an immigrant love letter

this is a love letter

     to jasmine rice     and soy sauce     in the ethnic aisle     to the crisp

     melting     of duck skin in my mouth     you taste     the

I WRITE PANIC

into the locked kitchen
cabinet, china chipped
& sticky. i write
myself into a bottle
of vodka, sloshing
in waves of bitter
padded tongue.
i write the morning
green &

crying boyfriend

feels like me and god are fighting
they don’t want me to do anything

getting my period at midnight
my poems are like prayers

god doesn’t want me to stop learning
maybe i

Describing Feminine Energy

I am electric-orange.
I am strong legs running
through a poppy field, two arms
thrown open, both feet meeting
soil, moon-face turned up to
the sun, with lips like

Wait Here

Though sometimes the present clutches,
panoramic scattered, in gigantic ways,
we wonder about “its persistent fluttering.” 
Later, far-reaching, bark phone in the wind dawn
that

                       words to describe love

saw a pretty plant through a store window
                                                                    picked out a different one instead
that

THE FORGE

we’re speaking by the heat of the
forge, perspiring, charlie grasping
the end of my steel rod with gloved
hands, i pounding metal atop the
metal shop anvil with a sledge ham
-mer.

One night of nothing

When the languorous motion of bats and owls overthrows the scorching August air
making a party only takes three

One night of nothing
heavy      on an empty

for M

   i.
In the beginning there was only the girl
and the ocean. Someone was telling a story; 

in the story a girl’s friend died, an accident, 
so she walked into the sea, breathed

Your hair blows like a plastic grocery bag...

Many days I realize my dreams are fiction half way through.

"Lyric" and "Obvious Pairs"

its stagnant swollen limbs...

"Strange," "Rare Books," "New Suit," and "The Killer"

in this one you’re a six foot / two hundred pound prize

"Why This Pregnant Woman Walked Out of a Subway Restaurant in Tears" and "The Return of Sad Beck, Thank God"

"A Diaristic Quality but Everything Is Still Gone" and "Jonas Mekas at the Tate Modern"

if i say 'i am sorry' to so-and-so...

Most people prefer the Vulcan statue...

it must have been the fifth...

Outside a window a stag picks at an apple core,
its antlers, tilted downwards, catch on a branch,
it stumbles, takes a breath, regains its footing.
                        A wooden sign—nondescript

"The Courtyard" and "Double Jeopardy"

one from the spit where I watched them...

Two cop cars nose to rear...

None of us have The Touch,

Though we have felt The Touch

*

We are all (all of us

Wearing leopard-print dusters Just once,

I was thirty hands tall (like one whole horse

Standing on