"Unasylumed, Unarchived."
"And these teeth my father swiped with a rough finger,
when syllabic pain is what fractured cannot solve.
I am imprisoned.
My hands are no martyrs.
What did the new China replace?
Let's revisit the poplar tree in the form
of my gentrified Oakland alleyway.
I would wrap the body in cotton.
The whole point in writing is not to revisit a war zone,
it's to delight in anonymity, in the embezzled desires
of the dead.
There are no queens, only angels.
An upturned collar, a welted back,
the rough grace of my lover's torso.
Can you show me what hurt is?
Unplacated skin, or maybe the moisture from my lips
pressing into your anger.
No protest forgiving enough for public disclosure.
My hair's just another's, my breasts carry
nothing but common exploits.
Do you breathe because you feel that is enough?
Pinch them again.
Have my shoulders hunched.
When I'm yours, you rarely wipe the sweat from my lips.
The new Chinese, please, as if this
is the dish you order from a takeout menu.
And what constitutes prayer?
Teeth, palate, tongue, lips, thumbs as thick as throat?
Cull my horrors for me, my arched palms
are not strange for you.
The devastating bodies beg skyward
where vapors won't diffuse through the packaging
container.
Our breasts gave themselves to our hands,
we could absolve the sins of our torturers.
Everything entered through them, spliced and unspliced,
and spliced our fingers for our beloveds.
Twice, four times again.
I saw my father go down the alleyway.
I saw his feet reach towards the dead roots.
I only watched after him, asked what will become of his life.
I took the chain of civic performances from his neck
and placed it around my own as if this would
resolve my body in progress.
And the porous textures of our skins are no longer relevant.
I know he is not set stone.
His blood won't gush from his fists.
What syllabic pain is nothing?
Say he could drive into another body,
an entire blank space drones, indefinite in its contour.
I will never speak of returning.
Adam, you'll step into the shower,
pour lukewarm water over my limbs.
As a child bathed under the California skylight,
I often lost track of time.
About fractured paradise.
I will never count my body as foreign.
You should know the soil fate of an excavated languor:
We do not need to wash until we freeze.
Say you turn off the water on your own.
What footsteps arched against a velvety bath mat?
I'm going by an ash trail.
I'm implicating my sexuality by sleeping in
the home we have built. From Oakland
to our fractured diaspora, must we
fear being shot from the sky?
Beloved, our murders would be knotted in themselves.
No one can free us but our fists in exile.
I'm still swabbing my teeth with your hot fingers."