EXTERNAL DRIVE "ASTER" LOADED

Can't sleep
so you put on his grey boots—nothing else—& step
inside the rain. Even though he’s gone, you think, I still want
to be clean. If only the rain were gasoline, your tongue
a lit match, & you can change without disappearing. If only
he dies the second his name becomes a tooth
in your mouth. But he doesn’t. He dies when they wheel him
away & the priest ushers you out of the room, your palms
two puddles of rain. He dies as your heart beats faster,
as another war coppers the sky. He dies each night
you close your eyes & hear his slow exhale. Your fist choking
the dark. Your fist through the bathroom mirror. He dies
at the party where everyone laughs & all you want is to go
into the kitchen & make seven omelets before burning
down the house. All you want is to run into the woods & beg
the wolf to fuck you up. He dies when you wake
& its November forever. A Hendrix record melted
on a rusted needle. He dies the morning he kisses you
for two minutes too long, when he says Wait followed by
I have something to say & you quickly grab your favorite
pink pillow & smother him as he cries into the soft
& darkening fabric. You hold still until he’s very quiet,
until the walls dissolve & you're both standing in the crowded train
again. Look how it rocks you back & forth like a slow dance
seen from the distance of years. You're still a freshman. You're still
terrified of having only two hands. & he doesn’t know your name yet
but he smiles anyway. His teeth reflected in the window
reflecting your lips as you mouth Hello—your tongue
a lit match.

you ride your bike to the park bruised
with 9pm the maples draped with plastic bags
shredded from days the cornfield
freshly razed & you've lied
about where you're going you're supposed
to be out with a woman you can’t find
a name for but he’s waiting
in the baseball field behind the dugout
flecked with newports torn condoms
he’s waiting with sticky palms & mint
on his breath a cheap haircut
& his sister’s levis
stench of piss rising from wet grass
it’s june after all & you're young
until september he looks different
from his picture but it doesn’t matter
because you kissed your mother
on the cheek before coming
this far because the fly’s dark slit is enough
to speak through the zipper a thin scream
where you plant your mouth
to hear the sound of birds
hitting water snap of elastic
waistbands four hands quickening
into dozens: a swarm of want you wear
like a bridal veil but you don’t
deserve it: the boy &
his loneliness the boy who finds you
beautiful only because you're not
a mirror because you don’t have
enough faces to abandon you've come
this far to be no one & it’s june
until morning youre young until a pop song
plays in a dead kid’s room water spilling in
from every corner of summer & you want
to tell him it’s okay that the night is also a grave
we climb out of but he’s already fixing
his collar the cornfield a cruelty steaming
with manure you smear your neck with
lipstick you dress with shaky hands
you say thank you thank you thank you
because you haven't learned the purpose
of forgive me because that’s what you say
when a stranger steps out of summer
& offers you another hour to live

Everything’s a blur. You don’t play Talking Heads,
Bob Dylan, talk about work or your iffy stomach.

You read the road as if it’s encrypted
with what a father should say on a drive like this.

Should I apologize for your missed appointments,
unread emails? There is always someone

who needs you more. Mostly I’m sorry
that I’m not as happy as you raised me to be.

I want to ask the GPS the quickest route to end this silence.
When we reach The Centre you pull up and go straight

for the boot. This is what you know to do,
to lift the heavy thing, tell me to take your good umbrella.

You drag my suitcase to the door where the nurse stands
with a notepad and clutches your arm.

I’ll come back soon, you say,
but she smiles and says, It’s better if you don’t.

Come to my funeral dressed as you
would for an autumn walk in the woods.

Arrive on your schedule; I give you permission
to be late, even without good cause.

If my day arrives when you had other plans, please
proceed with them instead. Celebrate me

there—keep dancing. Tend your gardens. Live
well. Don’t stop. Think of me forever assigned

to a period, a place, a people. Remember me
in stories—not the first time we met, not the last,

a time in between. Our moment here is small.
I am too—a worldly thing among worldly things—

one part per seven billion. Make me smaller still.
Repurpose my body. Mix me with soil and seed,

compost for a sapling. Make my remains useful,
wondrous. Let me bloom and recede, grow

and decay, let me be lovely yet
temporal, like memories, like mahogany.

  Blattodea

Because you cosy with the aunties in your
reeking slums, and are intimate and sweet.

Because you begrudge no one a meal, but ooze
a faecal trail to lead your commune to its source,

like a dirty bee. Because you are joyfully promiscuous.
Because you pouch your young and hide them

in the sweaty creases of the house
near suppurating food so they’ll hatch to a feast;

or, keep your eggs with you in a special purse
shaped like a kidney bean, and clutch it fast;

or reinsert them into your abdomen
and womb them there; or carry them as yolks

and give live birth, then feed your pale brood
secretions from your anus, or your armpit glands,

like milk; or, deep in the flesh of a rotten log
pass them a bolus of pre-digested food, mouth to mouth.

Because you suffer your young to swarm upon
your back, and do not flinch or buck them off,

but carry them like a human playing horsey
with her children, down on hands and knees,

decrying the swag of her own loose flesh.
Because you twirl your antennae gracefully

to test your crawl space. Because strokingly
you caress your offsprings’ backs, and gentle them

with pretty pheromones and chirps. Because
you purr when your young stroke your face.

Because you would leave your body for your offspring
to dine upon — all the liquors and gravy

of the obscene world, your work in the crannies
delivered to the living. Because you are,

despite all rumours, mortal. And what if
you are crushed before your eggs can be delivered?

What if your sisters drive you, hissing, out?
What if your kitchen is fumigated?!

What if the mongoose the lizard the snake —
a muscular tongue prying at the warm and greasy interstices

of your stubborn occupancy — takes you in its mouth?
Someone must care for the dirt.

because you
    were never
holy
    only beautiful
enough
    to be found

with a hook
    in your mouth
water shook
    like sparks
when they pulled
    you out

& sometimes
    your hand
is all you have
    to hold
yourself to this
    world & it’s

the sound not
    the prayer
that enters
    the thunder not
the lightning
    that wakes you

in the backseat
    midnight’s neon
parking lot
    holy water
smeared
    between

your thighs
    where no man
ever drowned
    from too much
thirst
    the cumshot

an art
    -iculation
of chewed stars
    so lift
the joy
    -crusted thumb

& teach
    the tongue
of unbridled
    nourishment
to be lost in
    an image

is to find within it
    a door
so close
    your eyes
& open
    reach down

with every rib
    humming
the desperation
    of unstruck
piano keys
    some call this

being human but you
    already know
it’s the briefest form
    of forever yes
even the saints
    remember this the if

under every
    utterance
beneath
    the breath brimmed
like cherry blossoms
    foaming into no one’s

springtime
    how often these lines
resemble claw marks
    of your brothers
being dragged
    away from you

you whose name
    not heard
by the ear
    but the smallest
bones
    in the graves you

who ignite the april air
    with all your petals’
here here here you
    who twist
through barbed
    -wired light

despite knowing
    how color beckons
decapitation
    i reach down
looking for you
    in american dirt

in towns with names
    like hope
celebration
    success & sweet
lips like little
    saigon

laramie money
    & sanford towns
whose trees know
    the weight of history
can bend their branches
    to breaking

lines whose roots burrow
    through stones
& hard facts
    gathering
the memory of rust
    & iron

mandibles
    & amethyst yes
touch yourself
    like this
part the softest hurt’s
    unhealable

hunger
    after all
the lord cut you
    here
to remind us where
    he came

from pin this antlered
    heartbeat back
to earth
    cry out
until the dark fluents
    each faceless

beast banished
    from the ark
as you scrape the salt
    off the cock-clit
& call it
    daylight

don't
    be afraid
to be this
    luminous
to be so bright so
    empty

the bullets pass
    right through you
thinking
    they have found
the sky as you reach
    down press

a hand
    to this blood
-warm body
    like a word
being nailed
    to its meaning

& lives

Dearest Father, forgive me for I have seen.
Behind the wooden fence, a field lit
with summer, a man pressing a shank
to another man’s throat. Steel turning to light
on sweat-slick neck. Forgive me
for not twisting this tongue into the shape
of Your name. For thinking:
this must be how every prayer
begins—the word Please cleaving
the wind into fragments, into what
a boy hears in his need to know
how pain blesses the body back
to its sinner. The hour suddenly
stilled. The man, his lips pressed
to the black boot. Am I wrong to love
those eyes, to see something so clear
& blue—beg to remain clear
& blue? Did my cheek twitch
when the wet shadow bloomed from his crotch
& trickled into ochre dirt? How quickly
the blade becomes You. But let me begin
again: There’s a boy kneeling
in a house with every door kicked open
to summer. There’s a question corroding
his tongue. A knife touching
Your finger lodged inside the throat.
Dearest Father, what becomes of the boy
no longer a boy? Please—
what becomes of the shepherd
when the sheep are cannibals?

Hi 琛
—your text wakes my phone & I can see
the moments before your sending: thumb hovering, potential characters
having popped up after you switched
keyboards, typed “Chen.” 琛—you’re one of a few who write it, say me
like that. You write It’s been a long time & it feels like the question
behind the statement—why
haven’t we talked? So busy I reply, when part of me
wants to call, say I miss you,
Mom. To speak that sentence in Mandarin. It’s been a long time
since I’ve spoken any Mandarin, any
to you. Some days I forget my name
isn’t just “Chen.” Worry I’ll forget how to write it, without my phone,
without
you to write it to. What do you still need to finish this semester? you
ask
& I almost laugh—it’s a question you’ve asked me
since conception. How different is it now, in PhD land? Might as well be
back
in high school, scrambling to finish French
sentences about shopping on the Champs-Élysées
while aboard the shivery bus, or in the chattery cafeteria, lunch tray
balanced atop my knees. I was young. I said Here
I am. Do you have any idea how often

they called me strong, they said I don’t know how you do it, you’re so
brave & strong? Friends, classmates, teachers,
counselors, cafeteria ladies: Hi, SoBrave&Strong! as they passed in the hall.
Because I was young & said Here I am. While you said Wrong,
Wrong. While guys on the track team laughed & laughed because Hey,
French earlier, wasn’t it so
gay? While girls I just met linked arms with me, paraded
me around. While teachers applauded me for becoming
president of the GSA,
then never attended another meeting. While my best friends
& favorite grownups spent their lunches listening, their free blocks
listening.
They knew nobody is SoBrave without anybody’s &,
somebody else’s Strong—why didn’t
you? Why couldn’t I tell you about the boy
who dumped me via his away message on AIM? Or the boy who demanded
I have “anime hair”? Or the one who kept saying you were Horrible,
a horrible mother & I said
Yeah, & kept sipping my lukewarm chai, & later asked When can I see
you
again? & he said Yeah
I don’t think we really clicked & I don’t blame him, I brought up
my whole entire history with you on the first date, I mean, why
did your name for me
also have to be SoBrave&Strong, why not
just Loved?
I know,
it’s been years since you’ve said Wrong.

But you still haven’t said Happy Anniversary! Six years, wow!
—what I hoped for last week.
Some days I imagine a different history. Us
talking. If only I could’ve told you
about high school,
about college. & you could’ve said Come here. At home
you don’t have to worry about that.
Imagine it: me coming home, me running to you
to rant about a boy, & you shaking your head, That boy? All wrong
for you anyway. If only you’d say How right,
this boy, taking good care of you now.
OK I have to get this work done, but I’ll
call you soon—I don’t know whether that sentence, either part,
is true. Whether I’m lying. My thumb hovers, considers
switching keyboards. To ask Are you ready now, 妈?
妈妈?

_{On April 27, 2011, a gay couple, Michael Humphrey and Clayton Capshaw, was murdered by immolation in their home in Dallas, Texas.
Dallas Voice}

                                                       1

2

                                                           3

                                                        4

                                                           5

        6

                                                                        7

1. As if my finger, / tracing your collarbone / behind closed doors, / was enough / to erase myself. To forget / we built this house knowing / it won’t last. How / does anyone stop / regret / without cutting / off his hands? / Another torch
2. streams through / the kitchen window, / another errant dove. / It’s funny. I always knew / I’d be warmest beside / my man. / But don’t laugh. Understand me / when I say I burn best / when crowned / with your scent: that earth-sweat / & Old Spice I seek out each night / the days
3. refuse me. / Our faces blackening / in the photographs along the wall. / Don’t laugh. Just tell me the story / again, / of the sparrows who flew from falling Rome, / their blazed wings. / How ruin nested inside each thimbled throat / & made it sing
4. until the notes threaded to this / smoke rising / from your nostrils. Speak— / until your voice is nothing / but the crackle / of charred
5. bones. But don’t laugh / when these walls collapse / & only sparks / not sparrows / fly out. / When they come / to sift through these cinders—& pluck my tongue, / this fisted rose, / charcoaled & choked / from your gone
6. mouth. / Each black petal / blasted / with what’s left / of our laughter. / Laughter ashed / to air / to honey to baby / darling, / look. Look how happy we are / to be no one / & still
7. American.

I kiss him. I kiss him. I kiss him. I kiss him. I kiss him. I kiss him. I kiss
him. I kiss him. I kiss him. I kiss him. I kiss him. I kiss him. I kiss him. I
kiss him. I kiss him. I kiss him. I kiss him. I kiss him. I kiss him. I kiss him.
I kiss him. I kiss him. I kiss him. I kiss him. I kiss him. I kiss him. I kiss
him. I kiss him. I kiss him. I kiss him. I kiss him. I kiss him. I kiss him. I
kiss him. I kiss him. I kiss him. I kiss him. I kiss him. I kiss him. I kiss him.
I kiss him. I kiss him. I kiss him. I kiss him. I kiss him. I kiss him. I kiss
him. I kiss him. I kiss him. I kiss him. I kiss him. I kiss him. I kiss him. I
kiss him. I kiss him. I kiss him. I kiss him. I kiss him. I kiss him. I kiss him.
I kiss him. I kiss him. I kiss him. I kiss him. I kiss him. I kiss him. I kiss
him. I kiss him. I kiss him. I kiss him. I kiss him. I kiss him. I kiss him. I
kiss him. I kiss him. I kiss him. I kiss him. I kiss him. I kiss him. I kiss him.

The sunflowers fall, right along with their mason jar, in the middle of the
night. Their heads too gloriously full of early July. How they seem to know
everything, except the virus. The crown it wears. All the unglory it craves.
Receives.

/

At Williams Sonoma the other day, a sales associate named Carol welcomes
the two of us to a new, touchless shopping experience. It’s a capacious
Williams Sonoma, at the Natick Mall, & we’re impressed by how Carol’s
voice fills the entire store. Her cheery script a lingering chime in our ears.
We’re here after our usual supermarket trip, curious how the mall is
reopening. & Carol—I know she’s paid to sound happy about this situation,
as she’s paid to ooze happiness about every Le Creuset skillet, kettle,
cassoulet. But she sounds far too happy.
\

Something wakes the dog. His barking like fistfuls of sunlight, like the sun
set on fire. I sit up at once, understand what he can’t: the sunflowers, the jar,
on the carpet. You groan, slowly raise your right hand, the only part capable
of any semblance of awake. You caress the dog’s head. His back.
You soften the fright away with syllable after syllable of your hand.

/

I wave to Carol as though sending her some love, though mostly it’s
concern. She smiles & smiles, as though the smile has kidnapped her, as
though her name isn’t actually Carol, as though Williams Sonoma has given

her that name, taken all her vocabulary except smiling & How may I assist
you??

\

I keep seeing it in slow motion, though I didn’t actually see their falling.
The sunflowers, overcome with true dizzying delight—with themselves.

/

I miss seeing your delight when touching pots & pans & potato mashers,
the vast array of Le Creuset. That afternoon with one autumnally orange
Dutch oven. Your face, as you touched that fire. Your face whenever you
just have to touch the fabric of every shirt that catches your eye in H&M,
tell me exactly how it feels. Then ask me to touch it, describe it myself. So
soft, yes, but in what way? Like a cloud? About to burst?

\
I picture Carol with sunflowers.
In a Williams Sonoma-approved apartment, Carol is allowed one sunflower,
one real happiness she can put in her own jar.
/

Your hand doesn’t touch even the shirts now, though you read somewhere
fabrics are okay, the virus can’t live on them, or not for long, or what are
the facts, today?

\

Or perhaps Carol, when she’s not a grinning retail robot, is the patron saint
of sunflowers.
The pricey cookware, just her day job.
/

I miss museums. Walking around with you, coming across an exhibit that
exclaims, Touch me! Watching your fingers revel in being fingers on a
wacky new surface.
Then kissing you hard while that twelve-foot tall papier-maché duck
watches, jealous.
Let there be a patron saint of making impossible birds very annoyed.

\

July 7, 2020: Over three million confirmed cases in the US. Over fifteen
thousand in critical condition. Over one hundred & thirty-three thousand
dead. Over half a million dead globally.
/

Many of the things I miss are pretty silly. Pretty & silly. & I miss them
deeply.
& my mother, who lives only ten minutes away by car, but hasn’t left the
house in months, has insisted I not leave mine unless absolutely necessary.
My mother, already sick, chronically sick in three different ways. She says
not to send anything. How I want to send her all the sunflowers.
Carol, you may assist me now. If you are indeed the holy rep of sunflowers,
Carol—please make row after row flicker up in the night, in the worry-field
of my mother’s head. Help her sleep. & dream only of glowing, petal-soft
things.

\

Surely, there is a patron saint of touch, who yes, at the moment is struggling
—unlike the brand-new patron saint of branded touchless experiences,
whose business has only been expanding. Booming, like a dog’s 3 a.m.
holler.

/

I miss walking through a museum by myself. That sweet surrounded-by-art
aloneness. Solitude enhanced, perfected—by unwearable pantsuits, hairy
suitcases.
I think it’s what any artist hopes for: not only to be remembered, but to be
company.

\

Perhaps Carol really is overcome with joy. Thrilled, like us, to be out of the
apartment, away from her relentlessly beautiful dog, cat, kid. Even when it
means repeating the same couple of lines, a sort of depressing jingle. & the
mask—all day. Still, she’s out & she’s caroling about the latest sale on
summer grilling essentials. To people who—perhaps she’s glad for it—
don’t know her.

/

They fell? you ask in the morning, surprised to see the sunflowers strewn on
the carpet. Yes, I say, & explain how that led to the dog barking. I add
something about being too lazy to pick them up, but really, I liked the way
they looked on the carpet, like golden messages from some other, less
exhausting place.
You pick the sunflowers up, return them to their jar after refilling it with
fresh tap water. You climb back in bed & touch my face.
You climb back in bed to touch my face.
You wrap your arms around me & it’s like you’re the patron saint of touch
as well as soft sunlight & soothed dogs. Or you must be the earthly
representative of divine holding. Or you’re both & also a boy, like me,
holding on.

In the body, where everything has a price,
‎             I was a beggar. On my knees,

I watched, through the keyhole, not
‎             the man showering, but the rain

falling through him: guitar strings snapping
‎             over his globed shoulders.

He was singing, which is why
‎             I remember it. His voice—

it filled me to the core
‎             like a skeleton. Even my name

knelt down inside me, asking
‎             to be spared.

He was singing. It is all I remember.
‎             For in the body, where everything has a price,

I was alive. I didn’t know
‎             there was a better reason.

That one morning, my father would stop
‎             —a dark colt paused in downpour—

& listen for my clutched breath
‎             behind the door. I didn’t know the cost

of entering a song—was to lose
‎             your way back.

So I entered. So I lost.
‎             I lost it all with my eyes

wide open.

We have not long to love.
Light does not stay.
The tender things are those
we fold away.
Coarse fabrics are the ones
for common wear.
In silence I have watched you
comb your hair.
Intimate the silence,
dim and warm.
I could but did not, reach
to touch your arm.
I could, but do not, break
that which is still.
(Almost the faintest whisper
would be shrill.)
So moments pass as though
they wished to stay.
We have not long to love.
A night. A day....

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

每一个生命的消失
都是另一个我的离去
又一枚螺丝松动
又一位打工兄弟坠楼
你替我死去
我替你继续写诗
顺便拧紧螺丝
今天是祖国六十五岁的生日
举国欢庆
二十四岁的你立在灰色的镜框里微微含笑
秋风秋雨
白发苍苍的父亲捧着你黑色的骨灰盒趔趄还乡

眼前的纸张微微发黄
我用钢笔在上面凿下深浅不一的黑
里面盛满打工的词汇
车间，流水线，机台，上岗证，加班，薪水……
我被它们治得服服贴贴
我不会呐喊，不会反抗
不会控诉，不会埋怨
只默默地承受着疲惫
驻足时光之初
我只盼望每月十号那张灰色的薪资单
赐我以迟到的安慰
为此我必须磨去棱角，磨去语言
拒绝旷工，拒绝病假，拒绝事假
拒绝迟到，拒绝早退
流水线旁我站立如铁，双手如飞
多少白天，多少黑夜
我就那样，站着入睡

我咽下一枚铁做的月亮
他们把它叫做螺丝
我咽下这工业的废水，失业的订单
那些低于机台的青春早早夭亡
我咽下奔波，咽下流离失所
咽下人行天桥，咽下长满水锈的生活
我再咽不下了
所有我曾经咽下的现在都从喉咙汹涌而出
在祖国的领土上铺成一首
耻辱的诗