From women,
I learned to praise.
If you are given my body, put it down.
If you are given anything
be sure to leave
no tracks in the snow. Know
that I never chose
which way the seasons turned. That it was always October
in my throat
& you: every leaf
refusing to rust.
Quick. Can you see the red dark shifting?
This means I am touching you. This means
you are not alone—even
as you are not.
If you get there before me, if you think
of nothing
& my face appears rippling
like a torn flag—turn back.
Turn back & find the book I left
for us, filled
with all the colors of the sky
forgotten by gravediggers.
Use it.
Use it to prove how the stars
were always what we knew
they were: the exit wounds
of every
misfired word.
Deto(nation)
There’s a joke that ends with—huh?
It’s the bomb saying here is your father.
Now here is your father inside
your lungs. Look how lighter
the earth is—afterward.
To even write father
is to carve a portion of the day
out of a bomb-bright page.
There’s enough light to drown in
but never enough to enter the bones
& stay. Don’t stay here, he said, my boy
broken by the names of flowers. Don’t cry
anymore. So I ran. I ran into the night.
The night: my shadow growing
toward my father
Ode to Masturbation
because you
were never
holy
only beautiful
enough
to be found
with a hook
in your mouth
water shook
like sparks
when they pulled
you out
& sometimes
your hand
is all you have
to hold
yourself to this
world & it’s
the sound not
the prayer
that enters
the thunder not
the lightning
that wakes you
in the backseat
midnight’s neon
parking lot
holy water
smeared
between
your thighs
where no man
ever drowned
from too much
thirst
the cumshot
an art
-iculation
of chewed stars
so lift
the joy
-crusted thumb
& teach
the tongue
of unbridled
nourishment
to be lost in
an image
is to find within it
a door
so close
your eyes
& open
reach down
with every rib
humming
the desperation
of unstruck
piano keys
some call this
being human but you
already know
it’s the briefest form
of forever yes
even the saints
remember this the if
under every
utterance
beneath
the breath brimmed
like cherry blossoms
foaming into no one’s
springtime
how often these lines
resemble claw marks
of your brothers
being dragged
away from you
you whose name
not heard
by the ear
but the smallest
bones
in the graves you
who ignite the april air
with all your petals’
here here here you
who twist
through barbed
-wired light
despite knowing
how color beckons
decapitation
i reach down
looking for you
in american dirt
in towns with names
like hope
celebration
success & sweet
lips like little
saigon
laramie money
& sanford towns
whose trees know
the weight of history
can bend their branches
to breaking
lines whose roots burrow
through stones
& hard facts
gathering
the memory of rust
& iron
mandibles
& amethyst yes
touch yourself
like this
part the softest hurt’s
unhealable
hunger
after all
the lord cut you
here
to remind us where
he came
from pin this antlered
heartbeat back
to earth
cry out
until the dark fluents
each faceless
beast banished
from the ark
as you scrape the salt
off the cock-clit
& call it
daylight
don’t
be afraid
to be this
luminous
to be so bright so
empty
the bullets pass
right through you
thinking
they have found
the sky as you reach
down press
a hand
to this blood
-warm body
like a word
being nailed
to its meaning
& lives
Notebook Fragments
A scar’s width of warmth on a worn man’s neck.
That’s all I wanted to be.
Sometimes I ask for too much just to feel my mouth overflow.
Discovery: My longest pubic hair is 1.2 inches.
Good or bad?
7:18 a.m. Kevin overdosed last night. His sister left a message. Couldn’t listen
to all of it. That makes three this year.
I promise to stop soon.
Spilled orange juice all over the table this morning. Sudden sunlight
I couldn’t wipe away.
My hands were daylight all through the night.
Woke at 1 a.m and, for no reason, ran through Duffy’s cornfield. Boxers only.
Corn was dry. I sounded like a fire,
for no reason.
Grandma said In the war they would grab a baby, a soldier at each ankle, and pull ...
Just like that.
It’s finally spring! Daffodils everywhere.
Just like that.
There are over 13,000 unidentified body parts from the World Trade Center
being stored in an underground repository in New York City.
Good or bad?
Shouldn’t heaven be superheavy by now?
Maybe the rain is “sweet” because it falls
through so much of the world.
Even sweetness can scratch the throat, so stir the sugar well. —Grandma
4:37 a.m. How come depression makes me feel more alive?
Life is funny.
/> Note to self: If a guy tells you his favorite poet is Jack Kerouac,
there’s a very good chance he’s a douchebag.
Note to self: If Orpheus were a woman I wouldn’t be stuck down here.
Why do all my books leave me empty-handed?
In Vietnamese, the word for grenade is “bom,” from the French “pomme,”
meaning “apple.”
Or was it American for “bomb”?
Woke up screaming with no sound. The room filling with a bluish water
called dawn. Went to kiss grandma on the forehead
just in case.
An American soldier fucked a Vietnamese farmgirl. Thus my mother exists.
Thus I exist. Thus no bombs = no family = no me.
Yikes.
9:47 a.m. Jerked off four times already. My arm kills.
Eggplant = cà pháo = “grenade tomato.” Thus nourishment defined
by extinction.
I met a man tonight. A high school English teacher
from the next town. A small town. Maybe
I shouldn’t have, but he had the hands
of someone I used to know. Someone I was used to.
The way they formed brief churches
over the table as he searched for the right words.
I met a man, not you. In his room the Bibles shook on the shelf
from candlelight. His scrotum a bruised fruit. I kissed it
lightly, the way one might kiss a grenade
before hurling it into the night’s mouth.
Maybe the tongue is also a key.
Yikes.
I could eat you he said, brushing my cheek with his knuckles.
I think I love my mom very much.
Some grenades explode with a vision of white flowers.
Baby’s breath blooming in a darkened sky, across
my chest.
Maybe the tongue is also a pin.
I’m gonna lose it when Whitney Houston dies.
I met a man. I promise to stop.
A pillaged village is a fine example of perfect rhyme. He said that.
He was white. Or maybe, I was just beside myself, next to him.
Either way, I forgot his name by heart.
I wonder what it feels like to move at the speed of thirst—if it’s fast
as lying on the kitchen floor with the lights off.
(Kristopher)
6:24 a.m. Greyhound station. One-way ticket to New York City: $36.75.
6:57 a.m. I love you, mom.
When the prison guards burned his manuscripts, Nguyễn Chí Thiện couldn’t stop
laughing—the 283 poems already inside him.
I dreamed I walked barefoot all the way to your house in the snow. Everything
was the blue of smudged ink
and you were still alive. There was even a light the shade of sunrise inside
your window.
God must be a season, grandma said, looking out at the blizzard drowning
her garden.
My footsteps on the sidewalk were the smallest flights.
Dear god, if you are a season, let it be the one I passed through
to get here.
Here. That’s all I wanted to be.
I promise.
The Smallest Measure
Behind the fallen oak,
the Winchester rattles
in a boy’s early hands.
A copper beard grazes
his ear. Go ahead.
She’s all yours...
Heavy with summer, I
am the doe whose one hoof cocks
like a question ready to open
roots. & like any god
-forsaken thing, I want nothing more
than my breaths. To lift
this snout, carved
from centuries of hunger, toward the next
low peach bruising
in the season’s clutch.
Go ahead, the voice thicker
now, drive her
home. But the boy is crying
into the carcass of a tree—cheeks smeared
with snot & chipped bark.
Once, I came near
enough to a man to smell
a woman’s scent
in his quiet praying—
as some will do before raising
their weapons closer
to the sky. But through the grained mist
that makes this morning’s minutes,
this smallest measure
of distance, I see two arms unhinging
the rifle from the boy’s grip,
its metallic shine
sharpened through wet leaves.
I see the rifle... the rifle coming
down, then gone. I see
an orange cap touching
an orange cap. No, a man
bending over his son
the way the hunted,
for centuries, must bend
over its own reflection
to drink.
Daily Bread
Củ Chi, Vietnam
Red is only black remembering.
Early dark & the baker wakes
to press what’s left of the year
into flour & water. Or rather,
he’s reshaping the curve of her pale calf
atmosphered by a landmine left over
from the war he can’t recall. A fistful
of hay & the oven scarlets. Alfalfa.
Forsythia. Foxglove. Bubbling
dough. When it’s done, he’ll tear open
the yeasty steam only to find
his palms—the same
as when he was young. When heaviness
was not measured by weight
but distance. He’ll climb
the spiral staircase & call her name.
He’ll imagine the softness of bread
as he peels back the wool blanket, raises
her phantom limb to his lips as each kiss
dissolves down her air-light ankles.
& he will never see the pleasure
this brings to her face. Never
her face. Because in my hurry
to make her real, make her
here, I will forget to write
a bit of light into the room.
Because my hands were always brief
& dim as my father’s.
& it will start to rain. I won’t
even think to put a roof over the house—
her prosthetic leg on the nightstand,
the clack clack as it fills to the brim. Listen,
the year is gone. I know
nothing of my country. I write things
down. I build a life & tear it apart
& the sun keeps shining. Crescent
wave. Salt-spray. Tsunami. I have
enough ink to give you the sea
but not the ships, but it’s my book
& I’ll say anything just to stay inside
this skin. Sassafras. Douglas fir.