You always want to leave
right before my midnight feeding

like you feel my
sweat glands grow heavy
or see the butter knives
I set aside to operate you.

I looked for the letters
to keep you but never talk
while chewing.

It’s a hunger that has no
feeling, a paralysis with no meaning
just a skinned linen napkin
draped tightly over table scraps.

Table Grace

The train stop at Damen was the
last time I decided
your eyes were dark

green moss
like the kind that tickles
your bedroom window.



You folded your legs over another seat,
pronounced ohs as oohs and said “fudge”
instead of fuck.

It was a long day,
said your wrinkled purple scrubs and
loose ponytail as they hugged
you asleep.

The alleyways
and telephone poles
pass through your window
and I envy how easily
you sleep.

I could see my reflection in
your pearl earring as I got off

your stop.

Watching

I exhale into
your black strands and

watch it whisp outwards
twirlandbend

like spider-legs.

You say the bruise on my thigh
looks like a wishbone

and I wish we could get closer
than these bones

but it’s a birthmark.

So I scrape the freckles from your back,
and press my heart in
between your shoulder blades

let it spin
into your chest-skin.

Ritual Courtship

She laid her hand
fanned over his face
as he looked through
pink-petal painted fingernails,

He slung her naked body over his
she was orchid-skinned
and he cringed
for the next ten minutes
when he’d have to wake her.

Her legs crossed 
like wheat stalks and poked 
out blanket ends,
her wrists fold through
golden jewelry jingling
with every move

asleep, is when he understood her.

The Insomniac

Grey highlighted his hair 
and he wore only patterned 
skintight cotton briefs and sang 
to Mary Poppins with 
the captions on.

He was a holder of riddles 
and bit his nails as he told them,
asking the universe to
slow down a little bit.

She was seven years younger 
under bat-winged eyelashes 
and an aged heart, peeling 
herself to ingenuity, 
straight-seasoned romance.

They laid sideways on beds 
and pushed their faces to the ground 
promising each other clean, 
unbubbling love to lift them 
from soiled corners of minds 
with limited capacity

we slide wrinkle-less 
skin without worry.

Child Talk; Evaporated

I’ve been to the darkest
corners of minds & I’m
past finding someone
in deeper than I am.

To get to the bottom of your being,
you have to understand this shade
of translucence.

Stop worrying about the content of
your poems, and be happy that you
have created poems.

I sing out of key 
and talk out of motion
so I write poems instead.

I think deeper than my brain
and curl my toes under sheets 
so I keep quiet instead.

Drinking coffee at 1 am to
stay up and write just to sleep
poetry.

I’m better with words
in my head, so I fold them up
in the attic to collectively pattern.

I promised myself a page of
poetry and I was forced
to be martyr of whatever
the fuck I was thinking.

I hope my sassiness can be tuned
so I don’t sound like a total bitch.

Thank god I’m still inspired
or else I don’t know who’d I talk 
to in the corner of
the lunchroom.

After the coffee and right before the
sleeping pill hits, there’s a burst of creativity energy 

Sometimes it’s better to quit while ahead.

Subliminal Lunchroom

Window-shopping 
outside diners on 
wet-streeted, late nights 
I go to see some sort of life.

You carry old train tickets in your
purse like currency
and use roman numerals
to express your phone number.

I look through your
ceramic eye-whites
like empty, cream-colored
coffee mugs.

You talk with your hands
but I bet your voice
sounds like an organ
keys uncovering
before they play
notes of maturity.

You’d have a limp
pathetic handshake 
weak enough to forget 
names.

Gloves on your hands
cover your face from
laughing when I tell you 
we’ve met before.

Like blueberries 
you tap violet
blue nails in and
out of your mouth.

Blueberry Nails

Loud-Minded

OUTLYING GOOD AND EVIL

Poetry that makes you pull the shades down. Words you lust for, in the thick of it. Fables you seek but never get the chance to live.

Word Vandal

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