The mall is America, is
a liminal space, is a graveyard
who has no idea everything
she holds has died, and
the stores soldier on, unawares,
paint chips carving makeshift
geographies over the merchandise,
defaulted promises on the
premises, everything must go,
a pizza shop pretends not to
notice his neighbors have
died and gone, his whistling
echoes long into the empty arcade.

My family dog is an
old man now, I lie on the
carpet beside him, cradling
his face in one hand and
running the other along his
trembling ribcage, I
cannot make him young
so I try to remind him somehow
of his mother.

Inescapable, time, but
lovely is the stillness, if
we let it, if we dare
give it the room, let
it settle over us and
settle our debts and doings,
notice, really notice, the
minutes running their hands
across our tender bodies.

At the gas station, fathers
whose knuckles bear scars
from years on a factory floor
scratch tickets, hope momentarily
awash in bleak fluorescence,
flashes of soft sand beaches
or red-chrome freedom or
something to hand their
sons before the anchor
drowns them, too –

You know what really
trickles down?

When she degrades
her own body, pushing her
plate away and cutting
herself apart in harshness,
jokes and complaints
piling up in the gaze of
her daughter, discovering
and pinching her little
stomach in wilting privacy;

or he toils, for years,
at a job that breaks him
of dreaming, drowning
the day’s weight in
pop-tab beer, amber
medicine, seething
in violet rage at the
notion that an
immigrant might dream,
might want, too;

or their concept of
god, who is perhaps said
to love, but whose most
clamorous devotees
revel in the anguish of
the oppressed, recoil
from the image of
a kiss between men,
make excuses for
brutish, stupid men
and their brutish,
stupid messes.

I plead guilty, his epitaph by the
hundred in my handwriting,
memory saltwater gargled
in the name of healing, but
I welcome the visceral sting,
cinematic flashback to
all his wanton brutalities –

Sobbing in a hot tub, finally
broken, unruly horse accepting
the limits imposed by cruel
fingertips, the sinking, cooling
epiphany, alone and disposable,
sexual revolution a skin-broken lie:
I waited, pleasant fool, for
the long-promised amory.

If I let myself remember
the roll of an ankle, I squirm
in my chair, instinctive
recoil, so perusing the
pages I penned in your
name makes me pine to
chain you to a chair,
listen and know the
weight of your
unbearable loneliness,
empty ache of your
counterfeit care.

So many miles
between me and the
days I welcomed the bruise
of your company, but
I remember, the poet’s
curse, the tongue always
travels to the tooth’s
jagged edge, so I
write and rinse and spit.

It’s so simple, the art
of romanticizing bruises,
excavating the wounds
left behind by lovers reckless,
far easier to describe the
mammalian thrill of the
concept of red when my
bedroom floor still litters
with bandages desperately
pressed against my body
and discarded in vain –

Fireworks in the dilating
pupils, some man learned
in the forbidden magic of
staring into the soul while he
lies tells me he loves me,
symphonies for the sidewalk
shootout, what is love, after all,
if not clinging through the
hurricane?

Far harder, admittedly,
to rile a poem’s bloodstream
with the details of love
steady, sustainable –
you meet me at the
airport, just past where
you’re supposed to, and
we both break into a
jog; I call you on a
Saturday, on speaker
while we both pretend
to be in the same room;
I wipe three dots
of your pee from
the toiletseat and don’t
tell you so; in the
morning, you detail
your dreams while they
evaporate; you pretend
not to remember I said
we’d cook tonight,

and would a reader stay?
Is this a poem anyone
wants, flesh cradled in lieu of
breaking? When the stanzas
don’t thrill, instead becoming
a gentle landing?

I love you as something
mundane and lovely, spoken
despite all our knowing, the
squeeze of a hand, the secret
grin at a small snore, handing
you the last sip of coffee
even though I wanted it.

And remember, gentle maxim,
market provocation, never get
her flowers, spotlight ricochet
off something shining,
hard-edged, get her something
that lasts, the audience
nods and murmurs, only
nine easy payments, I

recall the years of
lonely wanting, hands in
fidgets at the edge of a
dance circle not designed
for me, the startle
of that first kiss, tearing
clothing loose, panic
attack discovery, wrenching
limbs, clumsy lust, chests
heaving in the after, nothing
like it looked in porn, those

months of sheltering a
burgeoning love from
the world’s harsh god and
his brutalities, secret
languages for I love you,
three taps, hand outstretched
against sternum, all
those years and years
ago, survival a matter
of holding our breath, so

give me the crush of dying,
lovely things, adorn my
table with something that
will fall, fade, curl toward
an earth that birthed
it, we are transience,
yearning for eternity but
learning to be beautiful
instead, the remarkable,
unfathomable interim,
unlikely impermanence, but
what a wondrous flash.

All these details will
soon become relevant,
I promise – the snowflakes
collecting in cracks, all
those powderkeg wants
and worries, the
million myriad paths I’ve
carved into concrete toward
coffee, rereading the
old verses ’til they
are sacrosanct.

I hate it when you
stammer long story short, tell
it long, walk me through
the crowded alley of mind
and memory, the way the
edges blur, colors run,
meaning resurrected from
the moments that fell
through our clenched fists,
unwieldy ritual, this
clumsy communion.

My cat chooses my
lap, palms wandering his
orange fur as I contemplate
the day he will be a story
I tell, crack open my laptop
and wonder why
somebody would film porn
without taking off
his Apple Watch, and
the plant trembles near
the window, does it
remember New York?

Unfinished business, a
concept I can’t tether to
a single story, the lack
of resolution its own
resolution, and yet
I remember the summer
we picked those old scabs
together, recall the way
everything is happenstance
’til it’s over, nothing more
human than to hope
it will have mattered, after all,
hands frenetic, rearranging
it so.

Crack the door and wear my story
down the front steps, whistle
the lessons out loud as I
sketch my friends’ faces
into the sidewalk, I’m
all bravado and polish, grant
immortality to the details,
brush stroke forevers, what
a thing to fold these days
like a canvas over my framing,
paint smears dry like blood
in the locust shriek afternoon.

Just like tattoos and baby names, I
guard my secrets ’til they’re
beyond counsel, my hard-fought
stanzas, growl like
a beagle over his bowl
the moment anybody wanders
in, drop my new town
like an album drop and
watch the questions pour in.

At the movies, roll credits, I
bolt down the steps,
dropping popcorn in my
wake, can’t bear to compromise
the purity of my feelings
just yet, slink out and
dodge the quick takes
with ninja commitment.

I do not dream of a
life well curated, my throat
dry and cracking in
want of a damn good
story, public relations be
damned and poetry
be revered, evident and
lovely, what a life, lovely,
dark, and deep, what
a funny place for a
sunflower to grow.

Before you, love was a
hurricane, tearing on through,
uprooting everything in its
reckless reach and always
bearing the name of some man.

Study the lessons carved carefully
along the windowsills, my handwriting
measured, nothing that is
meant to stay will leave, or
love should not feel like
bruising, and every time
love failed, I endured here,
tearful and rebuilding, restoring place.

On the living room floor, I find
the cat stretching his body
along a sunspot, warm and
golden and grateful, the
same way he rests in
your company, and I find you
in every small refuge, the
morning coffee, sunset amble,
TV show cycling in the midst
of gutting grief, you crack
the door with green flowers
for the tabletop, and, like an
exhale, I pull you across my
shoulders, blanket familiar,
and forget whatever roars,
cold and damp, out the window.

Cassette tape split to
ribbons across the tile, I
was the culprit, having basked,
on repeat, to songs about
kindness and goodness,
peace, love, and joy, fruits
of the spirit, and my mom
searched the stores, to
no avail, but the message
stitched itself deep: You will
know a person’s spirit by
the fruits their presence bears.

Some years later, stained-glass
Sunday, I was appalled to
discover Judas’ trade, the
light of Jesus, thirty silvers,
then grew up to watch
the church trade him for
far less, rotten fruit in a
coat of wax, camera-ready
Christianity, oh the ache
of disillusionment.

I can pay no more heed
to the paternal counsel of
empty prophets, reveling
in the tears of the immigrant,
forgetting, ignoring, denying?
Jesus born, brown-skinned, under
shelter of a stable in a
strange land, these were
the stories, were the
stories on repeat, now spilled,
intestines along the floor,
and the fruits, far too
sour to bear.

Familiar scene, my kneecap
a crushed plum, clinging in
vain to the juices carving
rivers down my shins, strawberry
palms wince in the breeze, cleansing
sting of the water faucet,
peeling bandages open and
marveling at the miracle
of healing, indifferent to
my oversight, the body
yearns to live, the spirit
softly sings its thanks –

I traveled to Pennsylvania to
heal, and so it shall be done,
the shedding of skins I donned
to brave the concrete and its
cruelties, small reminders I
am a soft creature, sincere
and warm and open-eyed, my
return to form taking its
pound of flesh.

Show you the town we
all scoffed at, here was
the building where I roared my
first cries of heartbreak, twice
over, now a stretch of grass
where students belt the
National Anthem and laugh,
lovely the way the sun pours
honeyed color across the
sky as it leaves, I was here,
I was here, and I won’t
forget to visit this place again.

The old woman grins, her eyes
somewhere far and away, I
I wonder is she wandering,
this street, missing bricks but
drunk with the aroma of bread,
the small blue house they’d chosen,
mornings to the melody of
their daughter’s laughter, the
violet blur of some city, verdant
peace of a nameless town, homes
from the past she never had
the wherewithal to let free.