shaaluk-gatherer in water, she can dream. so she lines the lilies with parchment palms, and wants to be breeze someday when she plucks the stalks in tender regret, fish-flecks swirling in red and blue witness a sigh nutmeg feet mired in mud, hers too, is the sigh of a shaaluk — …

By 2 a.m., skyscrapers stand buck-naked Laughing in mad sepia staccato. We buried our fathers’ ashes here, Now they rise against the night Growing taller each day – The city never sleeps, they say. By 3 a.m., a million squares go out, only the ones with the mad, the sad, the…

standstill even on our brightest days, a satin stream of yellow rooms stuck like fishbone at our throats you braided your hair with seaweed, and wore a marmalade sundress– your breasts, like two downy pigeons- wrapped the blue of shabby rooms where you poured your shadows in tall wine glasses, and…

Your bed keeps burning, girl. Angel warns me. She warns me a lot nowadays that my brain has mushroomed into a honeycomb. I do not mind the buzz. The sting, even less so. My left hand hangs limp by my shoulder, a rotting ragpiece of mauled flesh. Our house has…

A balmy July eventide, and you clench my cold clamlike palm as cedar shingles harden, like festered knuckles of Saturday old man José At times, I wish for you, to holler, ‘Black sesame rolls and pork intestine!’ pass by my graying windowpane, dragging aquamarine carts, and fatherly smiles, eaten by kelp and grease stain Days of tiny lotuscups plump shrimp puddings tiger-striped blue snail shells you’d

I.Moulting Every night, I shed my skin, and lie at the peeling, orange tub Torso limp, like a new born Mermaid I cling to flimsy pantyhoses as old ladies, wear oily fish-skin on their udders, wondering when puce polka dots ‘neath collarbones would be Art. II.Bad Dream Every night, I dream…

I. My eyes trickle sand and sweat and seasalt she is an April girl and her island is overgrown with watercress and flamingo fishes. her nipples smile at me, bits of salmon sun dripping from her lips uncouth after my starved, half lidded eyes scan past her soft red mud underthighs…

There are days you smell of sad white linen and aftershave and I let you brush off cobwebs from my back and cigarette stubs from my navel … and you drown yourself, in drunken whiffs of long withered buttercup breasts, and smoldered sea-salt smiles There are days I toss, mustard seeds and lima beans, my cluttered beads of rosary and wonder why someone with a smile like dawn breaking open would drift to sleep, to paltry thighs, and purplish

My sweet, you asked me about Insanity insanity /ɪnˈsanəti/ noun the state of being seriously mentally ill; madness. I held up peachblossom candies for you, and ruminated the whistling monster; eyes carmine, chasing me till I slipped into my greyscaled, homestead listening to mom’s sewing machine ratatat ratatat ‘Ma, I…