negativity

cursed, she said. her palm open near my chin
her eyes on me groping
the grey bruised pear seated in her pink satin window.

all ears for the cause
i placed my two hundred dollars to the right of her fingertips
yes i said, nodding, the tears warm
a body living
with two first fingers i hear myself pointing

a curse, i nod
my mouth pressing the blame around it
quick
like twenty minutes twice a week
i wear my willing , my take me
topstitched to gold ribbon on my hip

like three rings of
everything gone wrong.

brilliant

a small grey stone in a pond, i watch a year

stretch itself closed, without heavy sighs

       nor early morning

            intoxications as delusion.

instead, i

turn to my green ghost self

collecting smoke in her familiar way

grasping the pen to resolve

with both hands.

 

good evening winter rain , i am a furnace

cup your hand around the lightswitch
pulling down on the sound

my voice sings out

trembling black lines from
the cold spot i try to fill
beneath your window.

i shuffle to

build something
tall     a smokestack of homes, a future

like this but big , arms leaping towards the
door , the window is not very far

from the front porch stuffy with cigarettes
,  you catch me with sameness
staring up from the corner to see you ,  bright
round looking
i felt you before you handed me your name
i hear myself
our pants piled together on the floor.

december already
still everything soon.

some things , made soon

audre lorde. love.

 if i could be anything.

t.

shame on a thursday

tonight, hungry past dinner time, i put on shoes. slip
down the street mid rain. chana masala plus one plain naan equals
my favorite 7 dollar dinner, i'll eat it quietly, shoulder slouched seated by the bed.

outside,  an elderly black man points his red and white cane in the direction of the curb.
can i help you cross i'm asking my ready lent  hand quick on his wintered sleeve
   i am pleasant and
he asks for help,  his left palm capsizing towards me.
in this moment my definitions find me limited plus quick shame in the cheeks equals
3 quarters and a dime, he takes me arm.

this is us, i say the light changing
and together we walk like
together we have somewhere to go.

across, i find another dollar from my pocket.
it is raining and my paper bag is filled with warm bread and sour guilt.
you're at the corner of jones at o' farrell i say loudly, our hands squeezing apart.
i continue up the hill quickly, like every good i've ever meant lurks ignorance behind.

now

an afternoon indoors

a painful squeezing in the center of my head
i spend a sunday of blue sky and thundering feats of aerodynamics-as-trauma
table bent into drawing words and pictures.

i want a poem. a small gold skinned cross section of me
every intention on display, to hold between breaths.

i spend all afternoon searching
years.
press my fingertips into the firm arch of line over line
my rib ,  willing
i sift with both hands for light green stems buried
eyes upturned passing

another golden hour.



now, mother
today , i dedicate this to you, you are
small like a single grain of rice
like mountain water after washing , milky
and quick with both hands on clay bowls
to feed our red cheeked bellows, gaping in your memory.
what can i gesture to make you sit , back? my closed lips
and heavy shoulders cannot withstand
the persistence of your delayed love
you have waited twenty five years to play out mother, to atone for the weakness in this "style" ,  born
in the hands of women.
and if i could gesture the translation of my padlocked away love to
you , it would spoon from your still soft hands, into the cracks between my teeth.