My cousin called me / girly and I've been scared / of him since. Six plus / years my junior.

My mother swooned at my reading the backs of cereal boxes at breakfast: riboflavin, acetate, pyridoxine hydrochloride, niacinamide, calcium bicarbonate…

When I first move to Flint, my house is / sandwiched between the two other Asians in the city: / the old Thai woman and the half Japanese man.

creation as combat or else all consumed when / looking to be discovered i became invisible.

I let the bird tell me what it wants to be compared to because it is still alive, still tending toward things.

YOU. You are a stout full-stop, planted squarely in the middle of my life. Time is turning you into an ellipsis, as it lugs me onward like the proverbial sack of potatoes.

i am the one who doesn’t trust you. / the world: a thin & narrow strip / across my darkness.

My sister arrived in a dream. / I was Judith coming home after conquering Holofernes / and there was some cheese left in my basket, / only a little blood speckled the cloth.

Ron is moving to Houston but spends the day helping me move furniture that won't fit in the death closet.

…to give my voice to a woman / who takes my name & date // of birth to access the two / prescriptions waiting for me

i bleed purple but only when i try to / the sunshine, helium and hydrogen sun spots / i remember how to combust like i did as a child

sweetie, who are u to question a man / that works? pulls back the sheets, / lifts the stiff board of his body / out of bed, peels off his clothes / & dresses himself daily.

candles lit / on new years floors / in the old house where the doors / never quite shut.

All day the fat flakes fall but do not stick. / The daffodils bend their stems, spill their golden cups.

Fourteen years today I love you so much even / more than dying out of such a world a love / ​beyond a severed barbwire fence a vein / rusted shut

And sometimes I am sorry when the mothers / pass by my window on their way to the park, / young ones on their hips or in their carts

AfterHeSwallowedUsWeWereAllTogetherWetAndStickyInsideMyFather'sGut

When the fog rolls in, we forget / about searching for the right song, / about directions and the path / and time

it's monsoon season in the high desert and the surgery's two weeks from today. in 14 days i'll be back from albuquerque, tucked into bed…

Combustion engines betray us. / Their carbon paradox hums in idle driveways.