I. 아름아, mom calls.   I’m talking to my partner on my mother’s couch, telling her the same things I’ve been saying all my life: Korean doesn’t have a ‘r’ sound, so it’s more like a ‘r d l’ all smushed together, not a roll like in Spanish.   I see this woman I love … Read more

To begin with The hieroglyphical origin of My identity was simply no body But a common reed Bowing its head to the rising sun On the barren bank of the Nile   Slim, tall, hollow-hearted Standing against tropical heat Until one day “I” was used As a human symbol, an open vowel Referring to the … Read more

Riding the RER Watching the graffiti scream From ghetto buildings As I enter Paris A deaf mute running A hustle Gets no sympathy from The passengers Watching blacks speak French And wondering can color link Us into kinship? Eating a baguette at gare de lyon As beggars wear their hunger On their faces Smoking gauloises … Read more

Wine or water waits. The leaf floats like a flower in wind. Sunlight becomes red with envy. The stone threatens. Air coagulates into sound. It’s as though everything living stops.   There is no answer good enough. The mind is not like water or wine. Leaves are not flowers. No matter how yellow the sound, … Read more

The difference is slight. There are scratches at the door. Some animal scurries off as you turn, and it’s gone to hide just out of view, but you know it’s there waiting.   Turn around too often and you get lost in the browns, the fine line between worlds becomes sharp as glass, loud as … Read more

Hide in plain sight: dye your hair blonde, claim to be a “Black Irish,”   product of the mating between a Spanish Armada survivor and   a lassie.  Drink California wine without shuddering, without tasting your people’s   blood.  Go on wine tours to network with alcoholics who turn pork barrel   politics into silk … Read more

Snow. Towel          for blankets.                       Slippery leather seats. Lord, give me strength.           Dry cornflakes.                     Up & down & up & down & up       … Read more

In the end we die. In the meantime dust collects in corners. I offer the folds of my brain as burrows for snakes and rabbits. I keep Band-Aids in back pockets for when the disasters come. Reminders not everything is fixable.   I book hotel rooms and make the unfixable sleep with the already fixed. … Read more

She chills to pac p biggie bone Because black pride is a special thing And aping one’s culture Makes her feel less guilty about her Own She is rail thin stocky pleasantly Plump Around the middle sometimes Down home pale with freckles Rarely Hollywood tan Maybe New England alabaster Just enough accents around the breasts … Read more

She was surprised when I told her I’d been to Europe “Why’d you get so excited about going there?” she said   I told her I wanted to be somewhere Where I didn’t feel American She claimed she listened to Hip hop   But long skirts told me She belonged to god She screwed up … Read more

I lie on my back on my sheets on my bed— the baby a regret, the pains a regret. What was full inside is now outside, on my breast. The baby slick with blood, the blood like a river, the fluid that circulates, carrying food and water and breath and bringing away waste from all … Read more

Juan Angel is jealous that I’m sleeping with a new trickster,                         but   JA and I will be buried together.   Others may join us in the only matrimonial bed legally allowed us. Rane Arroyo was a gay, Puerto Rican performance artist, playwright … Read more

* A girl with Chanel earrings asks me a question about Emerson.   * Test: the eraser ends of their pencils dance like little dervishes.   * The autistic kid finds God in the right angles of the hall’s lockers.   * A martyred French fry: foot-flattened and filthy on the lunchroom floor.   * … Read more

they found her small body wired into the heart of the church, small LEDs sprouting through her skin blooming like tiny red flowers too far deep for sunlight to reach. she was sheared clean through to bone by claws big enough to belong to the God hanging over the spot her mangled body lay.   … Read more