When
did I stop
paying attention to gravity
Who
untethered
my heart
Did anyone see
the sugar
in my chest melt
Early this morning
when a parade of little humans
read poems in the post-storm air
Who noticed
my body collapse, releasing joy like
a small door
Does anyone
know if love
ever has an accurate weather report
is it the opposite of humidity?
is it this scene in front of me?
Question: Mr. Zachary, is this poem good?
Translation: Last week, we learned what rejection meant.
I do not like the definition of that word. Is there anything
wrong with what I feel? Am I good enough? Nobody ever
listens to what I have to say. Last week, we learned what
worthy meant. I want to mean worthy.
Question: Mr. Zachary, does this poem have to rhyme?
Translation: If there are rules, I don’t want to break them.
I just hate when language has expectation. I don’t want
to be expected.
Question: Mr. Zachary, do I have to read this poem out loud?
Translation: I’ve never trusted my mouth. Inside is a voice I am
afraid to let out. Who is going to listen to me? What do you mean
the stage is mine? What do you mean I can command an audience
just by speaking?
Question: Mr. Zachary, what if we don’t know what to write?
Translation: How does anyone ever say what they mean? Self-
Expression is confusing. How can I matter just by saying so?
If I have a story, you mean I have to write it? I don’t want to say
what I have to say. You mean someone is listening? I don’t think
so. No one wants to know what’s inside my head. Not even me.
What do we want?
More certainty!
When do we want it?
I don’t know!
Tomorrow!
Maybe!
And the days
Parade
Forth.
The Unknown
Unceremonious.
Want is a seashell pretending to be the ocean.
That’s why Van Gogh cut off his ear.
Where’s the rationale for rejection?
How do you measure the value
of something lost?
Benefit of the doubt is a stupid phrase.
Nobody benefits from doubt.
Not in this country.
Belief only
Please.
Bubbles play ballet in the parking lot
A little girl travels by her own breath
Down the street, the swing set is busy
Throwing laughter like a pendulum
The sun is everyone’s friend
The parking lot at H-E-B is full
No one is left at home today
Everyone is falling in love
Flowers at Home Depot
My mother watches me reverse
From the boy on her wall
And out onto the road
The tree in front of our house
is the biggest it has ever been
I trust my little brother
I’m getting better at hugs
Not quite a perfectionist
A student of mine once told me
She likes I’m not a perfectionist because
Perfectionism
Is just a hologram of ego
A-ha!
Look at all my substance!
Seriously, the weight of my heart is substantial
Watch, I can win arguments without raising my voice.
Watch, I can go a whole day listening
I’ve made up my mind
Life is a good idea.
I do not surrender!
These eggs need salt!
The smile is still my natural habitat.
Chicken soup says I love you.
I haven’t set an alarm for my heart.
Sleeping in late is actually a form of medicine.
All your ex-girlfriends agree:
you did nothing wrong.
This just in!
One day, your name will be someone’s favorite song.
Son, the first time you come
to Flavor Town, you will want to eat
everything. You will look
at your hands
memorize the size of
what you can hold.
Only fools rush in
so wait for the invitation
learn to love food
by the dance of heat.
A woman’s body is not for you to eat
not for you to pick apart
but to ask for the recipe,
to see what you need,
in hopes of being needed,
to be worthy of her kitchen.
I don’t care how hungry you are
you don’t get fed
just because
you hear a
growl.
Don’t just show up.
You need an invitation.
Make sure not to chew
with your mouth open.
Are you hungry?
Are you hungry?
Are you hungry?
Are you hungry?
Do not confuse
I could eat
for
eat me.
Do not confuse
I’m hungry
for
I’m hungry for you.
I beg of you. I’m hardly a perfect man.
But when the food is hot, wait your turn.
Just because your mouth is open
doesn’t mean you get fed.
When you hear
it is time
to break
bread,
think of your mother
washing your plate.
You don’t always
get seconds.
You are not even promised
first.
If she doesn’t want you
in her kitchen,
say yes, Chef!
When she says her body is out of bounds,
say yes, Chef!
You are, after all, a guest.
You cannot savor the dish
until she sets the table.
Show me all the possibilities
on how not to be alone.
I am telling you I need you.
The rain won’t quit looking
for a body to swallow
It is telling everyone to need
each other, but people do not
have appetites for people.
People just have appetites.
I don’t long for the company
of another because I am hungry.
Every day I perform for love
but the audience is stuck in traffic
The show does not go on
even when my mouth does,
even when I say what I mean,
and who knows what I mean.
I am under the moon with a woman
who does not know my history with rain
who looks at me like the first days in spring
and suddenly the sensation of sinking is gone.
How do I explain the absence of love
without looking for it?
I am my heart’s only detective.
The mystery of meaning
is knowing without saying
but I cannot do both.
Show me, show me, show me.
All the possibilities.
How does anyone stop being alone?
Does the sadness pile and pile or
does it serve some other purpose?
Say my name in the middle of a sentence
where sadness cannot reach.
If my day is truly good, I will tell you all about it.
Don’t let me slip away with simple answers.
If ever I make-pretend, take away my hands.
Both my hands are open and only you can fill them.
When I trap myself inside the house lonely built,
tell me to open my curtains.
Outside my street, live oaks longer than longing.
Behind my house, a whole street called Moonmist
Early one morning, a grandmother teaches her grandson
how to rake, shows him where to place his hands,
and how to build a mountain of fallen things,
and he is trying so hard to gather, to put his hands
where his hands should go, and even then,
his body is not big enough, he cannot do
what he has to do, but what difference does
that make?
I am twenty-three and my heart feels the breeze
even in my sleep. I squeeze a blood-orange and
smell the perfume of citrus on my hands. Even my touch
grows braver the sweeter the songs I sing.
Like last Sunday, I set my body before the sun
lowered my mouth and saw the spring moonlight
pour out, like a melody, parody or parable.
My mouth is a house of blue solitude, wide-open sky,
you should see the trees that give me shade
and the guests who never stay.
I am twenty-three and my heart feels the breeze always.
When someone asks about the potholes in your heart
do not mention the bad days, the flat tire, the reckless speeding.
There are only good days and on good days
survival is the only the answer. I have so many questions
I do not want to ask. The weight of what I don’t know
lets me know plenty room is left to grow.
I don’t always want to finish what’s next.
Whatever happened to breakfast?
I slept through mornings because the cost of living
was not convincing.
I could not remember what waited for me.
I know lonesome does not deserve my love
but that conversation is such a hard thing to do.
I hear my gift with words is such a blessing.
I hear it’s not fair because you’re better with words
I say it isn’t so simple.
When you’re afraid of what the dark can do,
Language is the only room to run to.
Being good with what scares me most
is not a badge, but a casket of truths. Yes,
speech is a gift, but I never asked for a mouth,
for this matrimony of what I feel always coming back out,
never asked to love the significance that
always invites itself over and under my sheets,
but it belongs to me, is mine to sift through.
The pulchritude of an April afternoon tells me
it is too soon for anger.
I am twenty-three and my heart is caught in a breeze,
this poem is an invitation for you sway with me.
I am an architect of kindness and I require your spiritual congruity.
Take Agathist, derived from Greek, is a person who
believes all things reach toward an ultimate good.
Let that be me.
I have a history of inconsolability I do not want to repeat.
Rinse my mouth out with all the color I want to keep.
My mother leaves a voicemail I listen to while
I stir a pot of beans I made using my grandmother’s recipe.
Outside, the birds and the bees sing and sting,
I watch, stir and smell the steam, the weight of what
I do know can feed a family, can find meaning
even when my belly or heart is empty,
damaged by the translation of want and need,
even then, love is instructive,
even then, love is this scene, the one where I leave my house
and everyone is happy to see me.
Did I tell you about the cardinal
in my backyard?
I saw a bright red body leap from the ground
and didn’t think it looked so tough.
Thought of my heart, thought of how hard
it is just to pick up the pieces, but
did I tell you about class last week?
I ask my students to read their poems
out loud to one another.
A student asks me what it means
to be vulnerable and I am not afraid
to tell her the truth.
She tells me she’s only
nervous in front of one person,
whispers his name because it
is still soft and simple, and I can’t remember
the last time I whispered a name like good news.
Did I tell you about the good news?
Cindy Phan is going back to Vietnam.
Cindy Phan is my barber and she calls me handsome.
Cindy Phan hasn’t seen her family in six years
Cindy Phan crossed the ocean because
she was sick, and now she is better.
Did I tell you about the time I got better?
Oh, it wasn’t very extravagant.
Everyone just said they loved me
and meant it.
“Mama. What’s vacation?
Vacations when you go somewhere…and you never come back.”
-Forrest Gump
TO THE WOMAN I LOVE, WHO IS STILL ON VACATION
I changed my mailing address, but I don’t think that matters.
You can forget about the refrigerator magnets. Something tells me
the magnet wouldn’t attract anything anyway.
What is left of yours remains in the lost and found of who
we once were. I rummage through it at least once a week
to keep the dust a dance away from deluge.
I went weeks deluded, convinced the months would
run out of ways to move forward, pretended my bedroom
would become baggage claim, and you would see me convulsing
on the conveyor belt like being yours made my blood
want to leave too, so perhaps I can’t blame you
or perhaps I just wanted nothing more than your touch
to topple me to pieces, for your hand to burn through the wreckage
and wake up a bird perched against the worst of it.
I am a coward when it comes to claiming
But still bury myself with so much baggage. This body
has blackened into a fisted ballast, a broken knuckled
ballad that probably sounds like elevator music
repeating forever, the pieces picked apart, a part
of me is still wishing you were here a part of me
still wants to be the place where you go even if it
is only to take what is left of yours
I can’t be in a room with an open door anymore.
Ajar. I know what a jar is. It’s where I pretend our love preserves itself
only the lid is always open and you are always going
bad, or back, or ahead.
Ahead. I know what a head is. It’s where I hear myself
raise the worry into bread. Our love,
a spoiled loaf, an oath that tore like a one-way ticket
stub that said everything but stay, or sorry, or
I’ll be back for you.
I don’t know where people go when they leave a place
or a person they never want to return to, but I hope the exit
wound is clean. I cannot keep caring about maps and the lines
they leave for me to follow. As far as I am concerned, they all end
the same.
A POEM A DAY 