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

feet

i had a purple rabbit's foot key chain.
the fur on it was soft & 
i caressed 
it for luck on the way 
to grade school, 
i felt each notched toe.
curious, i'd grip the cool metal base
where the limb stopped.
i check my limbs.

somewhere there are thousands
of three legged rabbits
in all different colors.
they hop askew & they spend 
their whole lives looking
for that one limb.

as all rabbits are shapeshifters,
they try becoming
three-legged horses 
& one-footed owls.
they attempt different bodies,
trapped in their uneven-ness.
i check my limbs

& i ask myself at night,
when i go looking for the keychain,
who it was who cut off
their feet-- was it me?
if it was, i don't remember.
do you remember all
the things you've done wrong?

i check all my limbs
& i ask the rabbits to cut
off my left foot, so i can
be like them. 
for luck.

there's so  many rabbits
all of them in my house,
in the yard,
knocking over bookshelves 
& digging in cabinets
for the foot but it's 
no where to be found.

the rabbits cry
& the purple one lays
down on the floor by my bed
i feel guilty of something
but i don't know what

& i ask to see where
the foot was taken from,
peering at the marred fur
i get an idea.

i take them all
to the curious shop up
the street 
where they sell
rabbit's feet, all dangling
around the check out counter.

we buy one 
& tie it to the purple rabbit's leg.
he tests it out 
& thanks me.

none of them seem alarmed 
by the use of the limbs
of another rabbit. 

i ask them if these rabbits
will also come for me 
someday, if i go looking for
my rabbit's foot again
they laugh & laugh 
Oh yes.

& at home i consider
cutting off my own limb
& making it into a key chain,
but i don't think it would
be much luck.

instead i feed 
more three-legged rabbits,
i pray to them 
i ask for good fortune
& all night they stare 
at me, waiting for 
me to fall asleep so 
they can tear apart
the house for the foot

a poem to other men at the gym

this is a love poem of sorts.
i explore muscle like
topography & i watch other men
at the gym. not out of lust,
but out of desire to know 
what my body is supposed to look like.
the same man in a red tank top
works his chest each morning
like a great swan, pumping
& sighing Ah! i observe
him & he makes me love birds.
i want to be a swam like that
& i wait for him to be done
with the machine. another man 
paces the locker room barefoot
in a suite. i'm drawn to
all these men who go right from
the gym to work. i imagine they're
cold in their cars, damp from
the showers. i don't take
a shower because i don't
have the right anatomy for it.
in another life, i would, &
i'd marvel at their bodies
there too; steam strewn 
around their ankles. water
can make anyone seem like
a god. then there's the men 
who sit on the benches
& watch themselves
in the big open mirrors.
stone faced, they take
in their own features. do they
think of themselves as beautiful?
probably not, but i do.
these men don't move often,
pinch their muscles & 
they want more. i also want
more muscles, whatever that
means. i've worked
up to lifting 115 pounds,
but only because i get 
to watch the others, i don't
want to  be other men,
i want to be their arms
& their thighs & their calves;
their calves are my favorite.
& when i leave i get 
my sweater from the locker room
& i feel like the eyes
of all the men there are watching me
& my body.
i used to mind, but now
i love it. i hope they 
make maps of me at home,
drawing each hair like 
a thin river on the face
of a mountain. maybe they 
love me like i love them.

acetaminophen

white & small & with fins;
i feel the pills come alive
as i swallow them,
their thrumming in 
the tributaries of my veins.
this one is a goldfish &
this one an egret stalking
the marrow of my bones,
feathers dropping in the 
red river, everything
is dyed maroon in me,
a one-note kaleidoscope.
i wonder what will happen
if i swallow the whole
bottle & i look inside
at the pills & they're all
white ants, circling 
the container so i shake
it to make them stop moving.
fever reducer, these animals
are made of december &
they're too small. the bottle
gone empty in me, i want 
to call my mother to ask
what the appropriate dosage
should have been but it's too late. 
my liver becomes
a salmon & swims 
out my mouth. i don't tell
anyone because they would
be worried. i just eat 
more white creatures,
pills in a cereal bowl,
lost in milk & scooped out
with a spoon. how dulled
can it get? all the lines
of the world gone out of focus
& soft, even my finger nails
become velvet. i wander
outside, barefoot 
in the winter & all
the lines of my body disappear 
into the tails of kites,
the strings of balloons,
i stand, a collaboration
of colors: white & orange
& pink. what keeps them together?
i eat more acetaminophen
until the color too disbands.
over the course of several
days i'll resemble.
one of the colors will
call my mom & tell her
that i have a fever &
that all my bones are
full of fish. another color
will write love letters furiously
to a block cell phone number,
another color, the pink color,
will dangle on 
the ceiling of our bed room,
trying to whistle.
white ovals, matte texture.
i lay the last out on
the palm of my hand &
i fill my pockets with 
them before leaving. 
i hear my mother
saying 
take two every 
6 hours 
& so i take three

hamburger

there's an Andy Warhol piece
where he just eats a Big Mac.
he looks past the camera;
a bottle of ketchup & 
the white burger king
bag sit on the table. i watch
it over & over again. i become
aware of the crinkling 
of the wax paper as he unwraps
the sandwich, of the quiet
clink of the ketchup bottle lid.
it's old noise,
held in a thirty-year-old video,
a fraction of the sound that's
been gone for decades.
i sit down & pretend to eat
along with him.
i don't eat hamburgers
so i pantomime. i want
to keep him company even 
if it's only a moving image.
Andy's been dead for just
as a long as his sounds 
but here he is, his mouth 
moving, his fingers touching
the food. i wonder what 
it is that makes someone
really dead & whether or
not Andy is really dead.
i crawl into the video & ask
him questions while he eats
what does it taste like?
can i have a bite?
i lean in closer but he doesn't
notice, eyes fixed forward
towards the camera.
the video ends & everything
goes black so i start it 
over again from the beginning.
he unwraps again. 
i go to a burger king alone.
i don't eat hamburger 
but i want to get food
for Andy. i pick up several 
dozen bags of hamburgers.
i stack them in the passenger
seat & bring them home
where the video  has been
playing on loop for days.
passing him burger after burger,
Andy eat more each time.
i feed him & he thanks me 
for breaking the cycle.
as he chews he cries
asking am i dead
am i dead
am i dead?