Amuse-Bouche

Ammi and Abu, and that brother of mine— / They don’t know who I am. Curfews & calls / to prayer, weekly lectures at the mosque, / but then, there’s also the smell of bacon…

“Coming from an ethnic background and living in a diverse city like Los Angeles, my work reflects my identity as an Asian American…”

I want to die the way my dog sleeps / a tiny, take-up-no-room-curl. / I want to live like him, too, / rising twice or thrice a day, / a lift up from a stomach, / a grin to an n, / a head-to-tail unfurl…

I lost my virginity while the dragon fell. When the enormous canvas beast faltered, people flocked beneath it. Maybe they hoped their attention would encourage it to stay aloft in the dead air, like zealots of a dying god refusing to believe its power could ever wane….

The following three found poems are from the collection Roger That […]

I haven’t been to the place where my father isn’t buried, only ashes and the idea of him. I haven’t said my goodbyes over the patch of grass where his body doesn’t lay….

I construct intimate artworks that investigate the gross romance between person and location…

Here’s the peach bathroom / that gave her new ways / to look taller—

Our eyes tripped over a four-by-four inch bronze memorial embedded in a sidewalk in Cologne, Germany…

There was a pecan tree that dropped nuts across the crabgrass that surrounded her parents’ bungalow-style home. She introduced me to her rat-dog and its seven grown puppies that surrounded me, yapping away my patience, each of them dirty and unclaimed…

In my next life I will come back as a Wild Mountain Woman…

We both tried to kill ourselves, you with / pills, me, with a razor and a bottle of wine…

Even on 5th avenue, it costs money to die. / Especially if you die in a Taco Bell drive-through / or in the kitchenware aisle of Macy’s; it costs / money to die even if you flop down dead / in your own flower garden…

While mowing the lawn, a small bird flew into my chest and stuck there. It’s America. I can’t afford health insurance…

On the first day there was stillness. For a moment nothing moved. The wind held its breath. The birds stopped in midflight—their wings pinned against the blurry space of sky.