Poetry

Two boys, pink in their manhood, lean over a balcony, full 
of teeth. Below: a brown man, skin tired of holding his bones. 
Work falls in shadows around his feet. 
The Puget Sound is bluer than any dream or sky. The boys loom, pink.

reeking of moss & blossom & on the street
i call home, i cannot be sure if i
exist. my thighs press on one another

in the selfie he is currently texting to “Lula Mae,”
the man next to me on flight 4853
to Columbia, dressed in a black turtleneck
and a thick double chain,

in the living room again, i cannot conjure
even the space i inhabit. rain for several

Surely you stay my certain own, you stay
obtuse. Surely your kisses were little poisons 
gripping tight my lips, my arms, mapping their way
across my unsure body. Surely, this fission

system says we’re not in charge of much else
but this. system’s [planter’s raj] & the damn 
tea. the Brits sell us, Lipton sells us, Tata 
sells us. when are we permitted to unload? 

Lighted room. Man and Woman enter talking.

—I mean, we built the world.

—What do you mean?

If we were to go
           if the house fell in an earthquake

if fire, if fire

& in the mornings sometimes awoke so cold
—the wind in Iowa City was brutal—
those days of doubt, those days of troubled land,
that I did not want to get out of bed &

In Iowa City, the restaurant 
where I worked on the weekend, 
I befriended another waitress, blond & blue-eyed,