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sleepy little town to me at 13 find me in the canyon manchester, united kingdom the blossoming parenthood not your barbie doll fantasy hear me, please.
a cold sunday in charleston an apology because of what i cannot be affirmations for more than a lonely future boys will be boys
thursday in charleston listening to mako road haiku for a beach day i was raised by shawn and gus trying to write a poem when you’re happy my neighbor’s kid could by an ar-15 poem for a funeral the kids are alright on creativity underneath capitalism intravenous injection our mother for patrick on his birthday barren forest because how can one avoid a conversation with one’s own mortality fun to be around
i hope this finds you well! on meditation
they’re in portugal now and i miss them how water flows. for gung-tai and po-tai.
it is quiet and i can hear the droplets of rain on the hood of my toyota rav 4 and you are in the passenger seat / because this is a future where we became more than a beer on a rooftop / where conversations with you live beyond poems / where i can once again feel the forgiving presence of your hands / where i am no longer afraid to lose myself in the calm of your eyes / and where a town of greasy gyros on streets flooded with gin and breweries on every corner, can become nothing more than a sleepy little town with a bench we share.
because i remember googling “am i gay?” at 3am lighting my soft face up with nothing but blue light from the iPod touch i bought in 4th grade the violently sparkling pink case i put it in because being a girly girl meant i liked boys only trapping my purple soul in sperrys and lululemon only straight girls had a place so i made myself one of them i try not to speak of those dead hands rotting flesh the assault of “fruity” and “queer” and “lesbo” overthinking the way i do my hair and the way i say “hello” maybe there is a way to fix who i can see myself becoming eyes watering in a bed that’s just a lake to fall into it’s not the newly discovered lust that makes me want to run it’s every other little thing that i want with her my enemies would tremble to see me now the unapologetic and screaming it at the top of my lungs queer self apparently i’m just a girl, who can fall in love with another girl who can also kiss and fall in love with a boy too not your bicameral enemy you can steal validity from with a song that lives inside a mouth formerly sewn shut but now i can find community in all it has to offer now “queer” is poised to represent the whole of me a world where i don’t have to fit myself inside a simple box where the nuances of my sexuality and gender aren’t lost but that sense of undefined abstractness is found because i am free and i am as likely to want and to feel and to love a woman just as much as man radical liberation of peaceful existence within my queerness like the way you flip to the first page of a new book ready to understand.
don’t let the sound of your own wheels drive you crazy hear music and melodies in color as if they were breathing human souls connecting as embodiments of the unattainable as we all are (and always will be) to one another
well, i got down on my knees, and i pretend to pray to understanding what and why here and what’s the best way living as the universe breaking it open, revealing the nexus of seeing each other in songs
everybody, look, what’s going down? places that become focal points for shattered conventions where you and i can embrace and wonder and dream the rebel attitude of learning what it means to be alive
manc monsters followed me around an investigation of the youthful dreaming noel gallagher and his high flying birds caught inside post-punk personifications hoarse brick and concrete homes
emblems of industrialization
salford lads club was made to be the place for us teach each other how to find something everything. here on the epping walk bridge remember 1979 and kevin cummins
under harsh chucktown suns we ran away nights where i can find myself on canal street ian curtis and i share the same soul terror beneath the rain is something i’d get used to ever fallen in love with a place? destined to become a part of you
k-punk was lucid and revelatory inside the songs are where this city lives next to the waterstones on deansgate god dammit i think this is where i’m supposed to be decidedly discovering a passion of knowing or maybe not knowing at the same time maybe i just want to breathe will this be the place?
“Revolution is not something fixed in ideology, nor is it something fashioned to a particular decade. It is a perpetual process embedded in the human spirit.”
– Abbie Hoffmanthere was a tree, grown from a seed so potent the soil sighed with pleasure as it breathed itself a journey. the gardeners and farmers gathered, knowing storms would soon descend this generation would not live to see the clouds part.
but i remember the blossoming the peaking through a window they left cracked open because i am furious and on fire, as i cover my eyes from tear gas and dodge the rubber bullets we sit beside our own spirits revolution. the garden that came before us taught us how.
emergent compromise under july humidity mother and father please know i did not mean to hurt you in elkton maryland is where i learned to love leasing moments at work-from-home desks to say “no charge” yes, those are the memories i hold within my heart
wind-swept curls running around front yards intertwining like the branches of a blueberry bush never knowing the next day or even the hour gratitude is not just a word, but a promise forever will never be enough time with you i will always, always want to be here with you even on the days when i might want to yell at you love has a funny way of showing itself when you need it the most dear mom and dad i don’t think enough thank yous exist.
smooth skin and a tiny waist never making room for melanin
one day i burned my hair to a crisp curls were far too difficult for them
you point french manicured nails at stretch marks and my thighs that rub together
if i get more pretty do you think he will like me?
blue eyes haunted my adolescence and i remember when i shaved my arms
the boy who called me “monkey arms” always a second choice or just an experiment.
the skinny-minny blonde girls in string bikinis that perfect way they’d never let me be one of them.
i’ve been starving myself
carving skin until my bones are showing
sorry i’m not your barbie doll fantasy if i’m honest i never wanted to be.
this is a part of my humanity to understand there is more a fire we will not distinguish. acknowledge more than just those seated at the head of the table reach below to an ascension of values because the price is nothing less than my life. a life of devotion, so please, hear my voice, hear my cries, hear me, please.
the palms in the wind city cats beneath parked cars warmth they find as one
please know this does not mean i love you any less if i could figure out a way to swallow the lump of dread in my throat i would maybe then i’d be able to feel what you always do but i am a failed test in the experiment of humanity because i want to go back to before the schism of our existence before i thought this is what would make you run away would you be ok if nothing ever happened, nothing at all? deep down i know the answer will always be no and it will never be me because at the same time that i am not enough i will always be too much a problem that’s not worth fixing.
to remind myself that i deserve to be loved not only desired for the way i furrow my brow and purse my lips when i concentrate how the shorter hairs at the edge of my face curl slightly more than the rest the stuttering and shaking in my voice when i read my poems to you even the hyperfixations on tv shows and movies and books and music because that all that i am should be more than enough to love.
please, can we just stay here, in these simple moments forever?
the boys i went to high school with they’re going to turn into kendall roys dead eyes and daddy’s money and a career in suffocating themselves because their father was a businessman and don’t forget their very first bully too power struggle with the person they love and hate and fear the most i could smell the entitlement and selfishness with a dash of manipulation really just the daddy issues and inferiority complex wounded masculinity in their jeep wranglers but for some reason i’ll still sympathize in the same way as kendall at the end of the day it’s just a longing for acceptance and approval and i’d be lying if i said i didn’t want the same
windows down on 26 drives because the sun peeked through the clouds and we walked to iced lattes and cappuccinos brew hall with chicken gyros and pool
i think i could stay like this forever lost and sitting in the flowers
the soft crash of waves
sand between toes is true peace
sullivan’s is home
or maybe his name was gus t.t. showbiz (the extra t is for extra talent) the hyper-observant dry-humored brunette and his always-think-ahead best friend because i remember when shawn taught me that just because you put syrup on something that doesn’t make it pancakes and to remember don’t take pictures of buildings take pictures of moments, because that’s what matters and how i always searched for the pineapples maybe we can end the night by watching a movie harry potter and the prisoner of marzipan and drink some drakkar noir (or was it pinot noir?) what the hell, i’ve heard it both ways.
so that “i love you, man” in a video he left because he doesn’t do goodbyes nothing will ever warm my heart quite the same.
because all of my poems are usually about being anxious or depressed / heartbreaks and panic attacks / but now i’m not as sad and i actually find reasons to live and be happy / and i wonder if my sadness was the only value of my artistry / it’s really hard to write a poem when you’re happy / but i guess i’ll try because why the hell not
i did not come here to weep in front of a crowd. i came because lately i open my mouth
& nothing falls out but an anguished screech. on the ground i watch their blood
pooling & the cameras circle like sharks. please give me more than something to mourn.
a boy i went to middle school with got shot in february so i guess takeout restaurants aren’t for food
they’re for 19 bullets to the chest & a community needing to host another vigil.
because flesh is meat & don’t forget meat bleeds. children like lamb drawn to the slaughter
& public education is a death sentence. but kids should be able to watch arthur or curious george
not training videos on how to hide under a desk or what classroom supplies are the best deadly weapons
but politics doesn’t care about a life & this world is going to end in a pool of blood. i’m just trying not to show how scared i am.
the lilac and baby blue flowers on my dress they hugged me in the st. edmond’s gym
& the box of ashes floating in the caribbean sea underneath a boat captained by harry (we lost him too)
you always remained close into the earth etched your name in all the soil where you walked
the name of a great teacher who believed we all had something to say & the right to say it
the twenty-eighth of november & turning myself over in a blanket that couldn’t quite keep me warm
pancreatic cancer buries itself inside your body & eats away at you like a parasite
the doctors told us we’d have to watch you suffer but peace found itself like the flowers on my dress
so i’ll remember tractor rides and cocoa bread just as much as chapped lips, stick-thin arms & legs
it is all you & that is something i can never forget.
i thought i didn’t know a future of hope and fighting eternal power but the kids are alright and youth is a memory and a dream unapologetic vulnerability and a laugh let us nurture the yearning voices that will make themselves heard
i have dreams, underneath stars the ones that keep me awake.
where these strings of words left on pages and in books more than an after-work activity
but instead i sit at a desk next to monitor stands and the ding of Microsoft Teams
i think this thing we call capitalism it could kill the creative in me it could slam the door
right in those eyes the ones a co-worker once told me have dreams swimming inside them
but i have a doorstop and i can fashion just the right key there is more beyond the lock
i don’t think i’d have a life without writing.
my freshly 18 and naive heart ran after you and the world i saw through you so i gave and you took and it hurt being alone together
because you can always give up on something you never really wanted from the beginning and that’s the truth the reality of falling in love with someone’s regrets
and now there’s a space between and you can grow and heal and learn and love and i can do the same so how does it feel? now you’ll never be able to forget me. because i hate remembering you too
but i think i can forgive believe in a future for both of us separate but forever flowing in each other’s veins
our mother is an oak tree with t w i s t s and turns
our mother is the jasmine flowers that sit gently atop the stairs of a porch
our mother is a puddle on the ground water breathing and beating with a heart of its own
our mother is the shining sun warming skin and lighting up a city street
i think know our mother was created to be loved and cherished and protected and saved
i long for a day when our mother is respected as a mother should be she has given us life
portrait of a life as a dreamer always creating and seeking and wanting these are the things i love and admire remember days in blackbox theaters and the stage i always knew i’d find you two souls can we please never forget each other? knowing you, always a part of me
a friendship begins not where the seed is planted but where the axe meets the trunk of the tree some trees grow from the root but cannot be replanted no matter the attempts of fertilizing or watering & what words were etched into its bark a friendship begins and ends with the pain like knowing it takes more than just yourself & a lonely self that they see is not giving enough i have no life to offer other than the one i was meant to live. something akin to the twists of branches so this is how i plan to leave them behind unceremoniously and wondering if anything ever photosynthesized or if perhaps this tree was rotted from the start sap dried up on the hands outstretched as far as they could
that one time in the lobby of a hotel in los angeles, california & crying into a cheap fabric pillow because this was me standing in front of my own mortality & asking her to give me an answer while i watch my phone on 911 tremble in hands & i touch my cheeks to wipe away the first surfacing of an emotion i had felt in months & it reminds me that if i went right now the paramedics would come & my parents would receive a call & have to identify the body & that is something i spend hours hoping they never have to do because a parent should never have to outlive a child & mine should be no different & i remember another time in a squirrel hill home & holding scissors in my hand & watching skin part in two like a sea but knowing i wanted it to flow in togetherness & so yes for a moment i tried to talk to my own mortality but the words got lost in translation & i don’t think i really listened so now i will make what space i can to sit down & share a cup of coffee with her once more
& now i am heard & i can listen i am close enough to see myself & cherish every possible ending & i can create an authentic self to love & learn & live today.
because a downtown night where you can spend on liquor and i can spend on electric bills drown yourself in duplicitous days for the way you come across perceptions of a body lost in a jacket so when your head catches fire don’t come bitchin’ to me and now in nights of reflection pressing replay on the records of us you had to be a big shot, didn’t cha never knowing when to leave it alone when to show some grace so i suppose i could be sorry my successes don’t look the same but in the interest of being authentic instead i’ll say “screw you” this life is entirely mine and your chastising creature-self is not allowed to chew on me
when writing an email i can’t help but exclaim & send well-wishes & ask about the weekend of someone i’ve never even met the unexplainable comfort & pride of simply just wanting to be liked & maybe even loved so i’ll start off my message with an i hope you are well & close it out with a thanks so much & put far too many exclamation points at the end of all my sentences because i can always say yes & i can never say no & find myself continually trapped in the tornado of exchanging pieces of myself & washing away truth & stretching myself thin because boundaries are not something that can be set by someone who can only build glass walls remember that you can see through glass & surrendering the self to others is easier than voicing your own needs & pleasing everyone is never enough & always leaves a hollow cavity where you could’ve remembered the person you are meant to say yes to first is yourself.
my home of being alone but never lonely every rise and fall of my lungs and the deep sigh of relief in being one with my own mind in growing my days like ivy because they are mine this is a reminder your existence is a garden and a garden requires a gardener to water the plants truth in flowers of tulips and tiger lilies and roses i have begun to learn how to take care of a living thing organically breathing myself into a life of attention not fear but peace among the uncertainty
because i met them last year but really i’ve known them for all this life rescuing a mind lost in a city it thought was not for itself to know instead they can buy me my first pbr at recovery room and i can be inspired by a woman whose strength is unimaginable new poems that the math teacher reads supporting my soul
and these are the type of friends you’d spend all the time in the world with memories growing like a fire when you throw gasoline on it yet all the time in the world is simply not even close to enough
tomorrow is the first day of asian american & pacific islander heritage month & i can’t help but think of the time in college when someone told me i wasn’t really asian & the time that one guy asked me about my ethnicity & when i told him i was chinese he responded by saying that was quite literally the last thing i would’ve guessed & that felt like a million lashes to the back. because my ancestors are from the guangdong province & spoke hakka & that house with the pantry full of candy was my favorite place & the chaofàn he made is still my favorite food to this day & my apartment is a please take your shoes off at the door house complete with a bowl of white rabbit candies on the counter. i always find myself replaying the shot-to-the-chest moment when a professor in college referred to asian languages as “oriental” & when i tried to explain why that was wrong she just explained why i was wrong & she was right. but instead i remember how the lunar new year was my favorite celebration growing up because i could eat duck & beef & carrots & bao & wonton soup & oranges for dessert. (the red envelopes from great-grandparents didn’t hurt also). but like that person told me in college apparently i’m not a “real asian.” but what is a “real asian,” really? to me it is everything i am & everything i want to be. yes, it is my mom taking my door off my bedroom as a punishment & taking your shoes off when you enter the house, but it is also my creative mind & the music i listen to & the color i paint my nails & the books i read & the art i hang up in my apartment & asian is not an umbrella term. asian is the beauty of existing in every pocket of the world & every ability of being alive. it is the friend from high school who i will never forget & the short films he makes. it is my cousin & her playing soccer for the u20 jamaica women’s national team (yes, there are chinese people from jamaica). asian is the way water flows. free & splashing & a current strong enough to love.
To coalesce means to come together to form one mass or whole. As I entered National Poetry Month this year I found myself seeking a whole unity. Since I began to publish my writing and share it more widely with the world, I have often wondered what my words as a collective mean. And as I have entered my 20s and adulthood, I have wondered the same things about life and my existence. My mind is a home in which I reside by myself and that state of solitude often breeds curiosity about myself, about the world around me, about my past experiences, about all this universe has to offer. So I wrote one poem every single day for the month of April. Doing so allowed me to attempt to answer those questions that circle around my mind so often. I was able to discover a new sense of unity within the self. Through exploration of everything from my ethnicity to the loss of friendships and processing grief, I experienced a unique coalescence of identity It was a feeling I had never felt before While I am in no way at the end of my journey, writing these poems was a tremendous step in my journey to unity and understanding of the self and the world around me. The gratitude I have for this experience is hard to put into words. I have become further connected to my existence and have found an even deeper appreciation for life. My first book of poetry, barely there, surviving, consisted of poems I wrote when I was in some of the darkest places of my life times when I did not want to be alive. To now say that I love this life and that I embrace all of it (even the moments of pain) as giving breath and meaning, and that I want to be alive, is truly a beautiful thing and I have writing to thank for that.
