Dear Boy In the Mirror Who Will Die on the Barricade

In this light, your hair is more blond than pink.
A starched collar, a fierce and joyous smile,
you are committed to Patria and nothing else.

Nothing has made me understand love
and confused my sense of self
more than slipping into your fictional skin

I would lower my register
I am down the octave

I would lie with your flat bare chest
against the curve of his shoulder,
kiss the knob of his spine
in philia.

Let his wine-dark breath brush the back of your ears,
his burning hands to our future plans, saying,
“Let me sleep here until I die.”
“You are incapable-”
“You'll see.”

We are Romantics at heart.

You see, I know love.
It exists above the waist,
at the knot in your schoolboy's tie:
in the space between your first and middle fingers
where lips brush a knuckle and no further.

Two years and 45 days.

I am not sad today.

I am sad most days when I think of you.
The wound has lessened,
some days it is only the stretch of a stiff muscle
other days the frenetic darkness of a childhood's midnight closet
But not today.

Today is nearly spring and a crocus peeks out beneath
half-melted snow on my neighbors lawn
and the tentative leaf buds of the oak tree wave in the wind.

This day when I feel you most near,
lemon squares covered in sugar and tall stems of white wine.
A birthday party tonight.

The world is filled with you today
like a secret season,
gulls on my rooftop
begging for cake.

A Homing Beacon

Today is the day we wade in frozen rivers,
through heartbreak, sleep
and wake in the night
victorious
With no one to clean the armour
we took to battle then.

When I miss you, it is midnight sweats,
and pre-dawn starts
eyeing winter moutnains from spring towers,
an easy isolation.

It is distraction in sorting out bills,
budgeting tears and counting the calories lost in them.

When I miss you, it is ponderous,
the creeping slow lane
passing the glitter-paved freeway I am demanding from the world.

You are the exit I want to get off at.
I need directions to our house,
 but north was never steady for me
I never understood the draw, so instead of freedom-bound
I am mired in jungles of small eyes
and quick whispers,
of sympathy and in the care of gin.

when the cellular tower calls me home

You are late autumn
cold evening rain running
home down the cracked eastern sidewalk

A pocket vibration and
the shivering answer I Will Be
soaked to the bone and my cigarette
will go out three times

Little puddle splash and the western front
is on fire

These days you are transcontinental
instead of transatlantic and I have
trouble deciphering your drunk Moroccan hand
where coffee spilled

but like you, the paper still smells of the sea.

Love in the Ashes

Listen.

There was love in this house, and I have photographic evidence to prove it.

There are pictures of us kissing,
sometimes my face is screwed up
sometimes you are pretending I am someone else
or I am pretending you are not you

And sometimes we are satisfied:
emotion breaks in the slant of my eyelash
and the placement of your hands on my clavicle

We lean in.

The lipstick already smudging on the corner of your mouth
the future ashes of our burning bridges smeared glitter under my whiskey eyes
caked to the waterline

We love harder.

I have the evidence in the flash on a bar window in Brooklyn.

We love

harder.

Subject to Change

I've been drinking since the piano started, Tom.

I'm the same kind of bad as you,

and I'm only going to the top of the hill

where the sun shines a mouth of freedom

and the cloud cover puts flowers on the flower's grave

and the rags I'm hoisting put cigars between my teeth

I grow a Wolverine

or maybe a Van Buren

but my chest concaves

and I'll take the sins of my father

if you'll take the sins of my mother

make a bone song out of this bluesy invitation,

and get me real gone.

123012-123112, "For Elliott, Part Deux ohne Trunkenheit"

Creatures like us
think too much about what it means
to be one of us.

We don't know
and our identification must always be for somewhere better
someone - ourselves of a different caliber.

I wish we could trade bodies for a day,
I would give you my breasts in an instant,
an easy femininity and heels that rarely hurt -
natural sway and carriage to be noticed.

The stares only feel terrible when you remind yourself
of what they could mean in strange crowded bars
or Post Alley after two.

In you,
I would hold tiny espresso cups,
drumming fingertips at young ladies reading Proust,
ask them what they know Anais and Henry.

I would buy a leather jack
and climb long limbed over abandoned warehouses
putting bricks in zipper pockets
I would call the fog on the pier back home
find a pretty girl
and kiss her as best my newer mouth
knew how.

121912-123012, "For Matt"

How is it more awkward
when we haven't been sleeping together?

The morning after, you are always
so mad at me and I haven't even done anything
(this time).

We are really great at drinking
and video games.
And laughing.

Don't lose patience with me
just because the sun comes up.
I love you.
You know what I mean?

122812-122912, "For Elliott, Part Une mit Kohlensaure"

You were so distracted by marriage pacts
you forgot how badly
you want life now.

There was a more important contract -
we shall not pass without the other;
you.
will not
die
without me.

Kiss me harder in the past's kitchen,
tonight we're getting everything wrong in the right way,
call me the end point in your universe's starting line,
tell me I'm not a whiskey bubble,
you really just said we'd get it right this time,
we are never honestly going to know what that means.

But I am a whiskey bubble,
ginger perfect pop on your tongue,
warm against refrigerator doors between cabinets--
There's ice in my teeth;
you're drinking out of a beaker,
I forgot how much chemistry you had.
My valence electron, drifter.
Hold tight til Sunday, little spark,
we'll be take nobility for our own soon enough.
We're almost home.

122712-122812, "For Riley"

Your best friends
are always the ones
you're a little bit in love with.

Ten year ago saw well water drunk down
with a scoffed curse that nothing
could bring you back for real;
but two musketeers,
glowing pyramids - backup spouses
afraid of weddings
real spouses afraid of how she might crack her head open,

I haven't had a cigarette in a month
but I'm really drunk. and it tastes like tea.

So dance with greater loves
who are a poem in a burrito.
and so tired.

But drive me home like I'm more precious cargo
than what's in the Versace box
or your hightops

Drive me home like I am the best idea you ever had

because your best friends
are always the ones
you're a little bit in love with.

"There will be stars"; Sara Teasdale

There will be stars over the place forever;
   Though the house we loved and the street
   we loved are lost,
Every time the earth circles her orbit
   On the night the autumn equinox is crossed,
Two stars we knew, poised on the peak of midnight
   Will reach their zenith; stillness will be deep;
There will be stars over the place forever,
   There will be stars forever, while we sleep

Sunshine cinquain

Shine! Beyond old sun,
the jealous moon still rises.
a New Year has come at last;
and though lovers hearts beat fast
peeking babe dawn betrays them.

A Working List of Fear

1) Outside the church: rain
falls too heavy for her heart--
the weight of the ring

2) Outside, the rain falls
a church overhead, not
hers, but indulgent

3) No words in English.
German, maybe, liebe mine.
Our future, Seattle gray

4) Find a better love,
give it to a better woman;
bury your empty heart

5) Make my body strong
as my mind as immortal as aerials
spinning, spinning

The Spindle

You use me too much.

Write me into something new,
do not leave me to dust and rot
as year after year another
girl longs to prick
her finger, or have seven shirts
to spin.

Put me in the knit of
your baby's blanket, the
wool scarf you hold onto when the
fairy queen rides by with your love again.

Do not leave me to dust, and rot,
do not leave me to ruin 
their chances at falling in love
alone.

Please Stop Writing 9/11 Poems

Ten and half years ago,
I feel like I wore my red All-Stars.
I put my shoes on and ran to the parking lot.
I found Carolyn’s silver Passat,
got in the passenger side and we drove to Lovers’ Ridge.

We made it in time to see the second tower fall.

Dear poets from other places,
I know you are America’s heart
and the story you are trying to tell is relevant.

But this is not something you know.
This is not your gap-toothed awkward skyline ten years later,
in a false pubescence,
this is not your scaffolding and avoidant glances on drunken walks home.
The unbidden tears on the PATH when we catch skeleton support beams in construction lights,
the tracing of fingertips over our parents names on days when no one is looking.

A few days ago, someone posted online that they didn’t understand why New Yorkers get offended when politicians include 9/11 in their stump speeches.

I answered in the same way I have been answering since after the second tower fell:
Those are not my words.

People don’t like to talk about cultural appropriation outside of Asia or Africa.

As an American, most people say I have no culture to appropriate;
when those men flew
those planes into
Our Home,

they divorced New York City from America without our consent.

And we no longer live in the same country you do.

We voted against the Patriot Act, half of us are still convinced it was an inside job,
there was enough information that it could’ve been stopped,
we’ve read the 9/11 commission so many times the binding has broken -

You never knew that we smiled,
did you?

We’re hard stone-faced finance warriors,
nothing ever hurts.
hey we’re New Yorkers, fuck you and the horse you rode in on.

When the ashes piled three inches high over all of lower Manhattan,
and the sky blackened all the way to the Jersey Shore,
where was your best friend’s father?

Ten years later when the first response teams are fighting for their lives,
fighting for money to pay the medical bills to keep them alive
because their insurance companies drop them and the new ones
call heroism a pre-existing condition,
succumbing to the permanent iron lungs in their bedrooms
where is your best friend’s father?

For all of your sorrow,
for all your perfect precious words
that stir strangers in strange lands,

Where is your wallet?
How much of your barista’s salary did you donate to the Firefighters Widows Fund this year?

Your words are beautiful,
and unlike the ones the politicians are still spouting,
I believe in the heart of you -

You think you’re giving a voice to the voiceless,
but sweetheart,
this is New York, believe me, we have voices.

Please stop writing 9/11 poems.
My culture is not a play for points,
my broken skyline is not the ace up your sleeve -

We’ve all sewed our wounds shut with yarn as best we could,
our best surgeons seemed to die in the aftermath.
We’ve scabbed and scarred,
started over,
we know our neighbours and their beautiful hijab-wearing children.
Please, stop tearing open our wounds.

Today, at 1 World Trade Center,
A 105-story building is nearing completion.
It looks just like a penis,
the politicians wanted to call it the Freedom Tower -
we told them that was a really dumb name.

Its scaffolding makes my commute more difficult,
its fences guard cranes and jackhammers instead of warped steel and broken dreams.
It will always be a redheaded stepchild to me.

But, I like to look up at the workers harnessed in,
sealing the windows at floor 102,
marrying New York to the sky once more.

(Half-)Birthday Poem

I set alarms with my smart phone that wake me when I sleep lightest,
that throw open night time windows so the rain can clean my dreams.

It’s my birthday. I want some goddamn coffee,
but twenty-five years has brought two roommates -
one won’t leave until 11,
the other won’t leave at all -
and my good-intentioned 6 a.m. will disturb them.
So no coffee.

It’s a running day, but I can’t be bothered with the rain.

It turns out at twenty-five,
all girls develop teleportation powers that can only be used at great cost;
this is how your mother always managed to be where you needed her to be,
every time.
It’s also how she aged so quickly in your teenage years.

Most spend the years off their life on their children,
I’ll spend mine on you
and chasing nightmares out of your firstborn’s bedroom -
teaching her how to make shadows into soldiers,
the wolf in the walls into an ally,
the witch in the corner into Jesus.

I’d teach you but true love negates all monsters.

It’s my birthday.
I’m going running in the rain.

The Invitation (6/30)

I drowned in the Atlantic -
oh you want poetry, let me give you poetry
with something I don’t care to admit.

I want to crawl into your bed and add whispers to the symphonies,
the sound of fingerskins brushing and your arms in the small of my back.

But the plainest English I know is silenced silence.

So I will go isolated islanding on the Bering sea
with the wolves
and the silence of heaven
breathe deep in a snowbank
and never come home.

The Offspring (5/30)

“You will be a great mother.”
The excess testosterone in my body at puberty not only dictated the jungle that covers it,
the breasts of permanent D-cups,
but also the hormones that will drive my body to addiction
and death
should the government dictate
I must carry this child to term.
No spina bifuda here
just a wandering Y chromosome
that fought too hard in utero and settled in my organs -
It makes a rare symphony of me,
And I compensate with fluted skirts, feminine pageantry
to distract from the rest of me.
That my well of patience is 3 shallow buckets reserved for holidays doesn’t help.

“You will be a great mother,”
breaks the bones I forget I have.

The day the OB/GYN looked straight in my eyes and said,
“There is a ninety-five percent chance you will miscarry,
and a seventy-five percent chance you will require medication -
medication that will cause birth defects and retardation -
just to survive your pregnancy….”

that was the day I chose publishing over family,
machine over man.
I love my children.
I will murder them when they are a cluster of cells
too small to register a heartbeat,
rather than with neglect
or a Lady Macbeth scene of out out damn spot,
out out damn baby,
Holding infant heads underwater
and sitting in jail all of my remaining days for a case of Alien Body Syndrome.

I am pro-choice because I love my children.

Not every womb is built to sustain life,
not every body is capable of keeping it.

I'll Eat You Alive (8/30)

tell me a story
I am greedy for them
want them to come from your lips to my mouth
so I can bite ‘em,
let ‘em juice smush on my cheeks run down my neck,
color my hands rainbows like five years olds eating popsicles

i want your stories to cradle in the hollow of my clavicle while I’m sleeping
a burrito in fleece blankets with your story
wrapping lazy around my eardrums,
curling nose to tail around inner ear bones when I wake,
setting my day off balance.

Tell Me All Your Loves, Love: A Conversation in Five Parts (7/30)

i.my love for you is an exponential marathon
of unstoppable anthropomorphic force that won’t stop until
there is nothing else to expand into:
sun's going away, it's getting cold.

ii.stop building latticeworks of cause and effect
around the notions in my head,
everything I do reminds me of you:
my love for you is a desperation because it's February.

iii.i love you more than electrons love the superposition:
new york makes me physically ill
and the idea of not seeing you for however long
is even worse:
I think I'm losing my mind.

iv.wandering naked in my house,
It’s February, I’m getting cold.
come here, gimme your clothes:
i love you more than sleep but sleep loves me more than anything

v.i love you more than i love breathing,
and i love you more than i love gin
but gin loves me more than anything