads with our shovels,
even after they are severed and dead. We must

chase the purple cabbages that run from us,
squeeze the goldfish of their marbles,
take the airplanes to the chipmunks,
chew the eggshells until they silken.

I'll take the muppet from your lips
in a week and let you sleep.
I'll pinprick your heart to know
the dander, the mold of the world,
and leave you stunned in the thunder of spring.

These Lips

I'm sorry Mother but I'll paint my lips
Plum Sky, Medieval Blush, Flirty Nude,
Spring Rose, BonBon Sands and even the shade
you hate the most--my NARS lip stain in Rage.
But I'm not wearing these lips to kiss the mouth
of some man and write my number on his hand.
You try to wipe my lips with a tissue but
no I’ll kiss my own hand first and look
at the imprint that settles into my skin.
I’ll read those fine lines like scoring the Bible pages,
I’ll flip through those onion thin verses
and show you the name Jezebel does not appear.

Dear Me

I found mouse droppings on my childhood diaries
in a drawer that opens for anyone to read.
This is what comes to diaries.

Merry

For Tim

Merry, merry, merry,
merry, merry, merry, merry,
merry, merry,
donut.

Squinting Without My Glasses

This crazy moon lights up like a kaleidoscope,
I see moving constellations in the dotted ceiling--
Orion's belt unbuckles into Cassiopeia's upside-down head,
and I make the Seven Sisters sun sick from their own light
that they burn and combust into something
that looks like my first grade teacher--
and soon the pupil of my eye has reached its limit
and I can't see what's waving in my face.
It never touches but the motion makes me sneeze.

Shutter Open

When I see the half-moon, I want to slide
the dark away with my finger like how I broke
my father's camera by placing my finger on the lens
and forcing those shutter eyelids blindly open. Slide
and click, shutter open, to reveal such a solemn blank
face. I saw my reflection, waxy, smooth and irritating as fog
on a winter windshield, and I broke my nail on the image
of my face, and so I dragged my thumb to make it disappear.

Grandma Clementine

Young hands to old hands like the skin of a clementine peel--then peeling and then drying and then cracked. I've been crumbling dried clementine peels and smelling my fingers for the catches of dying scent. Her hand moving, patting my palm and plucking at my fingers. It was only then I realized the difference between touching and being touched. I left one peel by her side. I broke it evenly into dried pieces that smelled like candy and left them there. I know I cannot save them.

Moon Shine

The moon has a fat belly tonight
And I can’t decide if that makes her a slut,
But I sit in her light anyway.

I'm Sorry W.G Sebald

When I pick up The Rings Of Saturn
I fall into a horrible pattern.
I open the cover and see the first page--
That net-covered window, that comfort cage,
Is maybe the only image that I understand,
but my eyes lose focus and can't see a strand
of the words you put one after the other
in sentences that seem to go on forever.
I always fall asleep at the same part,
the page with the cadaver and his open heart.
I'm trying my best to finish but perhaps it's not too dire,
I've tried to read you more than Nabokov's Pale Fire.

Steel and Wire

Gum, metal, and bone
I run my tongue along
the back of white enamel
and swear I can taste blood.
The gleaming brackets plump
my lips and people say,
"Look at that mouth,"
not knowing that I carry
steel and wire on my teeth.

Pickle

You would be a lovely thing
to pickle and keep on a high shelf.
I would spend my time
looking at you from a distance.
Stepping back to step forward again,
to see how you change, if at all.
I would only drink
the brine in the jar,
and seal my lips with a closing sip
after I drink deep deep.

*A man waiting at the Davis bus stop told me I would be a lovely thing to pickle. I still don't know how I feel about this.

The Poem I Won't Be Reading At My Sister's Wedding

Love is love, love, love,
so love is love is love,
somebody loves loves loves loves somebody,
so love, love, love,
if somebody loves loves somebody then somebody loves someone,
love, love, love.

*directly taken from my Intro to Elementary Logic lecture notes.

Watermelon (Cut-up poem from Tim)

I ate a watermelon, the seeds slipping between my lips,
And remembered a plumb memory:
A boy once told me that any watermelon seed I ate
Would sit in the dark of my belly, that internal darkness,
And the seeds would wait to grow, to spindle in my abdomen.
They would stick until I opened my mouth,
For sun to shine and cast lines of shade and light.
The vines would soon grow, furling and tucking,
In the darkest and softest areas of me.
And once skin spanned, alive in the lack of what I never truly knew,
The boy said that one day I would give birth to this melon,
And give it a name.

Where I Continue to Destroy The Korean Language...(and pretend to write poetry)

Bop mo-go-so? : A nosy question.

Ooyu: the word sounds like what a baby feels when he is weaning, but I don't think it should.

Sa Gwa: When you hit your knee against a table and you breathe in your pain and then hiss out an expletive.

Bonku: A dangerous word. A smiling demon that sounds like a pet name and distracts you by its cute pronunciation. Unrecoverable.

Mo-Dee: Necessary.