I Feel, And I’m Tormented.

where therein I have a dream

that I’m not scared when I see police

and my brother felt no knee

while my mother cries and pleads,

she could create a Time Machine,

stop our meddling overseas,

never choke her life of glee,

delete all her dear babies

this achievement works for me,

I wouldn’t wish my heart won’t beat

into my mind it should be me,

but I wake up with sweat in beads,

the memory a ghost over my bed

forever stuck unrealized 

like a private daydream 

trapped in another head,

the remainings of my presence

produced by fever,

where she insists she showers alone,

just leave her,

promise her damp skin remains untouched

and refuse to deliver,

watch the reaper fix your mistake

tributaries dear fuse dear dynamite

and wet match. Amen.

The water don’t love me and she don’t love me and maybe I’m drowning

from the inside.

Who put the river in my arm said don’t

let the water?

Maybe the knife

got a hard kiss and a sweet bite.

Maybe the knife only metal

and wood and a bit of brass

but maybe it know

how to love the inside of me.

Maybe I don’t believe in meaning in god

in plans in paths and the closer I am

to my animal self the more human I am

the more I let myself break

like a wave. Ocean

in my arm. Stone in my arm. Iron and wood and brass in my arm.

when even your friend, after hearing the story,

says, My mother would never put up with that.

Fight the urge to rattle off statistics: that,

more often, a woman who chooses to leave

is then murdered. The hundredth time

your father says, But she hated violence,

why would she marry a guy like that?—

don't waste your breath explaining, again,

how abusers wait, are patient, that they

don't beat you on the first date, sometimes

not even the first few years of a marriage.

Keep an impassive face whenever you hear

Stand By Your Man, and let go your rage

when you recall those words were advice

given your mother. Try to forget the first

trial, before she was dead, when the charge

was only attempted murder; don't belabor

the thinking or the sentence that allowed

her ex-husband's release a year later, or

the juror who said, It's a domestic issue—

they should work it out themselves. Just

breathe when, after you read your poems

about grief, a woman asks, Do you think

your mother was weak for men? Learn

to ignore subtext. Imagine a thought-

cloud above your head, dark and heavy

with the words you cannot say; let silence

rain down. Remember you were told,

by your famous professor, that you should

write about something else, unburden

yourself of the death of your mother and

just pour your heart out in the poems.

Ask yourself what's in your heart, that

reliquary—blood locket and seedbed—and

contend with what it means, the folk saying

you learned from a Korean poet in Seoul:

that one does not bury the mother's body

in the ground but in the chest, or—like you —

you carry her corpse on your back.”

The iron, the tang of metal & rust.

I held a penny

on my tongue.

The taste shocked me,

its brown-gold sweet.

I roamed the field

angry & burned

asking bitter questions of a gun.

Dance is a body’s refusal

to die. But, oh, your gone hair.

The flame & orange flare.

Our forms, our least known selves — 

barrel, sugar, & stench.

Your pleas, looped in writing,

the stutter of a body’s

broken grammar.”

Of my cousin the snake.

There’ll come a time when your godlikeness

Will make you quiver and quake”

hand me down,

on me a few sizes too big

after the drugs took

our mother’s sanity,

our brother,

my irises as my pupils enlarge.

I’d give up my eyesight

just to see our brother wear them again.

I’ll buy our mom new pairs

until she learns not to let them stain.

You’ll take a glance at the fabric

Sharing moms treatment

Back off in the deep end

so I’ll bring the pity starkly

and agree to throw a party

if you bring the gun and oxy,

I’ll eat them like they’re smarties,

then blow my brain all on my body—

one has got to end my story,

a page I like dog eared

with no intention to go back,

when I loved Annabel Lee,

but hated to read romance,

alcohol I used to force down,

so open up with ease,

surrender to release,

let me see you scream,

and curse if you need,

to too many

fists flying,

breaking doors over my head,

morning drinks,

pill bottles, and racists in mom’s bed