an ode/elegy to the train station & my body last night

i want to get lost alone 
in this big wild bird's nest city. 

i want to climb 
in between twigs & tinsel,
place my blue glittery earring 
on the curb.

on the subway car we
find yellow plastic seats &
sitting makes liquid sleep
of me, maybe orange juice.

i thank the train station
for having so many people.
there's a little boy 
kicking his legs &
a woman who turns 
the newspaper page at every stop.

so far this is a cliche poem
about the city. 
the reader asks,
"what else does he have to tell me?"

i was grateful for my body,
when was the last time you 
were grateful for your body?
no, not appearance-wise,
i mean the utility of it; 
i was thankful that
my ankles could move 
so far in one night & that 
my calve muscles felt heavy 
like mangoes.

a man was selling fruit 
on Christoper street &
i wanted to stop & buy 
a red delicious apple, but
we had to keep going.

the city makes me think
of fruit & water.
water, because the train
goes deep sea-- full of angler fish lights.
fruit, because all the buildings 
are full of nectar. i plucked
a stop light & bit down:
an overripe plum.

somewhere near penn station
a tall man stared me
in the eyes & asked "what
are you looking at fruit?"
my only thought was that 
if i were a fruit
i would probably be 
a peach & my lover, a nectarine.
i also thought how nice
it was that the crowds might
deter him from hurting me.

is there no safe water for
a queer body? an un-forbidden fruit?
the train is an eel or maybe a snake.

the curb swallows the 
blue glittery earrings &  
i'm thankful for the holes
in my earrings that
minnows can pass through.

if i died in the city
last night, i hoped that 
i might come back as 
a cluster of grapes in
that man's fruit cart 
or maybe as the farthest 
sliding door 
of the train back to long island.

i said 
thank you body for
being so tired, thank god
thank god thank god
& out the train window i could
only see rooms full of 
dead people & bowls 
of fruit, never the two
at the same time. yes,
& they were always under water. 

no cars pass me
on my walk home & the train
station behind me becomes
a goldfish in a pile
of glass on the floor.
no more fruit.
i'm happy that no cars pass me.
i look over my shoulder 
& i see the earrings on
the curb but i don't get
them, i hear the man asking
me "what are you looking
at you fruit?"

i thank my body for not
being attacked. i thank
the train station for being
gentle enough to me.
i thank headlines for
telling me gently that 
two gay men were 
stabbed in the bronyx.
i thank the water for 
turning everyone's words
into nothing more than bubbles
rising & turning 
into fruit above the skyscrapers.

at home in the dim
kitchen light eat an orange.

autopsy on a blue jay

the birds dropped from the sky 
like purses, spilling outside,
the sound of feathers on pavement
(if that makes a sound).

i collected them: the cardinals
the robins, the swallows,
& the blue jay, stacked them
all on a crystal plate
to investigate what's ailing them.

with the fabric scissors
i cut them apart, even though
my mother warned me 
not to play with dead things.

first the cardinal, full
of black & blue wires-- 
spitting electric at me,
i look for a plug to maybe
recharge the animal, but there
doesn't seem to be one.

the swallow came apart easier,
Velcro was all that held his
chest together. i pried gently
so that the collection of 
stolen keys from inside didn't 
fall out. i tried them all
in my front door, thinking
that might revive him.

i had to do the robins 
mid-day when no one would
notice the loud classical music
pouring out of the every incision.
i fill balloons with the songs
& send them out the apartment window
for someone to find. 

the last one was the blue jay,
i remembered him from the fence
outside, the tilt of his head
& his chipper pacing.
i thought about how similar 
we were, be up so early
watching nothing.

still on the crystal plate
i hesitate because
i don't want to know what's
inside the blue jay.

i imagine him full of 
gumballs & engagement rings.
full of thimbles or 
blue ring-pops. 

i open the bird from the zipper
on his spine.
he's the inside of my mother's
purse. i remember it well
from stealing quarters as a kid.
the check book, the bank envelope,
the gift cards to the Peanut Bar,
the swishy tan lining & the black
wide-toothed hair clip. 

i steal two quarters
& put them in my pocket which
instantly causes the bird starts 
thrashing again. 
zipping him up quick i throw
open the window & the blue jay 
goes back outside
to pace the fence.

i think what's happening 
to the birds has to do with me, 
i see them on the ground
everywhere & i wonder what 
they're all filled with.
are they that susceptible 
to nostalgia? i should
have been more careful
dreaming alone in my bed. 

when i see you tomorrow
i will tell you about the
blue jay, because you like
him too. if you don't believe
me that's alright, i'll lay
you down on the crystal 
plate & show you what kinds
of trinkets you've filled 
yourself with over all 
these years. 

flowers 1964
After Andy Warhol

the girl i loved's name was orange.
we ate flowers made of fuchsia.
biting the walls, they turned primrose.
our favorite planet was red.
the morning turned the house white.

the girl i loved's name was fuchsia.
we hated flowers, all of them primrose.
plucking them until our fingers were red.
the stems of the flowers died white.
in the kitchen we split an orange.

the girl i loved's name was primrose.
we dyed each other in rivers, came out red.
the inside of apples is white
& so is the under belly of an orange. 
running away we called all the towns fuchsia.

the girl i loved's name was red.
she liked strawberries unripe & white.
we dipped our fingers in sunrise orange 
& swallowed it; the sky tasted fuchsia. 
she told me life's not a primrose.

the girl i loved's name was white.
why didn't she like the color orange?
she would paint canvases entirely fuchsia.
undressing me, she'd laugh you're so primrose.
we'd bite off the other's lips, kiss red.

butterfly sanctuary to be bulldozed for Trump's border wall

when you die you disband into 
a flock of butterflies & you get
to decide what kind you want to be: 
monarch or swallow-tail?

i would pick monarch because of how
wide their wings can get:
4 great inches.
fluttering between the other fragments
of myself i would re-learn how
to sing in the body of an insect.

the word for "butterfly" in
Spanish is mariposa & i learned
that in 7th grade Spanish class.
i would write it in cursive
at the top of the paper 
over & over like the beat of wings.

i've been wanting to drive down
to the boarder for years now,
the savoir complex in me,
but this is the first time i 
know what i would do. 

before the sanctuary is gone
i could teach all the people
trying to cross how to fall apart
into butterflies & re-assemble.

i would shout:
monarch or swallow-tail?
& fall into the desert to 
show them how i do it. 

if that doesn't work my back up
plan is to show them how to 
be the size of ants, load
them onto the back
of the butterflies to fly
past boarder patrol vehicles.

would they take to searching
butterflies then? pinching 
their orange wings & inspecting
their abdomens for passengers.

they would, they would
i know they would.

i don't have an answer 
& everything i say turn 
into butterflies & even
the butterflies with their view
of the Rio Grande want to disband.

when butterflies die
they fall apart into humans &
they don't get to decide
what kind they want to be:
this side of the wall or the other?

i'll stay here, i say,
because i'm not a butterfly.

family

we all go to the hibachi place
because we're celebrating something.
there's balloons tied to our
wrists: all of us have a birthday,
all of us are getting married, all of us
are graduating, all of us are hungry.
my brother gets chicken as his meat
& my uncle gets steak & my father gets
steak & i get shrimp because they're pink.
my mother can't decide because 
it's all so exotic, maybe just a salad.
we love the hibachi, catching broccoli 
in our mouths, the chef feeds us 
& speaks with the sounds of spatulas
on grille, the slick scraping of metal.
we watch him closely, the folds of
his wipe apron & red hat. he points
to me & i know he wants me to stand
on the grille. i listen to orders
as all children should, feet sizzling
in oil. my family claps-- what a trick!
the chef then takes me in his hands &
molds me into an egg; white & clear.
i feel my yolk heavy inside me,
a mouth full of egg white-- what a trick!
i spin for them on the hot surface, 
tucked into myself & he cracks me open.
instantly i cook yellowing on in the heat. 
he chops me into tiny pieces 
for the fried rice & i'm scattered amoung
the vegetables; tiny gem-like peas &
cubes of orange carrot. my brother
eats my shrimp & asks what we had 
come to celebrate & no one can remember.
my mother still hasn't ordered so 
she just eats the broccoli. all the balloons
pop at once from the tension. the chef
keeps making food to keep them there,
he doesn't want them to go him.
when they eat me, the egg, i feel
happy though. i had never know my family
like that-- like teeth on my body,
like the texture of their tongues
like the smoothness of their throats.
let's come back here sometime. 

Cronos

disguise yourself as a rock or a girl
(that's what i did). i watched 
him looming in the kitchen,
looking for another son to eat.
everyone is a sugar cookie cut into
the outline of a gender-- don't forget that.
when i cut myself i bleed purple
like a lizard tongue.
he iced each boy before devouring-- 
giving them little frosting pants 
& gum drops for eyes. 
everyone's father is Cronos,
a hungry & sharp-toothed God. he burns
the cookies on the tray & eats
them anyway while a girl in an apron
sits at the table, stirring
a fresh bowl of dough. 
let's make more he says.
we love our fathers, we must
& i am safe because i pose in
a dress-- i help the girl stir.
i have a memory of being eaten,
but it is only imagined. only real
boys can remember their father's
teeth coming down on their bones,
bit into pieces & scattered out
into a blood ocean. when i feel
lonely & not alive i think
of all my organs as fruit, especially
pears-- those soft green kinds
& one brown one in the middle 
of my ribs. when Cronos goes 
to sleep, as all gods eventually do.
i take out the pears & cut them
into thin slices, eating myself
as an act of defiance. i say, 
by the dim kitchen light,
i'm a boy & i'm being eaten.
i offer the girl pieces but she
shakes her head & says that Cronos
would notice if she ate
so i eat it all myself & before
i'm even done i feel them start
to grow back. i put on the dress
& he wakes up. this time i ask
to feed him the other boys
their soft sugary skin. they sleep,
they have never tried to resist him.
while he chews i break 
off a piece for myself. 
sons taste like
butter & honey. 
i swallow & my 
voice drops just a little bit
deeper. one must be careful
what they eat in front 
of their parents. they call 
me zeus & one day i'll pull
all the other boys out of my father's
mouth. not yet though. 
there's still too much to eat.
the pears are ripe
& it's dark.

Emil's Room

"i love you from the day you warmed my hands with your breath
because i had lost my gloves"*

1.
i thought that maybe if
i could paint your bedroom window
enough times, that, maybe it would
come down to meet me, the whole room
a kind of great bird descending 
from all the other red tin roofs.
i would walk inside & there
you would forever bed, lounging 
at your desk. no uniform,
just your body.

2.
i could never stand in
the street long because 
i didn't want someone 
to catch me. what are men
like us to do? 

3.
you never did tell me
about your time in 
The Great War but i did
feel it in your body,
so, tell me now that we
are safe below the earth

4.
on nights like this
i still hear mustard gas 
& taste chlorine bombs,
close the coffin door my love,
with me & we will whisper
until all of that is quiet
& it is only the sound
of our voices.

5.
i still wonder if out there,
above the soil, there's still
fighting.

6.
i make up ways that the war
ended as a way of keeping my mind
busy when you sleep.

i imagine millions of men coming
out to fill in the trenches like
the healing of a great scar.

i imagine the grave we're in
is one for other soldiers,
do they notice us?

7.
i still paint your room, only
without brushes. i write poems
to the room where we first 
kissed & were unafraid.

8.
tell me Emil, are you afraid
of anything?

9.
i'm afraid some nights
that they will dig up my body
& put me in a grave separate from yours.
i'm afraid of my father
even though he is long dead
i'm afraid of god & what he plans
to do with us, though he hasn't
damned us yet.

10.
i want to stay here, Emil
& build a replica of your house
underneath the earth.
the yellowish brick, the open window
the smell of the baker 
up the street. i will build
it down here for us.
while you're asleep.


*Emil and Xaver Sumer were
two World War I soldiers who 
were lovers. They were eventually
buried in the same plot. 
They died a year apart after having
served in the war. Friends and 
parents worked to keep them apart
because they disapproved of them  
being "homosexual." 

real

the real santa claus is the one
at the mall by our house.
 
even the biggest believer 
usually admits that they know 

the mall-santa's beard
is plastic & that his stomach

is just a big pillow. 
i went to take a picture with him

even though i'm old now 
& shouldn't take pictures with santa.

i climbed up on his lap 
& i told him that i want to be real

for christmas. he didn't
ask what i mean. he just nodded 

& told me that he would try his best.
i trust him. 

later, you tell me that you never 
really believed in santa at all.

i want to convince you somehow
but all i can say is that 

the man i saw was santa. i know
that he paces the hallways

of the mall at night. that he
takes off his beard & his belly,

a skinny, tired man, looking
in all the shop windows at his 

likenesses, snow globes & inflatables.
he resembles none of the santas.

he doesn't believe in santa some nights
& then he remembers that he's real 

& he gets back to reciting the names
of all the children in the world

in alphabetical order starting
with Aan. sitting on a bench 

across from louis vuitton
he wants a handbag for himself.

he wants to walk outside &
be selfish once in awhile.

he would ask for a fresh pear 
or some other ripe fruit

(all he's eaten for days is
soft pretzels & chick-fil-a)

i wish i could tell him that he's
allowed to not do it all this year

but i can only watch him,
i pin the photograph of us 

to my bed room wall & santa 
tosses pennies in the mall fountain 

proposals

at the museum 
in the Egyptian exhibit 
we saw a man in a grey sweater
get down on one knee & propose 
to a woman with strawberry blonde hair.

the couple stood in front of
a reconstructed tomb
a box of stone words.

i tell you that old things like
this terrify me because the people
who carved each symbol 
are dust dust dust
(it could be the Catholicism speaking).

i wanted to follow the couple
around & listen to their conversations.
what did they think of the mummies?

does he tell her that he'll
build her a tomb, bigger 
& more extravagant than Khaba or
Sneferu, that he'll build her
statues around its entrance

does she tell him that he's 
silly to say such things, that 
she imagines their love like
the corpses here, preserved &
always beautiful, 
wearing turquois & scarabs

maybe she tells him that
they should be burried
in the same coffin, facing 
each other.

i should have followed them
i should because i can't help
but think that they never
left the museum,

that they wondered,
trapped in the ancient objects
on the first floor.

& at night as they closed 
the museum & we were already  
on the train back home

he took the ring off her finger
& told her that
centuries from now
people might find 
the jewelry 
& try to guess
what their rings meant

he says that they might guess wrong
& think that the ring means
they're already married or 
invent another ritual 
to explain them.

as he says this they're
laying in the stone tomb
& the windows are all 
night sky & street lights

do they stay there
forever then?
i like to hope so

if i could have proposed
to you that day 
i would have asked if
we could be statues 
there, lion-faced maybe
egret faced maybe 
dog faced maybe
anything, just 
not mummies

the powerful one

from the museum today 
you & i stole 
an Egyptian artifact

sun red disk balanced on her head,
we took
the lioness, Sekhmet,

tall & stone & stoic
"The Powerful One"
"Lady of Slaughter"
"Mistress of Dread" 

now we can replicate
her, we can build more

the goddess of violence,
disaster & illness

her pharaoh commissioned
thousands of her statue
to surround his tomb

the moral:
worship what scares you

i'm not scared of Sekhmet 
but i won't take any chances

we pull great stones
from the north shore,
place them in the yard
to begin carving,

using the first statue
as a template

rows & rows & rows
we make,

setting them
in our yard

grass turns to sand as
we work, as we carve

as we take
part in the tradition 

of fear 

up the street walk 
lionesses, their 
sleek golden bodies

sturdy even 
in the New York winter 

they watch us & lick
their lips

i don't want to be eaten
i say as i craft
another lioness face
from the stone

keep working
i tell you

that pharaoh 
made Sekhmet's statues until 
he died & now 
we stole one from 
the Metropolitan 
Museum of Art 

what an art, humans are

sometimes all 
we can do, is keep 
ourselves busy

worship the sun