Arriving with throats like nipped roses, like a tiny
bloom fastened to each neck, nothing else
cuts the air quite like this thrum to make the small
dog at my feet whine and yelp. So we wait—no
excitement pinned to the sky so needled and our days open
full of rain for weeks. Nothing yet from the ground speaks
green except weeds. But soon you see a familiar shadow
hovering where the glass feeders you brought
inside used to hang because the ice might shatter the pollen
junk and leaf bits collected after this windiest, wildest of winters.
Kin across the ocean surely felt this little jump of blood, this
little heartbeat, perhaps brushed across my grandmother’s
mostly grey braid snaked down her brown
neck and back across the Indian and the widest part of the Pacific
ocean, across the Mississippi, and back underneath my
patio. I’ve lost track of the times I’ve been silent in my lungs,
quiet as a salamander. Those times I wanted to decipher the mutter
rolled off a stranger’s full and beautiful lips. I only knew they
spoke in Malayalam—my father’s language—and how
terrific it’d sound if I could make my own slow mouth
ululate like that in utter sorrow or joy. I’m certain I’d be
voracious with each light and peppered syllable
winged back to me in the form of this sort of faith, a gift like
xenia offered to me. And now I must give it back to this tiny bird, its
yield far greener and greater than I could ever repay—a light like
zirconia—hoping for something so simple and sweet to sip.

A is for antipsychotics, the only advertised long term solution

B for the beta blockers bought to slow the boom boom of a beating heart

C as in chronic: (of an illness) persisting for a longtime or constantly recurring, causing comorbidity, so they recommend cognitive behavioural therapy

D dials the DSM-5 handing out diagnosis after diagnosis, giving label to your distractibility and decreased need for sleep, so they recommend dialectical behavioral therapy where they teach you distress tolerance to dilute your delusions

E is ensure, the vanilla-flavored meal replacement drink for when you cannot eat during medication switches to the extended release formula

F is for your feelings, experienced at an alarming intensity in comparison to the average human, they tell you this is dangerous (they being doctors who don’t know your name if not reading it off of your file, they being doctors who diagnose and prescribe after ten minutes in a room with you) they tell you this can be fatal, which, honestly, sounds kind of fucking fun

G for the gatorade, one bottle in every room, two in the bathroom

H takes you to the hospital, high off hypomania, where you will check yourself in and admit you need the help. Here they will diagnose you with something we used to call, “hysteria”

I is for interpersonal effectiveness, the module in DBT that teaches you how to keep your friends despite your irritable instability

J is for “Just kidding!” after you’ve said too much, too quick

K is when you promise you will not kill yourself, without calling her first

L is the lithium, to stop the lows, to lighten the load

M represents MAD pride, a mass madness movement for mental health service users, and the aligned, advocating that individuals with mental illness should be, could be, proud to be MAD

N is for normal, you need badly to be so, and so you take the pills but all you are is numb and nauseous and still quite neurotic

O is overprescribed! Four years on 250 mg of lithium and four on 250 mg of seroquel, all before you can legally drink

P is for the panic disorder the psychiatrist diagnoses you with. It explains your paranoia (but not your promiscuity) you leave his office with a prescription for propranolol

Q is for the quetiapine you still can’t quit

R is racing thoughts and for the rate of suicide, running at 19% for everyone with this disorder

S is for side effects. You are so stupidly sedated but at least now you sleep off the sexual trauma and suspected schizophrenia

T is still triggered, despite every treatment

U is for unemployed, the long stretches where you are more ill than you are useful

V is for the vacant look in your eyes and the voices in your head

W is for the withdrawal, when you stop taking the wellbutrin

X is for xanax, which they’ll put you on for three months you don’t remember at 16

Y is for yoga, which actually, you practise daily. It helps, yet you still want to die

Z is for zyprexa, the drug you finally refuse to take

All frantic and drunk with new warmth, the bees
buzz and blur the holly bush.
Come see.
Don’t be afraid. Or do, but
everything worth admiring can sting or somber.
Fix your gaze upward and
give bats their due,
holy with quickness and echolocation:
in summer’s bleakest hum, the air
judders and mosquitoes blink out,
knifed into small quick mouths. Yes,
lurking in some unlucky bloodstreams
might be rabies or histoplasmosis, but almost
no one dies and you
owe the bats for your backyard serenity.
Praise the cassowary, its ultraviolet head, its
quills and purposeful claws. Only one
recorded human death, and if a boy
swung at you, wouldn’t you rage back? Or P.
terribilis, golden dart frog maligned by Latin,
underlauded and unsung, enough poison to
vex two elephants into death but ardent
with eggs and froglets, their protection a neon
xyston. And of course,
yes, humans. Remarkable how our
zeal for safety manifests: poison, rifle, vanishment.

A boy can wear a dress
    by cliff or by
creek, by God or by
   dark in the caul of the devil.

A boy can wear a dress
    bought with a tin-
can full of cherries on the
    day of his daddy’s dying.

A boy can weep in his dress—
    by boat or by plane, he
can sleep in his dress,
    dance in his dress, make

eyes in his dress at the
    flame at the hotel bar.
Goddamn it all to graceland,
    how stunning he looks

in his blue cotton dress,
    just stunning! Nothing can
keep him from
    losing our minds, sluicing

my heart in that way he does.
    Nothing can keep him.
On the walk to his daddy’s wake,
    persons of rank may

question his dress,
    raise their brows at his dress,
so he twirls and twirls
    till his dress is its own

    unaddressed question, un-
veiling the reasons he
    wakes every morning, like an
x-ray for colors beneath

    your colors, your
zygote soul, your naked twirl—

  —after Remedios Varo’s Mujer saliendo del psicoanalista

another face has sprouted in my chest
beastly, that’s me, a super freak
cavorting with your skull in my grasp
displaced personalities cannot be cloaked
ever, they will grow like a haunted
fever of wispy hair
gathered in a basket, along with time, a
half-filled vial of poison &
illusions of tick-tock-clocking syringe
just let me explain:
killing myself is not an option
let me try to live with my
multiple personas and their infinite masks, why
not weave them into a poncho
of chartreuse green, grow them,
pouch them, wear them like horns
question my memories, befriend
radical thoughts and nightmares
solemn my specters behind
tenuous doors with intimidating bells
understand the unexplainable, develop
venom as Tilda Swinton couture 
when dreams become a snail shell planted
X, marks the spot of this treasure I shall reveal,
yell on a mountain, YES, this is mine, I will
zap my fears—I can face all the faces, darling, of course I can

After I fumble another conversation about love, I think, 
Bird wouldn’t have hesitated for a moment, played 
coy as if everyone didn’t already know what #33 would do, 
daggers for eyes, soft hands ready to guide that orange ball 
exactly where he said he would. I’ve taken shots before, 
fear be damned, and missed more than I made, 
gone up and down the court enough to know 
halftime won’t fix everything. 
I’m bruised, my knee barks, my shot is shit, and I 
just need the bank to be open for once, for the glass to 
kiss the ball back, softly. I’m always writing to you 
like a last-ditch prayer, a heave from halfcourt 
moving like a meteor, like I could turn this white page of 
nothing into a night sky, these words constellations, 
old messages that would say in a hundred different 
shapes that I love you. All I ever wanted was Bird’s game, 
quietly telling opponents the spot on the floor where he would 
rise, after a screen and two dribbles, in the corner like a yellow 
sun and let the ball fly. I’m always writing to you 
to remind myself that all love poems are about the future. 
Under the bright lights of this metaphor, I’m digging deep, not 
vanishing when it matters most, to find the heart to take a shot 
when the clock winds down to nothing. The X-Man, 
Xavier McDaniel, laughs when he tells of how Bird took his heart once. 
You already know you have mine when the clock says 
zero my no-look mouth, my honey crossover, my silky net.

^{an Abecedarian}

Allegiance to the flag is a start. A promise.
Begin there, says the teacher.
Come, and we’ll climb the Hill at sunup,
Daring, not disruptive. Dusk metes out mornings for
Everyone who makes room
For freedom to mold another day, a lump of soft clay.
Go places, let my guitar emulate Leonard Cohen’s
Hallelujah, we will rock Hendrix style. Let Lennon sing:
It’s so hard, to sing for America. Imagine!
Just once, can we figure how to rebel this—what
Karma will justify sedition to reclaim a lost election?
Liberty gasping between light & the dark. To
Man up takes bravery, says the teacher.
Now, now, how did we get here, asks a student.
O, tell us how, you self-
Possessed Patriots.
Quickness is not the order of time, said an elder.
Repeatedly we vowed persistence,
Stood reigning just like dawn & dusk, till
Truth, the goddess of life gonged.
Untethered you’ll arrest the truth, &
Vision too will wane if only a biased whim.
We are You—Us is America,
XY YX XXXY YXY, limitless
Yes! Proclaim: P for peace, E for earth, A for all.
Zero in on C for climate, E for equality. Our unity.