A thousand swelling hairs on my tongue.
They taste the same,
and I know I’m probably watering
down the flavor,
I’m probably diffusing the boil, and the boy
that brought me here says he wants to expose me
to great things. He opens my throat,
a disposable gutter, and I know
I’m empty
or full, or which one he wants me to be, but I hope
it’s the right one, and I don’t know who’s holding my face
to the mattress, the one that wanted to salt my spine,
or the one that wanted to tag along
and sing some wicked lullaby,
but I hope it’s the right one.
It’s a miracle that I haven’t spilled over, really is
some kind of blessing that this accordion torso
has yet to break open with its hideous yawn,
and I should consider myself luckyenough to feel
a current pass through me
even if it settles in someone else. There is honor in being a message
in a bottle, or just the bottle,
empty,
full, jagged. Don’t kiss the messenger, don’t fuck
the middleman,or do, and watch the sweat
bead, and then disappear.
LADYBOY THEATER
It’s not that I wanted to fuck him cause he was white,
or that I pitied him for wanting me in that moment,
a desperate man drinking his own urine to survive.
This is no desert—the West, maybe, but he called me
easy, and all I could do to prove him wrong was swallow.
:::
[sunrise]
Boy in a dress does a fan dance
with a severed hand. Cherry blossoms
dripping from his small cock.
Bow for the savior. Kneel for your god.
Fall on his sword.
:::
Mistermister, did you know my father
snuck over to Cambodia from Vietnam?
He capsized his own boat
before he made it to shore
so the guards would rescue him
instead of shooting.
Don’t you know brown boys
are always drowning?
You can put that gun down.
:::
[dusk]
Boy undressed, jabs a hair ornament
into the hero’s neck as he cums.
I heard Batman was a rice queen on the low.
Chopstick eroticism: maneuver your thumbs,
crack me in half.
:::
Mistermister, do you expect a happy ending?
You told me I was beautiful as if it was something
I wouldn’t hear without you.
:::
[dawn]
Boy in a dress performs a tea ceremony
on all fours. Bent in like a river.
Incense burning down, ash crumbling
into the small of his back. Human sushi
platter. Human spice rack. Human-sized mouth.
:::
Mistermister, do you hear that train coming?
My kin made this bed of spikes.
My kin made theses silk chains. Probably
that ball gag too. There’s no time, sir.
Save yourself. Just put that penny
on my forehead and step out of the way.
:::
boylathers in a tub of saké.
boyfresh off the poppers.
boymail ordered.
boythe wrong package.
boydog collar made from jade.
boyrice wine enema.
boynapalm bukakke.
:::
[sunset]
Boy in a dress waits in a burning temple for a soldier
to come save him. White man runs down an endless hill
trampling over the faces of a nation of mothers.
The bullets come. The bullets hit. Their daughters
gone. Their daughters mall-walking with a white child
on a leash.
TEACHER’S PET
How do I describe what happened to me
if I’m not entirely sure what happened
to me? Therapy brings no closure,
instead, an echo that loses her name deeper
inside my body. I am a well of faceless
coins. I’ve tried to dig her out
of the marble, but have only managed to sculpt
a pair of hands. These are her hands.
I am starting to remember them quite
well. I remember digesting them inside her
office as she loosened the wet denim suctioned
to my nine-year-old thigh, peeling away everything
gold-soaked and warm. I am on her lap
now, my face being pressed against her
freckled chest. The musky smell of tangy
leather has yet to fade from the bridge
of my nose. Sometimes I can smell her
on a crowded bus or still stitched to the collar
of a secondhand blouse. If I close my eyes,
I am there. Here. Inches away from the wafting
scent of citrus and decay. I can almost make out
her face. Her voice peels away the top layer
of keratin from my nails. Warmth leaves
my body. Gold runs down a leg.
III
“When ladies used to come to me in dreams,
I said, ’Pretty mother, pretty mother.’
But when at last she really came, I shot her.”
— J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan
EASTER, 8
It’s almost like the window shattered
on its own, since we never could
prove what hit the back of Carol’s head,
and we swore we found nothing
amongst the broken glass, no ransom note
taped to a brick, no bullet still smoking
in the wall, all the children lined up
to be scolded by our mothers, and Vivian,
not my mother, but the white neighbor
lady that brought me along to a suburban house
with a pond in the backyard, where her sister,
in a porcelain gown, pats Vivian’s back
and says, you’re doing such a good thing,
and points her smile, thin as bat wings,
in my direction, and Viv, not my mother,
but told, he’s so well-behaved, you should
adopt him, ruffles my black hair,
while the other children cry, their glass cracking
cries, after being banned from playing outside,
and I sit, like a good pet, on the couch, and smile
my good smile, keep him, you should keep him,
and she feeds me a thick slice of ham, teeth coated
in honey, when I ask if I could help clean
the dishes, help earn my keep, and simultaneously
all their heads roll back, and they laugh a clean laugh,
cause I am a guest, and will always remain just a guest,
and later when this beast is returned
to the wild, my mother will carry
my sleeping body from the car and pull,
from my pocket, a handful of rocks.
TEACHER’S PET
There is a fingerstarting to unlace that winter
I assumed was just snow.
The name and face still thawing, most of this story
yet to come up for air.Only her hands.
It took me
thirteen years to remember thoselingering
starched digitson my hip.How easy it was
to bury them
underneath nostalgia,to remember
that age
only as a swarm of missingteeth and tokens—
I could be a liar.I could be remembering
the wron
g details.Details.Details: her office is still
a lost thing. Darkness holding the ember hostage.
There is nothing in this story that’s not a dagger.
Her voice is mud
sticky
and her name is trying to push its way through
my gums.
My thighs glow like a fresh scar.Gravel dripping
like sweat from my stretched pores.
All of this
could just be my sleeptalking. I have come
across manywith her calloused tentacles: cashiers,
librarians, friends,men, fingers trained
in zipper etiquette
and have asked them all to help mepull back this heavy scab—
I’m sorry.
I’ve seen your hands
before. I don’t know when,
but I’m certain they were here.
I WANT NOTHING
to do with my mother’s
sadness, her mouth:
a pockmark on every door
that opens onto a memorial scene,
her mouth: the beginning
of traffic. Odd to think
of it as an ugly and frequent
song on the radio,
a small bird shitting
and dying in my hands.
He is dead, she says,
over and over again,
except in Vietnamese,
which to me doesn’t sound
as tragic—a little uglier,
maybe, but less tragic,
for sure. The house phone
on her lap sings its dead
hum into the static air
of our living room. Who?
Who? I ask. I shake her
shoulders, Who?
When she finally looks
at me through the slit
of her black bangs,
she tells me about the man
she would have married
if she stayed in Vietnam,
and my posture straightens,
and my eyes roll, and I am
relieved at the absence
of my own grief, and I hate him,
this man, this dead man
that won’t stay gone
now that he’s gone
for good, now that he has built
this house of meat to rot
and stew on the sunniest days,
now that he fills the marrow
in each bone of my mother’s
regret. When she thinks of love
either she’s a widow or divorced,
and I believed for a while
that regret is leaving
the burning house
empty-handed, but he is
already ash, and I tell her
she made the right choice,
which is funny, cause I hate
my father, and often forget
that he’s still alive.
STUBBORN INERITANCE
After we put my grandmother to sleep
in an incinerator, they returned her
to us in a tin cube along with a plastic bag
full of things that refused to melt: nails, screws,
a titanium kneecap. Her wedding ring,
still solid, was placed in the urn surrounded by her
dust, her, and I thought skin was the only thing
holding one’s body together. She sat on the bookshelf
for months. Not sure what to do with our beloved
debris. What mountain or gust of wind? What seaside
cliff or bathroom drain? Whose lungs would take her
on a grand adventure? Most of her jingling joints kept
in a Ziploc bag, like bullets, serving no purpose
outside of a body—It took my mother eight years
to accept me for being gay. For eight years I sat
and watched my house burn. I watched her save the baby
photos but leave the baby—I know I should be grateful
that she came around at all. That she forgave me.
I’ve been told that it’s not her fault. It is how she was
raised. I’ve been told it’s our family’s old way
of thinking. I’ve been told to forgive this
stubborn inheritance, this thing that has lived
inside her, and her mother, and her mother’s father—
I’ve been told that once you’ve been stabbed, it is better to leave
the blade inside the body—removing the dagger will only open
the wound further. Forgiveness will bleed you thin. If you ignore
it, your skin could close around the metal. This is a part of you
now, this is all you will find when my body crumbles, this vengeful
child, this shiny grudge, a thirteen-year-old boy crawling
from the ashes, holding a gas can in his hands.
THE STORY
My mother opens my bedroom
door and gags on the overwhelming scent
of urine, like something died, she says,
in the story that follows me
to every family gathering,
a hound locked on the scent
of a wandering child. It was a phase
my mother said lasted until I was fourteen,
or around the time I started doing my own laundry.
She goes on to tell them about the piles of wet
clothes hidden in the back of my closet,
like something died—again
we all know this story,
a boy gets touched and then ruins
the upholstery, or a boy rubs himself
in the back of the school bus
until his jeans become a shade darker.
I never told my mother I was molested,
never told her that story, the one
where a boy finds a tongue,
ten years later, fermenting
in a jar. I never told her
how someone reached inside me
and turned on all the faucets.
IN THE END
I am told I have to climb
the Mountain of Forgiveness
but I’ve heard at the top
there is nothing
but a shitty view.
FINALLY, THE SON TALKS ABOUT WOMEN
after Rachel McKibbens
For the past fifteen years I have chased away all of my mother’s suitors. Many have come bearing bouquets of promise and left with a scar the size of my smile. Many flinch when I laugh. Behind the lips I have inherited from my mother are the snarling teeth of my father. No one ever taught me how to be in love with a man. I have gnawed through the joints of every boy that has slept in my bed. Mouth full of gristle.
I am the last man standing in my family. The rest have left guided either by death or free will. I am the only son in a family of daughters and mothers and fire-breathers and lumber-women who crafted their homes from bear traps and chicken broth. These women have trained me to light a matchstick with a tongue, to hold a hand without the need to squeeze, to comb away my cowlicks that sprout my father’s matted fur, that canine widow’s peak that won’t stop growing. These women have soldered a seal of trust with the iron in my blood. My mother tells me I am worthy of a woman’s love. This is a compliment. This is the faith that comes before you take the muzzle off, when you turn your back toward a dark alley, when you unhook the leash and expect him to stay.
VISTING HOURS
By now I should know my way around
Regions Hospital. It is the hospital I was born
in, the one that took my tonsils and my grandmother,
gave me three cousins and many, many blood
results. The smell of cold linen and piss
hovers in the thin air of the central tower,
a sour perfume. Her room illuminated
by the monitors, and a late night infomercial on mute—
think it was a blender—behind the curtain divider
/> she shared the room with a pair of wrists that tried conjuring
some red sea-witch to form in its palms, but if we think about it
this way then she is only a heart that locked its doors and left
the water running, or maybe she is a throat
that couldn’t contain its howl, or maybe a fist, or ankle,
or heart, or teeth, or heart, by now she must be a whole body.
By now she must have a name, a whole face, maybe,
and I did not come here to make her laugh,
or fluff her pillows, or spoon-feed her sugar,
to chew-n-spit concern into her dry mouth, but I do.
I brush her hair and wipe the applesauce from her chin,
and she doesn’t remember why she’s here,
just that she’s here. She’s home, and her shoes are off
and her sheets are clean, and she prefers it here.
When she is finally discharged, she tells me
that she doesn’t want to leave. She tells me she’s afraid
of being alone. Such a cliché fear, like heights,
or death, or becoming your mother.
NOSTOPHOBIA
fear of returning home
I am not afraid of the sadness
I will feel when my mother passes—
the undeniable pickaxe of loss
that will lodge itself in front
of me, cutting in line and standing
there forever like proud traffic,
a reminder that I do actually love
her. I am not afraid of the grief
that will haunt burnt eggs, or the crunch
of undercooked rice. Grief like sugar
boiling on a tongue. I am terrified
of no longer being a son,
to have to attend a funeral
without her.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank the following journals in which versions of these poems, sometimes under different titles, first appeared:
Anti-: “It Was the Morning He Discovered Chicken Bones Under
My Pillow, or It Was the Night I Drank, and Drank, and Drank Until
I Finally Found My Keys at the Bottom of Lake Harriet”
The Bakery: “Teacher’s Pet [Know: I am]”; “Teacher’s Pet [How do I]”
decomP magazinE: “Buffet Etiquette”
Indiana Review: “The Dock”; “The Ocean, Maybe”
The Journal: “A/S/L”; “Diffuse”
Muzzle Magazine: “Nourish”
PANK: “Christmas Eve, 17”
This Way to the Sugar Page 3
