last week may have been a waste of time

last week i decided to be different.  i unchecked my week's worth of alarms. i let myself sleep. i slept  late. i decided not to bother with coffee or socks. i crossed at crosswalks for a change, i spoke in a monotone voice to paying customers, plopped eighteen sixty five into their upturned palms (who buys coffee with a twenty?) directing my thank you's and notamused glares to right ears or white collars.

last week i spent three days hand making a book that takes one sentence to tell.

last week i thought i had been getting stoned and not writing anything, so for a change i smoked ALMOST every day, went on windy skates through the panhandle, added cilantro to my mac and cheese,  read and reread dreamtigers, cut back to two packs of seaweed a day, read and reread korean folklore  chapter two : korean shamanic initiation as therapeutic transformation: a transcultural view. ate a box of cinnamon life drowning in almond milk,  and by the end of the week had skimmed out six mediocre poems from the fryer.

i'll call them a series. i'll call them firsts.

F I R S T S

memory .

everything is up

red pointed roofs

round faces heavy with cheek

ask me if you are one of them 

red ribbon tied hair , laughing.

and there is the feeling of being lifted

up by fingertips.

dots.

the first time i encountered one, it was pink

in a hurry, i watched it file in with the others

running they covered the length of my shoelaces and turned

to rush back the other way.  it was a tuesday and i said aloud

the ants are all over me

they won't stop covering me with their legs

my right hand reached up to sound the alarm.

love.

a)

at the very mention of his name 

my upper lip buzzes as if his pink gash of mouth curling towards me 

i become a single wish , an able body warm between sheets.

b)

two years off , on .

our thisisme tempers flick the switch

his house ,  mine .

c)

through the streets of oakland chinatown

my roughskinned fingers paper into his

fitting                                 for tonight.

honesty.

i was six 

i refused to pledge allegiance to the flag.

my mouth told miss baker that this was not my country, and i wished to go home to my real mother.

three check marks next to my name, she marched me by the elbow to the principal.

home from school to find the woman angry, my suitcase packed she said

go. fine then go.

time.
when i went back to korea

age 27

i noticed that i was no longer a child

for the first time.