Long ago I met
a beautiful boy

Together we slept
 in my mother's womb 

Now the street of our fathers 
rises to eat him
::
Everything black
is forbidden in Eden

In my arms my brother
sleeps, teeth pearls

I give away the night
so he can have this slumber
::
I give away the man
who made me white

I give away the man
who freed my mother

I pry apart my skull
my scalp unfurls 
::
I nestle him gray
inside my brain, 

my brother sleeps
and dreams of genes

mauve lips fast against spine
he breathes. The sky
::
bends into my eyes
as they search for his skin 

Helicopter blades
invade our peace:::

Where is that Black
Where is it
Where
::
Blades slice, whine
pound the cupolas 

I slide him down and out
the small of my vertebrae 

He scurries down the bone
and to the ocean
::
navigates home 
in a boat carved of gommier

When he reaches our island 
everyone is relieved 

though they have not
forgotten me, belsé
::
Where is
your sister, eh?
Whey?

Koté belsé yé?
Whey?

Koté li yé 
Koté li yé
To the sand
To the stars on the sea 

Koté li yé
Koté li yé
To the one-celled egun
To the torpid moon 

Koté li yé
Koté li yé
::
There:::

Koté li yé
drapes across a baton;
glows electric in shine of taser;
pumped dry with glass bottle;
::
There:::

Koté li yé
vagina gape into the night;
neck dangle taut with plastic
bags and poorly knotted ropes;
::
There::: 

Koté li yé
belsé
Koté?

:::	     I burn 

my skin shines blacker, lacquer

:::	     non-mwen sé 		      flambó

ashes tremble in the moonlight

::: 	     sans humanité

my smoking bones fume the future

::: 	     pa bwè afwéchi pou lafiyèv dòt moun

A shipping container of rubber duckies made in China for the US washed overboard in 1992, and some of them traveled and washed ashore over 17,000 miles over 15 years.
 
Let’s go ahead and assume it’s yellow.
What little of science I know:
its plastic skin invincible against salt water,
but not the sun–
we can only ask so much.
Will it fade or brown?
What I mean to say is
I would want one of these
for my daughter:
its internal clock set to the mercy of the currents
that have been predictable for centuries,
but mercy is not the word anyone
would choose.
Sometimes not making sense and floating
are the same.
Each wave is its own beginning and ending.
Through international waters,
you could have caused an incident:
no one knowing you,
never reaching the hands that hoped for you.
Rough immigrant, or
free refugee–
floating flagless,
fading border,
stamped with words but not your name.

I use a trick to teach students
how to avoid passive voice.

Circle the verbs.
Imagine inserting “by zombies”
after each one.

Have the words been claimed
by the flesh-hungry undead?
If so, passive voice.

I wonder if these
sixth graders will recollect,
on summer vacation,
as they stretch their legs
on the way home
from Yellowstone or Yosemite
and the byway’s historical marker
beckons them to the
site of an Indian village—

Where trouble was brewing.
Where, after further hostilities, the army was directed to enter.
Where the village was razed after the skirmish occurred.
Where most were women and children.

Riveted bramble of passive verbs
etched in wood—
stripped hands
breaking up from the dry ground
to pinch the meat
of their young red tongues.

HEY

C’MON
COME OUT

WHEREVER YOU ARE

WE NEED TO HAVE THIS MEETING
AT THIS TREE

AIN’ EVEN BEEN
PLANTED
YET

I never thought I’d keep a record of my pain
or happiness
like candles lighting the entire soft lace
of the air
around the full length of your hair/a shower
organized by God
in brown and auburn
undulations luminous like particles
of flame
But now I do
retrieve an afternoon of apricots
and water interspersed with cigarettes
and sand and rocks
we walked across:
                        How easily you held
my hand
beside the low tide
of the world

Now I do
relive an evening of retreat
a bridge I left behind
where all the solid heat
of lust and tender trembling
lay as cruel and as kind
as passion spins its infinite
tergiversations in between the bitter
and the sweet

Alone and longing for you
now I do

looking over the plums, one by one
lifting each to his eyes and
turning it slowly, a little earth,
checking the smooth skin for pockmarks
and rot, or signs of unkind days or people,
then sliding them gently into the plastic.
whistling softly, reaching with a slim, woolen arm
into the cart, he first balanced them over the wire
before realizing the danger of bruising
and lifting them back out, cradling them
in the crook of his elbow until
something harder could take that bottom space.
I knew him from his hat, one of those
fine porkpie numbers they used to sell
on Roosevelt Road. it had lost its feather but
he had carefully folded a dollar bill
and slid it between the ribbon and the felt
and it stood at attention. he wore his money.
upright and strong, he was already to the checkout
by the time I caught up with him. I called out his name
and he spun like a dancer, candy bar in hand,
looked at me quizzically for a moment before
remembering my face. he smiled. well
hello young lady
       hello, so chilly today
       should have worn my warm coat like you
yes so cool for August in Chicago
       how are things going for you
oh he sighed and put the candy on the belt
it goes, it goes.

1. 	It bejins in Berlin
	
	A Historical Case
	Study 
	In Disappearance + Cultural Theft:
	Exhibit YZ:

	Brinj back to me Nefertiti 
      Her 
	Bust

Take her
From behind 
	the vitrine 
	
	For I know where to find her missinj eye
	
	Then put a woman in charje of all antiquities. 
	She-law: just because somethinj is beautiful 
	doesnt mean it was meant to be consumed; just because there are
 	tourists doesnt make it an attraction. 

2. 	everywhere anytxme atm her
	vxolatxon: guaranteed.  sxlence bought             or your settlement
 	money back. objectxfactxon xn the mxrror xs closer than xt appears.
	please mxnd the wage gap. cautxon: not chxld resxstant to open hold 	
	down 	and turn away squee geez use daxly, mornxng, and nxght
 	supported by an aroma of certified organxc heavens:

	for every gxrl who grows 
	xnto a woman
	who knows
	the best threat’s: 
	one she never 
	has to make
	
	she sublxmates your sublxmxnal
	even your affectxon has been xnfected


3. this poem cant go on without hex i mean 
	hex 
	heeee x
	hex
hex and hex
		hex 		hej heq hez hex

she was stolen bought sold lost put undex buxied alive at bixth she was dxagged in blue bxa duxing a xevolution with vixginity tests she waits then she doesnt she sh sh sh shh she left you she the best thing that happened to you then she lilililililiiii she intifada she moves with two kinds of gxace she ups the ante aging by candid defiant elegance she foxgets but nevex foxgives 

She-language complex 
she complex she so complex she complex got complex complex

4. she spends her time anxious because she knows she is better than 
you rang to say she died from being tired of your everything she knows she is fiyne; gorgeous but she hates it when she infuriates and when she jigs and is kind she minds her own business except when she is new and nervous though she is origin previous and impervious she wont stay quiet she is razor sharp and super tired she undarks, vets, wanes, and xeroxes; yaks and zzzzs the day she dreams 

5. Me tooa B  Me toob Me tooc R  Me tood Me tooe I  Me toof N  Me toog G  

Me tooh                 them 

Me tooi B  Me tooj A  Me took C Me tool K  Mem too Men too Me tooo 

Meep 

too                 Meq too 

Mer too Me too Me too Meu too Mev too Mew too Mex too Mey too Mez too 

            Me     ((too)) Me                               ((((((((((((too))))))))))))

You are as gold 
as the half-ripe grain 
that merges to gold again, 
as white as the white rain 
that beats through 
the half-opened flowers 
of the great flower tufts 
thick on the black limbs 
of an Illyrian apple bough.

  Can honey distill such fragrance 
As your bright hair—
For your face is as fair as rain, 
  yet as rain that lies clear 
  on white honey-comb,
lends radiance to the white wax, 
so your hair on your brow 
casts light for a shadow.

I had put down in writing my fear of the war

I too pined for pastoral description

The blue of the water was the blue of the world

Newness does not, for me, equal satisfaction

A finite number of concentric rings I push out into space

A tedious fabric moving through time without malice

An act of oration, rebellion, inventory, fantasy

The sound of the earth closing its one good eye over me

Imagine: you reach out towards the margin’s white hand

You do what your poems want and are clean

When you lay down your thorns you will be done

You do not take up arms against anyone

one is hard & the other tried to be

          one is fast & the other was faster

                    one is loud & one is a song
                    with one note & endless rest
          
                     one's whole life is a flash

        both spend their life
        trying to find a warmth to call home

both spark quite the debate,
some folks want to protect them/some think we should just get rid
                                      of the damn things all together.

The border is a line that birds cannot see.
The border is a beautiful piece of paper folded carelessly in half.
The border is where flint first met steel, starting a century of fires.
The border is a belt that is too tight, holding things up but making it hard to breathe.
The border is a rusted hinge that does not bend.
The border is the blood clot in the river’s vein.
The border says stop to the wind, but the wind speaks another language, and keeps going.
The border is a brand, the “Double-X” of barbed wire scarred into the skin of so many.
The border has always been a welcome stopping place but is now a stop sign, always red.
The border is a jump rope still there even after the game is finished.
The border is a real crack in an imaginary dam.
The border used to be an actual place, but now, it is the act of a thousand imaginations.
The border, the word border, sounds like order, but in this place they do not rhyme.
The border is a handshake that becomes a squeezing contest.

The border smells like cars at noon and wood smoke in the evening.
The border is the place between the two pages in a book where the spine is bent too far.
The border is two men in love with the same woman.
The border is an equation in search of an equals sign.
The border is the location of the factory where lightning and thunder are made.
The border is “NoNo” The Clown, who can’t make anyone laugh.
The border is a locked door that has been promoted.
The border is a moat but without a castle on either side.
The border has become Checkpoint Chale.
The border is a place of plans constantly broken and repaired and broken.
The border is mighty, but even the parting of the seas created a path, not a barrier.
The border is a big, neat, clean, clear black line on a map that does not exist.
The border is the line in new bifocals: below, small things get bigger; above, nothing changes.
The border is a skunk with a white line down its back.

i wish them cramps.
i wish them a strange town
and the last tampon.
I wish them no 7-11.

i wish them one week early
and wearing a white skirt.
i wish them one week late.

later i wish them hot flashes
and clots like you
wouldn't believe. let the
flashes come when they
meet someone special.
let the clots come
when they want to.

let them think they have accepted
arrogance in the universe,
then bring them to gynecologists
not unlike themselves.

I die of thirst beside the fountain 
I'm hot as fire, I'm shaking tooth on tooth 
In my own country I'm in a distant land 
Beside the blaze I'm shivering in flames 
Naked as a worm, dressed like a president 
I laugh in tears and hope in despair 
I cheer up in sad hopelessness 
I'm joyful and no pleasure's anywhere 
I'm powerful and lack all force and strength 
Warmly welcomed, always turned away.

I'm sure of nothing but what is uncertain 
Find nothing obscure but the obvious 
Doubt nothing but the certainties 
Knowledge to me is mere accident
I keep winning and remain the loser 
At dawn I say "I bid you good night"
Lying down I'm afraid of falling 
I'm so rich I haven't a penny 
I await an inheritance and am no one's heir 
Warmly welcomed, always turned away.

I never work and yet I labor 
To acquire goods I don't even want 
Kind words irritate me most 
He who speaks true deceives me worst 
A friend is someone who makes me think 
A white swan is a black crow 
The people who harm me think they help 
Lies and truth today I see they're one
I remember everything, my mind's a blank 
Warmly welcomed, always turned away.

Merciful Prince may it please you to know 
I understand much and have no wit or learning 
I'm biased against all laws impartially 
What's next to do? Redeem my pawned goods again! 
Warmly welcomed, always turned away.

It is with the voice of the Bible, or verse of Walt Whitman,
that we should reach you, Hunter!
Primitive and modern, simple and complicated,
with a bit of Washington and a bit of Nimrod.
You are the United States,
You are the future invader
the naive America who has Indian blood,
that still prays to Jesus Christ and still speaks Spanish.

You are a proud and strong exemplar of your race;
you are cultured, you are clever, you oppose Tolstoy.
And breaking horses, or murdering tigers,
you are an Alejandro Nebuchadnezzar.
(You’re a professor of energy,
as today’s madmen say.)
You think life is fire,
that progress is eruption;
where you put your bullet
you put the future.

No.

The United States is strong and big.
When it shakes there is a deep tremor
through the enormous vertebrae of the Andes.
If you clamor, you hear the roar of the lion.
Hugo said to Grant: “The stars are yours.”
(Just shining, rising, Argentine sun
and the Chilean star rises ...) You’re rich.
Join Hercules’ cult to Mammon’s;
and lighting the path to easy conquest,
Liberty raises her torch in New York.

But our America, which had poets
from the old days of Netzahualcoyotl,
you have saved in the footsteps of the great feet of Bacchus
panic in the alphabet learned a while;
who consulted the stars, that knew Atlantis,
whose name comes to resonate in Plato
Since the ancient times of your life
living light, fire, perfume, love,
America’s great Montezuma, from the Inca,
redolent of America by Christopher Columbus
Catholic American, Spanish American,
The America where noble Cuahtemoc said:
“I’m not a bed of roses” that America
trembles in hurricanes and lives in Love,
men of Saxon eyes and barbarous soul lives.
And dreams. And loves, and vibrates, and is the daughter of the Sun
Be careful. Live the American Spanish!
There are thousand of puppies loose Leon Spanish.
Be required, Roosevelt, being God himself,
Rifleman the terrible and strong Hunter,
order to keep us in your tight grip.

And, You may count it all, missing one thing: God!

I can write about colonialism, Disney, riots 
& inoculations. Centuries of American history 
before me: Pocahontas' bust, Rosa Parks 
arrest records, Elvis Presley meeting Nixon 
but with only an hour to go before recording 
a poem at The National Archives, I'm in 
Starbucks obsessed and struggling 
with the queerest piece of literature 
in the Archives- Eat The Carp. The Bureau 
of Fisheries urges Americans to Eat The Carp. 
This resilient variety of fish that lolled the tea 
gardens of Japan & became the staple 
for gefilte to Jews is 43 million pounds strong 
at the turn of the 20th century. We were coaxed 
to eat carp croquettes, jelly and caviar. Before 
there were Mcnuggets, there was the Carp.
These over-sized gold fish that multiplied 
from Carolina to California with the force 
of horseless carriages pounding through 
our streams. How do I pay homage to this 
tenacious piece of protein that has fortified 
our American bellies. For weeks, I have labored 
over composing haikus to the Carp, Neruda-like 
odes to the Carp. Howl Allen Ginsberg-style 
to the Carp. Sketch a Jackson Pollock splatter 
of concrete poetry all over our marbled 
Carp-ital City to the Carp. I even wanted to write 
something personally ethnic like a Filipino riddle 
to the Carp. Ultimately, this is a Carpe Diem poem 
to the Carp. So I say to you live and roam free 
as the Carp. Seize the Carp! Roast the Carp 
till our appetites are lit into star spangled flames 
leading us into a new dawn of Omega 3's 
& prosperity. Oh Lord, give me Carp & the power 
to forge and be prolific as Carp. Though I can't pay 
my student loans & while I haven't found a husband 
on Plenty of Fish, Scruff, Tinder & OK Cupid. I am 
Ok Carp, Gung Ho Carp, Play The Carp, Watch me 
star in Les Carpelables, the musical: "Carp On High, 
Hear My Prayer..." Carplohoma:  "Carplohoma 
where the carp come sweeping through the plains..."   
Give me Carp crispy-fried in Crisco & well done! 
Oh Lord, serve me a sweltering sausage of Carp 
smeared with a smack of sriracha, a kiss of mayo 
& mustard on a whole wheat bun.

For the longest time, the only memories I had
of that year were of Little Billy from the third floor, floating
dead in the pool & how angry the rest of the tenants were
when they drained & filled it with cement
& how that summer, the unbearable heat dragged its endless skin
across our bones—memory is the funniest character in this story:
when I think of that year, no one has a face—the first memory
I had of being molested did not come until nine years later.
At first I thought it was a dream, a movie, white noise
summoning a narrative through the static—if it’s true
what they say about memory being a series of rooms
then behind some locked door: a wicked apothecary: her fingers
trapped in jars, her hair growing like wild vines along the walls.
Somewhere in this story I am nine years old
filling the loud hollows with cement to drown out the ghost.
They say, give us details, so I give them my body.
They say, give us proof, so I give them my body.
If you cut me open, if you dissect me, you will pull from me:
a pair of handprints, a nine-year-old boy, fossilized.

California drought withering the basins,
the hills ready to ignite. Oh, stupid ways

I’ve loved and unraveled myself.
I, a parched field, and not a spit of rain.

I announced to a room of strangers,
I’ve never loved anyone more.

Now he and I no longer speak.

Outside: Manila, 40 years
after my parents’ first arrival.

I deplane where they debarked.
At customs, I am given a sheet warning of MERS—

in ’75, my parents received fishermen’s lunches,
a bottle of fish sauce. They couldn’t enter

until they were vaccinated. My mother, 22,
newly emptied of a stillborn daughter.

In Đà Nẵng, my cousin has become unrecognizable
after my four year absence. His teeth, at 21,

have begun to rot. His face swollen over.
I want to shield him from his terrible life.

Tazed at 15 by the cops until he pissed himself.
So beaten in the mental institution, that family had to

bring him home. His mother always near tears
when I ask, How are you doing?

You want to know what survivorhood looks like?
It’s not romantic. The corn drying huskless

in the front yard. The ducks chasing each other in the back.
The thick arms of a woman who will carry bricks

for the rest of her life. The plainness with which
she speaks of hardship. The bricks aren’t a metaphor

for the weight she carries. Ánh, which means light,
is sick, and cannot work,

but instead goes wandering the neighborhood,
eating other people’s food, bloating

his mother’s unpayable debts.
What pleasure can be found here,

even if the love is palpable?
My mother stopped crying years ago.

What’s the use, she says, of all this leaking.
Enough to fill a drainage ditch, a reservoir?

No, just enough to wet a pillow.
What a waste of time, me pining after

a man who no longer feels for me.
Today, I would give it up. Trade mine

for theirs. They tell me that they are not hungry.
Happy is their toil. My uncles and their

browned skins, not a pinch of fat anywhere.
They work the fields and swallow

beer after beer, getting sentimental.
Whose birds have come to roost, whose pigs in the muck?

Their dog has just birthed four new pups.
Despite ourselves, time moves on.

I walked lover’s lane with my cousin.

The heart-lights reflected on the river’s black.
The locks clustered and dangling.

I should have left our names on that bridge.
My name, the names of my family, written there.

And sometimes I know I am having a feeling
but I don't want to have a feeling so I close up
like a book or a jacket or a sack which holds
a body. Don't mind me, I'll just be dead in here,
you can drag me wherever you want, the body
seems to say. You laugh like a little silver moon.
You laugh like the moon on the water ignored
by necking lovers. You said you didn't like that word
because something so sweet should not call to mind
giraffes, but I love the word “necking,” the way it twists
in on itself, like what I do to you when I want
to disappear in you, leave the sack of my body
strewn on the shore of you. Sometimes I'm inside
the sack and then sometimes I am nothing more
than the stitching which keeps it from bursting.
Sometimes I carry the sack and sometimes the sack
carries me. I only know the difference sometimes.
Do you ever feel like it's difficult to figure out
what you're feeling? I have that all the time, especially
when I look out a window or at your open face
across from me in bed, or your closed face
when I see the quiet pain you contain, or which
contains you. I know you're more than that
frown which makes your face resemble a fist
with gorgeous black hair. I know you contain more
than the reaction to my words or my body.
Some of us have to learn to love with hands
interlocked, but each with our own hand.

Intermittent wet under
cloud cover, dry
where you are. All day
this rain without

you—so many planes
above the cloud line
carrying strangers
either closer or

farther away from
one another while
you and I remain
grounded. Are we

moving anyway
towards something
finer than what the day
might bring or is this

an illusion, a stay 
against everything
unforeseen—tiny bottles
clinking as the carts

make their way down
the narrow aisle
no matter what
class we find ourselves

seated in, your voice
the captain's voice
even if the masks
do not inflate

and there's no one
here to help me
put mine on first—
my head cradled

between your knees.

after Morgan Parker, after Wu-Tang

                      in the morning I think about money

           green horned lord of my waking

                      forest in which I stumbled toward no salvation

                                 prison made of emerald & pennies

           in my wallet I keep anxiety & a condom

I used to sell my body but now my blood spoiled

           All my favorite songs tell me to get money

                                              I’d rob a bank but I’m a poet

                                 I’m so broke I’m a genius

           If I was white, I’d take pictures of other pictures & sell them

I come from sharecroppers who come from slaves who do not come from kings

                                              sometimes I pay the weed man before I pay the light bill

                      sometimes is a synonym for often

I just want a grant or a fellowship or a rich white husband & I’ll be straight

           I feel most colored when I’m looking at my bank account

I feel most colored when I scream ball so hard motherfuckas wanna find me

                                 I spent one summer stealing from ragstock

If I went to jail I’d live rent-free but there is no way to avoid making white people richer

                                              A prison is a plantation made of stone & steel

           Being locked up for selling drugs = Being locked up for trying to eat

                                              a bald fade cost 20 bones now a days

                      what’s a blacker tax than blackness?

                                              what cost more than being American and poor?

                                         here is where I say reparations.

here is where I say got 20 bucks I can borrow?

           student loans are like slavery but not but with vacation days but not but police

I don’t know what it says about me when white institutions give me money

                      how much is the power ball this week?

I’mma print my own money and be my own god and live forever in a green frame

                      my grandmamma is great at saving money

           before my grandfather passed he showed me where he hid his money & his gun

                      my aunt can’t hold on to a dollar, a job, her brain

                                 I love how easy it is to be bad with money

                      don’t ask me about my taxes

                                 the b in debt is a silent black boy trapped

dear reader, with our heels digging into the good 
mud at a swamp’s edge, you might tell me something 
about the dandelion & how it is not a flower itself 
but a plant made up of several small flowers at its crown 
& lord knows I have been called by what I look like 
more than I have been called by what I actually am & 
I wish to return the favor for the purpose of this 
exercise. which, too, is an attempt at fashioning 
something pretty out of seeds refusing to make anything 
worthwhile of their burial. size me up & skip whatever semantics arrive 
to the tongue first. say: that boy he look like a hollowed-out grandfather 
clock. he look like a million-dollar god with a two-cent 
heaven. like all it takes is one kiss & before morning, 
you could scatter his whole mind across a field.