A POEM A DAY

I'm just happy to be here.
April 13, 2016

13/30: THE FIRST TIME I DODGED DEATH

happened after I slipped and fell
into the deep end, when the water
left no room in my lungs
for me to believe in buoyancy,
or breathing.
Who thought
a three-year-old boy
at the bottom of a pool
pretending to sleep
inside his blue dream body
could not die?
My tiny body,
a broken boat,
I could not escape,
the only thing I could do
was spill over the sides of
my sunken skin.
it happened so quick,
my cries, a pathetic ripple,
lost in the blue spool
of a hot summer day.
But, I did not die.
My oldest brother
jumped in to save me,
like a prodigal fish,
returning to the current.
This is what we mean
by sink or swim.
When death skimmed
my little life like a pelican
I was inside
a body of water,
a deluge of blue
blurring the line
between breath and death
But, I did not die.
My little unsinkable heart
crafted a life raft.
My little anchored body
uplifted by hands
belonging to a blue-eyed boy,
who would not leave me behind,
though,
we
both left the bright blue abyss,
returned back to the surface,
My body now braver
thanks to the bravado
of his own diving body,
took me against his hip,
and then we went back to earth,
and the sun kissed my face,
with big yellow lips.

 

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April 13, 2016

12/30: REMEMBER THE RED POWER RANGER CAKE?

Never did I want to be more loved
than when my brothers slammed
their bedroom door in my face,
turning the lock, my heroes
tossing their cape off and me,
laying
against the door,
the annoying little brother
the anointed little bother, forgotten
But still, I knocked.
Can I come in? Please? I won’t say anything.
Through the door, laughter low like
our mother’s breathing, down the hall,
so low I have become smaller in the thrall
of it, so small, I don’t even have a name.
But if I am to grow big, I cannot beg.
I lift my legs into the sky of someday,
I pretend both my brothers have unlocked
the door, both their hands open, like an invitation,
like before, on my 4th birthday, when my mother
arranged the most perfect Chocolate Red Power Ranger Cake,
with four candles in the icing, I stood in the backyard,
the sound of song surrounding me, the air in my little
lungs spun the flame into dust as both my brothers
shoved my nose into the bright red icing
and I am breathlessly laughing, my mother is clapping,
the scene is spectacular, and make no mistake,
both my heart and teeth break
into a piece of cake,
listening to both my older brothers,
singing happy birthday,
saying my name,
wearing their capes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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April 11, 2016

11/30: HOW TO MOW THE LAWN, A RECIPE

The line is everything.
If you want to make
the perfect lawn,
it must be perfectly long.
You’ll need:
a sharp blade,
a worthy roar of an engine,
a gallon of gasoline,
not to be confused
with your heart,
different sparkplug,
your blood, red skinned spud,
the glue, running river of salsa,
otherwise known,
as fuel.

In making the line,
ask, what am I trying to say?
Take your blade,
have your way,
Little chef.
Erase each little blade,
unmake this made place,
break the grass into glass,
thyme, mint, rosemary.
Rip the handkerchiefs
of the lord, like a form of grace.
Sacrament bent to the will
of your blade, elegant dish,
the front lawn should sing
the same way a wish
leaves the mouth
forming a kiss.
Plot twist.
You’re actually writing
a poem into the earth.
Making the ground
less than, together
both your hands
pushing onward,
creation by erasure.
Me, always too busy
escaping into the landscape,
chasing
echoes of my legacy,
the soundscape of the past
brushes pass my nose,
fresh cut grass, red salsa,
tortillas sewn and rolled in velvet
language so spicy, we actually
speak in fire.
 

 

 

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April 11, 2016

10/30: THE LONG GOODBYE

we don’t want to leave, even when
we’re actually leaving, even when
returning home is the last thing
left to do, it’s not our style.
we choose to linger, stick around,
embrace again, embrace again,
our soft brown hands wrapped
around our soft brown bodies,
my grandma whispering blessings
across the back of my neck,
red lipstick stuck to my cheeks,
my aunt’s kisses,
my grandfather’s wisdom,
a bowl of tortillas
sitting in the center of the island,
an invitation to stay,
a warn place to put
your hands.
The swing set
getting closer to the sky
each time we sit next
to each other, our bodies,
old memories fitting against new stories,
I think the hardest thing to do
is leave when you don’t want to,
not always knowing
what you wish you knew.
Is it so bad to be late,
then? When the door
is such a chore to open,
let us rest in the love
we give, on the couch,
sitting outside in the backyard,
grandma’s flowers changing
colors and shape, their petals
holding onto the stem,
not wanting to leave, even when
the season has come to end.
My family,
we choose
the long goodbye
to close the distance
between us,
hug, and hug, and hug,
kiss, and kiss, and kiss,
yes, I will miss, miss, miss
all the parts about this, this, this.
My loves, my dears, the sweet names
I need to hear, that I need to see—
My family,
we all choose
the long goodbye
to make our beginnings
shorter, I’m sure of it.

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April 9, 2016

9/30: LOVE SONG

No one is awake
except the orchestral
male crickets, flexing
their wings, sound springing,
surrounding me, my mother’s home,
and for all I know,
the earth.
Over, and over,
a learned clockwork
of wings lingering
under the pinched-purple
suburban sky
where I too used to linger,
in the earliest days of
my heartbreak, before
I became used to it,
where I would walk, and walk, and walk,
until
the empty spaces inside me then
would consume whatever
I put inside, and now,
again, the empty spaces
inside me are still
filling up with song,
entirely
the cup of my heart
spilling over, all my wrongs,
chirping,

working to be held,

with such precision,
it must be a performance
of some sort,
a love song in
the pre-dawn
exposing
a creature of both dawn
longing.
Am I any different?
A cricket’s temptation is a man’s determination.
But oh, how I wish I could stop listening to
the music I have pretended to
make when I thought a woman
was listening,
when I thought
rubbing my hands
against each other,
would teach me the words
of songs I never wanted to sing.

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April 9, 2016

8/30: Fourth Grade on a Friday

It’s Fourth grade on a Friday.
Walking to my class, I stop
at the sight before me:
two birds chase each other
like a soft rhyme, their wings
seizing the same air running
through my thick black as new moon hair,
the same April air that kissed my face
when I finally decided to misplace
the sour flowers planted in the
deep soil of my unnamed hurt.
Walking to my class, I stop
at the sight before me:
Two boys chase a squirrel
The squirrel chases the world
Both move with no thought,
no belief in exhaustion,
no need to falter.
What you want will always run
Against what you have.

Can this moment last?

The other day, a black butterfly
cuts across the backdrop of green
in my backyard, the pink flowers,
the white crane, the bluest jay,
the wild worthwhile smile of the sun
is the sum of all I’ve lost and gained.

It’s Fourth Grade on a Friday.
I tell Jack in class,
If you turn anywhere in the dictionary,
you can find a new word with old meaning,
meaning,
you story is unfinished,
meaning,
your story is yours,
meaning,
life is alive in the light of a word.
He calls out to me, shows me
the word he chose out of the rows
of definitions, the possibility of
knowing something new,
redoing the unknown,
until known,
and
I know nothing
other than nothing is more
important than the moment
where, he says,
Look, look what I found.

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April 9, 2016

7/30: QUE PASO / QUE PASÓ 

Depending on the flick of flint
in your cheeks, you could either
mean,
what’s up or what’s wrong?

I. What’s up?

Mirrors on the ceiling,

shiny thieves of my body
my mother grabbing my hand,
what do you want?

II. What’s wrong?

That unanswerable question,
is always the worst,
as well as,
dry skin, peeling,
more layers
more lairs of dark
hair and skin
to climb through

my mother’s perfume
leaving the room
before I do,

the sore spots
of my baby brother,
the knots in his perfect
shoulders, the problem is
our freckles betray us
Too easy to pick apart

II. What’s up?

a microphone
amplified reminder: no,
you’re not alone.
my friends, walking in,
beside me,
the path I’ve cleared
leads them back
inside me,
I’m counting the
faces I’ve misplaced
when I disappear

beneath, beneath, beneath

my peeled onion
steel heart—it takes time
to discover the whole,
please,
begin with a part,
it’s really quite easy.
How far will you
go just to start?
Ready? Set? Show.
Your lips are a finish line
run your mouth,
win the race,
win a trophy,
take a pen, rewrite
everlasting
across your lips,
then kiss me
like gold and first place.

III. What’s wrong?

Oh, I would be remiss
if I didn’t tell you about
the bells I miss,
Their brave kiss, loud lips,
All of it, a treat,
and none of it, a trick,
the songs I fail to catch
do not miss me back
do not care if I am late,
their sound still
rings, sings, strings
me the way a pearl
curls off the tongue
off an oyster, or
the way
oranges and grapefruits
my neighbor grew
were pulled off the
limbs of her trees,
taken delicately into her palm,
pretty little sun with its wrinkled skin,

the gift is so simple
I could not comprehend
the significance.

after she gave them to me.

I peeled one after
the other, all day,
my hands
smelled like a citrus kiss,
curious, but
I did not preserve these
homegrown things
Instead, I left them outside
for weeks, mistook their
sugar for strength,
until
a swarm of gnats
grabbed
the last inch of orange
peel,
their hunger,
more than familiar,
but acceptable, real.
their hunger
holds me accountable
for the rot I’ve got
brewing up my sleeve.

IV. What’s up?

The sunroof of my
mouth, the floor
of my tongue,
Words stacked like ladders
each step a letter
whose shape I imitate
with the secret messages
my hands translate.

When I lift my head with
no hesitation, with
no ancient echo of ache,
just the image of a
wrinkled notebook paper folded
in half, held in Anna belle’s hand,
the same small hand
passing me a poem
she wrote at home
I read four words:

Love is a path—

then look in her eyes
the color of hope,
holding its breath,
she says,
It just came to me

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April 9, 2016

6/30: IF YOU CHANGE ONE LETTER

If you change one letter,
lonely becomes lovely.
When I say cast a spell,
I want you to misspell
the ugliest word
you have called yourself.
Misremember its parts,
take power by the syllable
Grab a letter by its throat.
Every word ever spoken
stays invisible unless written.
Name the shadows in the dark.
Pick your tongue up like an ax.
No, your tongue is an ax.
No, your tongue is a tongue.
Sling the word you have reshaped.
If you change one letter,
wanting becomes waiting.
If you add one letter,
heart becomes hearth.
If you add one letter,
star becomes start.

The beginning is always like this,
metamorphosis through addition,

Listen, each word nothing more
than invention, invocation, invitation.

Again, again, again, my tongue spins
a sentence, a spool of creation,

Silkworm imitation.

Yes, your tongue is silk with blood
Alive with the words you’ve drug
through the mud of love, erasure
is a patient process.

A word, like any earthly body,
must erode, if only to grow again,

Must end in flames, if only to begin.

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April 6, 2016

5/30: LALOOSELALOSELALUZ, OR ELEGY TO THE DARK

Lighter lighter lighter,
I want to light the dark
with a lighter, light
my two hands, look
at the light between
my two hands, a dark
history is on fire, light
my palms with prayer,
toss light words
up in the air,
light balloon of truth,
lost light of my youth,
the dark is far and near,
I peel the light from my skin,
like a bruised banana peeling
itself to look for
light at both ends, I
whisper in silence,
follow
the light,
make it
wake up the world
with the fast break of
light, lighting the unseen
Light for the lightheaded,
Light for the dread
Light for the white lies
Light for the night readers
Lighter, Lighter, Lighter
Make my head lighter too
We eat light foods to confuse
the heavy bodies
of darkness we feed, but what
if we lost the mood to be hollow?
instead,
what if we
swallow light? lighten, feel
lighter than light, flick the light
off, on, walk out the dark,
march like a match strikes
sudden light forged into flame,
struck in a straight line, like
the quick light surge
at the end of super verb,
a pervasive verse, a light tongue
persuasive as heat
held inside
the light.

Will someone
light my black hair
in this blacker than
light night?
All the moon and stars
are gone, and so who
is left to
catch the light,
but me
with
my light bright
hands,
palms alight like
the first
light bulbs, light
hovering above
our lighter heads,
shedding light,
the darker the better,
when I say
look at my
new skin
made of light
my light head
lit with radiance
light as patience
it is
another way to
say,
the light
does not lose
a spark begins
a flame spread
behold,
the light is loose,
the dark is dead.

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April 5, 2016

4/30: HOW YOU THINK ABOUT YOURSELF

At a party where no one is listening,
a woman I’ve never wanted
whispers in my ear, leans over to say,
I know how you are,
And she is a liar as soon
as she says it, as soon as she says
know and you,
the air in the room sours.
She, a fruit fly, a gnat, a small
bothersome thing, hovering
beneath her false certainty,
and I cannot kill what I cannot see:
truth dimmed in half-light
a lie dug in the dark,
invisible, dangerous sparks,
catching fires
more troublesome than the storm
forming inside my throat.

On the phone, a woman I do not want
to want me back anymore says,
I think, I think
You have trust issues,
And as soon as she says it,
am I supposed to be less true?
Is my skin the soil she needs
her words to take root in?
People misconstrue
bloom and blame as the same,
but who gave both my name?

I read a text message from a woman
who does not want me to want her back,
who wanted me, then stopped wanting me,
who kissed me, then stopped kissing me,
who, at once, remains both
blameless and blooming.

She, typing,
me waiting,

three dots bounce like a wave
transmitting
the blue crash a new rash
now sending
slowly bending towards me,
the words move up, delivered
like the river leaving the ocean,
the words touch the earth of my skin,
leap off the touch screen, unleashed,
touching me without sound,
I think, I think
you felt more for me than I felt for you,
And as soon as she writes it,
I read it, each single syllable of
her words jump into my body,
barrage of silent cadavers
pierce the paper on my skin&
all I can do is weep in my garage,
inaudibly alone, sitting,
neither beside or outside,
but as my disgusted self,
listening to Azalea
croon out the wicked moon
of Louis Armstrong’s cratered
throat, a songbirds words
blooming off my tongue,
the garden of my blues
recoiling, repeating
the melody
of m’lady melancholy.
I confuse so many
sounds for hope.
Is my heart wrong?
In the dark field of my longing,
all the flowers are dead.
I know who you are,
the pain says
the pain says,
now and always,
your hurt
belongs to me,
while
the pain of your name
your long history of blame
now and always,
only
belongs to you,
and all I can do is murmur
alongside the sideways summer storm,
yearning to unlearn,
still not knowing what to do
other than follow
the soft curve of my palms
form around the jawline,
like a poorly written sentence
I don’t want to write.
I know who you are, and
I know who I want you to be
the pain says, but you’ll
never know the difference.
I say,
Pain,
How do you
think about yourself
when no one is there to witness?
when your grief stays, unanswerable,
never beginning, yet always
unfinished?

 

 

 

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