3
There you are on your back sleeping
looking dead I now dread the long day
filled with people I no longer care for I am
your pupil now you tell me what to study
here there are no rejections no Mello Roos
no asters with their clusters of flowers
hiding weeds no new poets taking selfies
or being blessed they fade more each day
out of your pupil I see a room as large
as a ruby and that is your world the whole
of it how I love what you see the part the
particle of a partitioned place one yet in
need of reform a world where others’ words
can yet burn into you like a branding iron
4
The scientific has gone what’s left are fires
that can’t be packaged that whisk my love
into threads I cannot collect or control
frequencies here have no waveform just
dotted lines everything has excavated
itself and everything has altered in the way
water in a pool breaks up light into pieces in
the way the light is tranced into approximations
and deviations into eyeless swirls that never
fix I have borne witness to this giant this
love for you that never leaves that burrows
laterally and downward that layers and
imprints on my skin the way goggles leave a
mark long after I have taken them off
5
When you wake your feet will be longer
you will be interested in the moles and
the dark holes in the pumpkin’s face
you will point and laugh at the citrus
comedy of its body you will scream when
I take a rake away stamp your heels as if
removing snow no no no no I am afraid of
your moods your streaks I cannot stack or
break I am afraid of the next minute the
atomic equivalent of death the endless
present tense I approach you as I do a
cigarette butt at the park I am suspicious of
you handle you by the burnt out bits the
side untouched by your sucking lips
6
Suddenly your face resembles mine but
how fast the look is swallowed into the
celestial space and your face is yours again
how terribly I want to inhabit your face
to dive into its cells to fold into your
gossamer skin how terribly I want to be the
side upon which you depend the part that
is only used to hold you up if you’d kiss me
you’d know the slum of my skin twisted with
weeds and wilderness old skin that has tried
to fly but cannot fly look there it is again
a look I know how quickly it tangents like
a small fish into a rock there are dangers
in the sea there is sincerity in the sea
7
When you fall onto the floor your cry
sounds like a lightbulb as it pulses on
off on off your wail sticks to me I fail to
hear the people dying or the dog crying or
the seizures that light up bodies you are my
seizure a blowtorch that spouts fire then
laughter then fire you take me by force you
are a sudden occurrence I ask the sky for
help but it just gives me the next rain I ask
the rain for help it just gives me the square
root of rain which is just more rain I ask
the fig tree for help but it just gives me little
brown pamphlets when I ask the tree which
way it just points in every direction
8
Someone says it is difficult to write poems
that are both domestic and ambitious if your
small head is my earth if I have concerns only
for the internal affairs of your body then how
am I domestic our home has more than four
sides there are wars in rooms furniture in
formation if I am your domestic servant why is
it assumed we are domestic that we are small
and petty that we are controllable unwild you
betray me over and over I play you and prey
on you this is not domestic there is no floral
sofa no salad plate no bingo hall just falling
bodies the trouble with falling bodies is
someone needs to catch them
9
I must tell you something there were six
lights in a circle a large wreath of heat that
tried to drag open my eyes I woke up coughing
but the lights were missing it was sudden
there was no heartbeat an extra chromosome
my boy let the suction take it turn its body
into a latticework of tissue lying on the table
I remembered the man helping his boy with
cerebral palsy walk the boy’s legs bent stiff as
if climbing a ladder to God there must be a
God only God makes me listen this way I take
my quill and write God a note but there are no
more words they have flown beyond the lights
all the letters shaped like question marks
10
You are no longer fictional no longer the
other side of a cliff you are my phantom
limb you glean even when gone you are
a sensation an illusion a missing you are
earthbound titanic you make me itch and
burn and ache when you touch the flower’s
thorn my own hand explodes when your
head goes underwater my sight is taken by
white only when I am alone underwater the
light streaming into the pool like bars my ears
filled with the water’s prayer are you gone
I slump into a temperate zone but then it rains
your thoughts are all around me and they
dimple the water like desire
11
When a boy throws sand on your face
the hunter’s bow and arrow tucked behind
my choking heart bends and I must do
everything to suppress otherwise to summon
the wren in me the festival but how lovely
his round face would look pocked with
sand how happy my hand would be to throw
grains toward his face into the plumbing
of a body I care little about here a giant ficus
tree can lift up a sidewalk here I am lean with
only a canister of water I am broken down in
this valley no goodwill I am embroidered
with love and grief with the exact moment
your breathing becomes slow and deep
12
The sun sends its wires of heat onto your
face stops on your cheek coiling into a
present tense of red I am a hungry bird
that murmurs love that murmurs more
when I see red it is not blood or war it is
not the spur on the point of fishhooks
the red here is a tributary toward you it is
a ruby of lunar rules a stone of sixty
sides I want to ladle your ruddy rust taste
your cheek that feels like church against
my lips your terrestrial material the softest
my mouth has found your skin that dies
each year your sheen that blights that
forever barriers me from you
13
Your thoughts come out as frays as howls
they are like the bubbles from a fish’s mouth
that rise and disappear globules of letters in
>
a liquid envelope today a woman’s voice
sounds old wood thick deep the voice is
mine it takes deeper cover against the sky
against its blue shin that never answers with
anything but clouds and rain my voice digs
with its fingers in the wrong direction dead
down it goes head down my throat drags me
one day I will bang and bang on the soil from
below but you and your briefcase will not hear
me one day you will look down at the manhole
pass through my breath rising up as steam
14
A bench sits stares out to sea it says sit
and feel this here another looks at the swamp
onto the logarithmic sways of thistle I close
my eyes and still see you I plug my ears
and still hear you let us pass the bench
and its lathed feelings let me bite the sky
away from the seam of ocean let me grieve
you and play you irk you and deter you let
me be happy with the of of love the square
root of you let me stop wanting the whole
let us stand on earth and watch ourselves
play toss with the yellow ball from where we
are from eye level not through a photograph
not a video not from space not later
15
In poetry accident is in vogue the idea of
wandering into a forest and running into a
flock of owls who normally work alone I
used to hunt for the owl and its highbrow
nose spellbound by its oooo oooo but we
planned you induced you told you when
now the sunlight plans your naps we eat not
when rain strikes our magnolia but when the
sun angles onto the axis of your back how
much accident even in planning you have
become my broken English how in one
moment your hands collide as in clapping
how in some other moment they will rise
over my encased body touch in prayer
III
THE DOCTOR SAYS HOSPICE
The doctor says hospice as if she
is a hostess and
wants Barbie Chang to try the
crawfish there are
no longer many crawl spaces left for
her mother who no
longer can take her own showers
once she cut flowers
but now her lungs are burnt crust
lost in their own
rusting Barbie Chang always thought
her mother was heartless
not lungless but now she knows the
lungs were framed
a pair of slabs tricked by the heart
traitors to each other
even the lungs want to socially identify
with others to climb
higher search for something better
climbing up a ladder into
the sky is another way of drowning
their punishment is
scars that grow into honeycombs
there’s nothing scarier
than something that won’t stop fooling
you with its beauty
MR. DARCY COMES AGAIN
Mr. Darcy comes again through
the uneven grass in
a blue cape boots long hair a white
shirt with sleeves that
cover his palms the terminal part of
his body but nothing
terminal here even silence is not
silent Barbie Chang
sits again at terminal E gate 33 and
waits for a plane that
never arrives there are eyes on the
runways in the fog
planes look like nightgowns the people
in the airport don’t
speak they only gasp her gasp when
she sees the man again
in the fog in the threads of the trees
she wants to be the girl
who wrestles a man’s heart into a
balcony into something
more than four parts she wants to
wrestle the same man’s
heart over and over but what if there
are at least nine hearts
what if she only has one balcony is this
why her gasp is trapped
in her throat she wants the gasp to
elope in the form of
something other than a man she wants
to throw up the gasp so
she can finally be free of its ring and
creep she wants it to
leave her alone wants it to leave
wants it
BARBIE CHANG VOWS TO QUIT
Barbie Chang vows to quit watching
the Circle as they go to
lunch lifted up in their own wind winding
through the parking lot in
hot plumes she vows to quit watching
their children in pools
together on plastic animals she tells
herself she is more
than a gesture has some stature is ready
to work for space her
muscles ache as she collegiates her
children so in the
future they paint pictures of themselves
with black hair become
more than someone else’s grieving
because everyone has
debt with the sun because at night things
become clear again windows
light up like presents in one a boy with
cerebral palsy in a ball
laughing his body stiff in the shape of an
empty lawn chair
BARBIE CHANG’S TEARS
Barbie Chang’s tears are the lights of
the city that go off on
off on Mr. Darcy walks around the city
but Barbie Chang can’t
follow him she can’t promote herself
if she had legs she would
stop begging if she had hands she would
stop her own wedding
the city has no extra bedding it is not
ready yet the maids are
still making beds Barbie Chang is still
looking for small openings
there are always storms long arms drinks
with pink umbrellas
because they know she is confused like a
sea horse light avoids her
town on the map B2 C4 she wants to
be used she doesn’t
want to be with you or you it is morning
again and she is already
mourning the men the night men who
never fight who never
write back she prefers to sleep on her
back so she can see the
eyes of her attackers in the morning
a bed with questions
with her depression on each side two
small holes from knees
THERE ARE LUNGS
There are lungs in Barbie Chang’s
dreams and jeeps in her
lungs the lungs are hard and almost
dead the jeep no longer
runs her mother’s lungs are undone
they cover her heart like
a tarp her mother thinks her own
heart is softer than it is
Barbie Chang thought her own heart
would do more than
beat she longs for a longer lawn where
she can sit on a mower
and not think about perimeters if a
heart doesn’t beckon
forever why does it matter if we ever
reach language why does
it matter which form is better or whether
anyone ever wins an
award for anything maybe her life is
scarce becau
se it’s not
about filling up but emptying out like
the tree the men trim
every four years how it just grows
another way creeping
under the driveway Barbie Chang is still
working harder because
the women at school seem better and
Barbie Chang Page 3