poem: breasts and eggs

she is standing in the stairway -- red overalls and shinyblack hair dancing around her neck in the lopped-off way that i always wanted (when i cut my hair shortit is a tempest, a misery.) she is maybe forty, she lookstwenty-five. i want to ask her: why is itwhen i have just gotten overone thing,…

poem: blonde highlights

the mystery, the murders; you sound likeforeign words or fitzgerald writing alone in rose colored wine; you text like an AI chatbot but i take the blame mostly. listening to reginaspektor in the car: do you love me do youlove me, says my sister my motherthe general throng. how do i explain, i wantairplane ecstasy…

poem: i’m thinking of starting things

sports presents: december sunday,winter light, the men first-downfirst-down. i am undecided,grad school or travelteach abroad, live love sex& kisses with strangers,his hand on my neckin the little house, jeju islandrennes then paris, toykotoyko beijjing. sports continues: why don't you crowd the line of scrimmage, says the commentator;the aloe plant next to the christmastree next to…

poem: insular

is it like last year – the self inside the self? the same lattes, the same late-night girls,working working workingfor ivory schools,jades – and pearls – i can forgive the coffee if it counts towards yale,princeton – oxford –the university of nowhere,un château dans l'air, hiding in front of me,resurrecting what –might have been: the…

writing: the things that happened today

I stood in the shower a long time and imagined getting out, taking my towel from the hook and wrapping it around my body, and then unclipping my hair and shaking it loose and bunching the curls between my fingers, and walking back to my dorm room. My room is clean. Nothing else, lately, has…

poem: strangers far away and very close

girl looking out a windowdo you remember Rennes—where the stars— almost bloomed?where men cut themselvesfor eternal random truth;saying: i miss the dysfunction,the late, exploding nightsyour hand in my mouththe spiraling, the fights;girl looking out a windowis he caught in your head?—the boy over the ocean, his hands pulled into squareslet the riot fall— and find…

poem: there is always a lost generation

she is sitting with her face in the window watching the country blur into Monet and his outcast friends— she is always afraid, if she blinks she will miss the important moment when the universe pauses and catches her breath. the country falls louder and longer when when she picks up culture and tries it,…

poem: tourist

Did the man you met in Hong Kong tell you of the sparkles, falling behind your eyes? Did he tell you that souls are easily distilled into green tea, and tongues can be plucked out and served with monkey-feet and cinnamon as delicacy; that strangers will pay steep money to sit in a tight booth,…

poem: girl standing (abroad)

girl standing in the yellowing light of a foreign classroom with asian fingerprints on the windows and her face turned up to the rippling low green mountains that sneak up to the smog and the blue horizons. she has a red scarf twisted around her neck and her future with the romance pecking at the…