4 AM: The Night Before An Exam,
I draw everyone i’ve ever loved
charcoal, pencil
composition paper
I draw my father in goodwill wearing a sombrero
and his mother’s smile
I can’t seem to get his eyes right
(were they always this bright)?
I draw close friends
1 through 7
I need to be thinking about catarrhines, and locomotions of spines,
and stereoscopic eyes
I draw Darcy,
in our old bingo club classroom
wearing a happy birthday! headband
from the box of dollar store prizes
I still have the pink plastic duck on the dash of my car and Sophia has the other—what are the strategies of a mother
against infanticide?
what are the stages of a primate’s life?
I draw Uri,
who i swear, acts like they’ve known me since i was three
sitting in a school chair
pom pom hat pulled over their face
and i laugh so hard i nearly make myself dead by way of falling out of my seat and hitting my head
(just like i did when i took the photo)
I draw Sarah,
at the county fair
green t-shirt and gold glasses and red hair
I draw my brother and my sister and her children,
in the San Juans
only two and twelve years apart but i swear my niece and nephew
look so young compared to us siblings
Gene flow -
also known
as admixture is the process of allele frequencies changing as a result of
of interbreeding or the movement of a population to the other
I draw a strange picture of my mother,
bike helmet and fleece vest and a face without rest
(no wonder i left the nest)
there’s a vain page
full of self-portraits
borderline ego-whorish
why do i have so much tit in this pic? damn look at that waist and that pretty incongruent face—allopatric speciation is the division of a species as the result of geographic barriers resulting in different phenotypes for the
new population
I draw a series of crushes
from the mind
(and i can still remember the way Zac pushed his thigh against mine)—platyrrhines’ root is derived from platyrrhini meaning ‘broad nosed’
I draw the people i don’t talk to anymore
drifted or mutilated
something in it’s faded.
Do you remember when we were going down Race St in your car and then—
The Siamang is an endangered arboreal gibbon native to Asia. NWM (New World Monkey) or OWM (Old World Monkey)?
I scribble down beloved faces
looking for traces
See the beauty
—what we define as beauty is screwed, because i swear it's the catch in the light or the way Sophia's eyes looked so bright cradling an opossum or my sister in 2002 looking like a fool—
in all of them
And i think to myself it’s a real shame
that half of them
deride, deny, despise
themselves
When i draw you,
I am saying i love you the only way
i know how to do
I am begging you
to see yourselves the way I do
Parabolic Dental Arcade
I am trying to write a poem about oranges
About gnashing teeth and how it feels for someone to love you
even when you look primally stupid
humans’ jaws are characterized by
a u-shaped parabolic curve
dental formula 2:1:2:3
this, in many respects sets us apart from the rest of
the hominidae
I am trying to write a poem about desire
rind, juices, sticky flesh
runs down my chin
obnoxious tongue darts out to lick it off
dental arcade refers to the:
curved rows of teeth
on the upper and
lower jaw
I am trying to write about the feeling of being hunched over the kitchen sink
tearing apart the rawhide skin
fingernails sunk in
feeling like you’re taking part in some hideously lustful sin
unlike some apes,
our teeth do not have spaces
to sharpen our canines
despite this, at 162 psi
humans have got one hell of a bite
I am trying to write about the abstract feeling of hunger
about gnawing and wanting and longing
about citrus and seeds and pulp and spit and incisors
and the way it feels to be desired—
no, I am trying to write about
fucking
oranges
Armada
sometimes I wonder what my grandfather saw on that battleship,
port cities doused in napalm
Saigon set on fire
he was just an electrical engineer,
my mother says
he never saw combat
what did you see out there?
when I close my eyes hard enough,
I can picture myself standing beside him
watching people die
along the shoreline
you’ve got two options, son: join the army or the navy
so he shipped out
(he reads Catch-22 in bootcamp but I don’t know it til he wanders into my
house
while I’m reading it on the couch)
there’s things he’ll never say
(is he scared in the clear light of day?)
i’m old enough to know he’s no hero
i’m also old enough to know not to bring up Vietnam or the words bomb or sarong
(i learn this when I am ten and sitting on the backporch waiting for him to stop screaming the house
down
over a
crossword)
what did you see out there?
I see old photos of him sometimes,
hidden in the wallpapered corners of my mother’s dresser
holding my grandmother (and all her rage is in my mother now)
there ain’t no light in his eyes
and i wonder where it died
Water-Toothed, My Brother Slips Into A Stream
Salmon go home to die
I saw you there, in the stream
You were so young there,
Fish rotting on the riverbank
Meadow-child
Three-trickster-ravens
Picking out the maggots
Their eggs,
You stepped around them so carefully,
Like separating salt from water
Skin from blood
The living dead,
swam all around you
red-backed
and hook-jawed
but you didn’t seem to care
And you are destined to die in the place of your birth
Because this is the place that made you ugly
And this is the place that made you angry
And this is the place that made you soft
And the salmon will always be there to rot.
A Poem For The Burnt Out Belarusian Houses
this is the poem,
for the 628 belarusian villages
burned alive
matchstick-frame houses
with their people inside
while they watched you die
they led you to the square
and slaughtered you there
this is the poem,
for the grandmother
laid living dead in the street
why bother, says one to the other
they killed you with laughter
this is the poem,
for the mother
who tried to push her child
out a window
clinging to your shirt,
wailing, your babies
died screaming
this is the poem,
for the father
trying to shove his way
out of the flaming barn
they shot at your feet when you wouldn’t listen
beating your fists bloody on the door
this is the poem,
for the boy
turned partisan
the one who escaped
hidden in the trees,
a rifle over his knees
he no longer dreams
This is a poem,
for the children of the Khatyn massacre
that is to say,
the ghosts
left behind
in the belarusian countryside
immolated
for nothing.
The Women in the Trees
Let me tell you the story,
of the women in the trees
A girl,
draws water from a well
the forest, all temperate and windy in the mountains draws back
her rebozo sticks to her arms
clay pot jabs against her waist
things are done differently in the mountains
water-slick hands
dirt and masa beneath her nails
she's only thirteen
that's old enough
A grandmother,
older than the revolution
tucked herself away during the Cristero
old enough to remember when men dangled from the trees,
sits
frowning
kneading at stone
mortar and pestle
push and pull
there was no electricity, yet, not in the mountains
The girl,
her granddaughter
pours the water into the adobe lavadero
splashes her skirt a little
no running water yet either in the mountains
The grandmother,
kneading
cross dangling from her neck
on her knees, penitent flattening masa
tells her
to go get more
everything is done by hand here in the mountains
The girl,
chipped clay pot in hand
twin braids,
the way her mother used to do
does as asked
twisting and pulling
rope stinging her calloused palms
she's only a child
but she's got hands
like she's been working since she was born
A man,
wanders out of the arboles
swaying trees that break apart for him
he calls out to her
a glint in his eye
a friend, he calls himself
The girl,
she hoists up her pot
and her skirts
and tells him that he's gone the wrong way
preparing to run
The man smiles,
and descends upon her
you want this, he says
i want you, he says
it's love at first sight, he says
and wraps his arms around her
she screams
she runs up the hill
fast feet can only do so much
against a man
he catches her
the clay pot shatters
it was a different time, but we knew it was bad even then, in the mountains
he hurts her
simply
angrily
she claws and screams and bites and cries
jagged edges of clay digging into her back
The man,
wild-eyed
blood-hungry
sinks his knife
over and over in her chest
until she is more wound than girl
The grandmother,
runs down the hill
down the ranchero steps
past the chickens
past the trees
flour stuck to her fingers
shrieking the name of her child's child
he stabs her
forty-two times
they only have open-casket funerals in the mountains
her arms
are covered in defensive wounds
grandmother-skin all worn and sagged
sliced open
to the bone
her daughters,
away
what a tragedy, whispers the chismosa
stand quiet
at the viewing
grandmother and granddaughter, abuelita y nieta, laid out like wounded angels
takes two days before the viewing is over
before the Church says it's alright to bury them
their refuge is in heaven now
The man,
flees
before he can be strung up
there are no police in the mountains
The daughters,
hear
whispers,
convocations,
allegations,
of the man who did it
a slip of tongue
a twist of fate
word of mouth
he who hurts is here
this was how we did things in the mountains
braided hair, just like their mother's mother
knives belted to their waists
poised low in the trees
lying in wait
as the man,
walking home
along the dirt road
gnawed on a nectarine
pit and juices jutting against his teeth
daughters,
mother-blood hot and angry
descended upon him
his nectarine, laid in the red dirt, an afterthought
as they drew into him
and cut