Party Anthem

Crafted fingers tap tap tap the shoulders of someone you love.

They don’t know that they’re somewhere you’ve never been invited

Never gave a name - 

Tap tap tap the stereo.

It’s a party 

We’re dancing

But you won’t look at my face.

I wonder if it’s even there.

I wonder if you really matter because

Your eyes say something your hips won’t.

Shakira Shakira 
Pon de Replay

You’re crying under the detritus sound. I hear you.

LAUREN doesn’t understand that I’m trying to love you

because she never will

and I don’t even know a LAUREN.

“Do you?”

ME: “How was your day?”

YOU: “Huh?”

A pause. A guilty look.

YOU: “I wasn’t listening.”

Caramel is coating the lips of someone you love.
Burnt sugar is coating the lips of someone you love.

Murder is coating the lips of someone I love -

Ten years in Rikers.

I’m trying to learn how to be happy.

We’re dancing

We’re dancing

- The record skips -

You’re gone.

I'm Just So Tired Here

I sleep on couches,

my body curled against the dog.

I am content here.

Dreams have never made sense to me.

I’ve had recurring ones,

ones that hurt the first time

but then replayed to the point where I didn’t want to regain consciousness-

couldn’t bear to lose safe fear.

I once had a dream where the girl I loved

(who had a boyfriend)

was decapitated.

He couldn’t accept her death.

Fists pounding.

I didn’t wake up.

The Human Tongue, The Human Brain

She doesn't know how to put words in her mouth.

They're there, somewhere,
somewhere she doesn't know, can touch but cannot feel-
Is it even tangible?

Maybe that's it.
Maybe sometimes words can be colors.
Maybe children know something we don't.

But I don't want to make assumptions.

Of all the ancient woman,
Maybe it was better to be seen and not heard.
Maybe it was easier that way.

Fireproof

It's been so long, too long
since I checked the fire-detector
(upstairs, down the hall, first left- no- second)
out of fear.

My wagons now circle around the blaze
of whatever I might be.
Pulling in close, too close,
be careful my weary pioneers, you might get burned.
You might lose everything.

We wouldn't want that, would we?

Because some things you can't forget

I remember New Year’s Eve vividly growing up

mostly because it never seemed to end.

My parents worked jobs that meant more time spent

away

than at home,

so I was close with my Nana.

I remember asking what hour it was,

mushing my face into couch cushions thinking

this slight pain will pass the time.

Anything will pass the time.

My Nana was born on February 28th, 1928.

She’s my father’s mother.

My mom’s mom died a decade earlier

to the day of 

my birth

from a cancer of which I don’t know.

Everyone in my family dies of cancer,

so they’re pretty hard to keep track of.

Names are easy to forget when they died

before you were a thought.

She’s the only one to live through her cancer,

my Nana.

But doctor’s took her leg

and a few toes

which left her alone with her thoughts, 

arguably the poison which has left her on the edge of

senility.

Now,

I watch her die slowly

in front of soap operas and the Food Network.

I don’t know which is worse -

actively knowing someone is already gone,

or being surprised by the loss.

I don’t think about them enough -

these ancestors that left me

to be greater than they were.

I’ve seen pictures,

I know my mother looked exactly like her mother

and I can only imagine the pain

of looking in the mirror 

and seeing someone you’ve lost.

Of being startled by ghosts in every passing reflection.

My grandfather,

my father’s father,

had a sister who died during my childhood.

She was the daughter of my aunt,

because my great-grandmother died

when my grandfather was a child,

so my great-grandfather married her sister 

and they had Teresa.

They named her after her sister,

his wife.

She lost her hearing young

due to the fact penicillin hadn’t been discovered,

and as a toddler she taught me basic sign language.

That’s how I learned 

“I Love You”

for the first time

in a second language.

She lived with my Nana,

where I spent all of my time

(coloring on the floor in front of TVs bigger than I was)

and I was there when they took her away

on a stretcher.

I saw the ambulance drive away.

I don’t think they took me to her funeral, 

but the fact remains that I

remember her. 

I remember my Nana making grilled cheese

back when I liked grilled cheese

before I stopped eating it

because she couldn’t make it anymore.

I understand loss

better than I’m expected to.

I have a better memory 

than I ever wished for.

Improbable

My mother is a lobster, my father a bear

My sister a nymph 

and my brother is a warrior.

I can tell you what I believe but

it doesn’t really matter.

My mother has claws, giant and throbbing

she thrashes underwater,

soaks in the sun. 

She curls eggs under her tail

uses antennae to find her way-

She will not be caught in your net.

My father sleeps through winter.

His heart beat slows, 

he counts what he has collected

making sure he has enough - 

his storage is full.

His growl stuns those he encounters

and they fight him

but he fights back harder.

They don’t know his strength. 

They don’t know his power.

My sister sings through nature -

combing her hair on bristling materials, through her fingers,

she finds herself where no one looks.

You walk through forests with your eyes glued shut,

she’ll guide you through your foolishness.

My brother has an axe that could

bring nations to their knees.

A cry that holds no mercy.

He knows how to break apart a body in twelve different ways.

He has learned the art of war.

He has learned what it is for.

I am a dragon.

I have spikes running down my spine,

scales dripping off my skin 

warning of my loyalty.

I will protect the princess,

I will burn the rest -

you are not my keeper.

We all have a choice between seeing the world 

as it is, or learning how to find

the one we need.

Natation

It always started with this concept of underwater;

this feeling of not-quite-drowning,

this feeling of not-quite-floating.

I used to swim everyday.

I rushed in the morning to get there as the titanium scraped across the concrete

miraculous gates to somewhere else-

a way into instead of a way out of.

I stayed until sunset, until what could be categorized as ending but not quite over.

I could hold my breath for the longest,

could feel every square inch of my body against the compound

Hydrogen, Oxygen, Hydrogen, Me

I always won whatever race I swam in.

I wasn’t anything but myself underwater.

Holding my breath was no longer a weakness,

Hiding between bonded molecules wasn’t like behind inched open doors

You can’t hear the yelling underwater.

My parents had three kids in four years.

My parents weren’t pleased by the repercussions of having three kids in four years.

My parents weren’t pleased with each other due to the repercussions of having three kids in four years.

But you can’t hear the fighting underwater.

I’ve heard the reason we pile blankets and comforters over ourselves is to recreate a womb.

We want that warmth, that compression.

I keep windows open during snowstorms so I can rationalize this weight of living,

this pursuit of pressure.

My parents don’t see what I see,
you don't wear goggles in the ocean - the constant thrashing could leave you blind.

But I can feel every square inch of my body frozen inside a block of ice when they open their mouths.

I see their hearts beating outside of their bodies, swimming towards something that’s not-quite-each-other 

trying to tell the other something,

but their ears must be so clogged because no one can listen.

This might be categorized as ending but not quite over.

My mother loves the sun. She loves the heat.

I love the cold rush of purity. 

I love the cool dryness of the shade 

and the feeling of boiling droplets off my skin in the white-hot-heat.

I love not seeing what’s in front of me while I pull myself forward into my own current.

I love how underwater, everything’s muted, everything has nothing to fear.

I want to rationalize holding my breath.

I want something other than fear to pull me under.

I want to submerged outside of myself.