any way you slice it i was born for a good time

some of my primary interests include pomp
circumstance
occasion
and carousing

love a kickback and a kiki
very much love a tea

weddings
graduations
meg’s monday night birthday function i stayed at waaaay too late for a monday night

i’m mariah carey on qvc repeatedly describing herself
and everything she loves as “festive”

i’m andré leon talley specifying he wear a caftan
for his cremation

my dearest ellery said he can’t remember a boring day in his life
i’m free will agnostic
but with each conscious choice toward that ethos

the need for sleep
the need to labor
two little devils strapped to my back who synergize
to ruin quality time

just rude
needy
and greedy

depending on who you ask
i’m going to hell and all my girls are too
i’m afterlife agnostic but if some kind of something comes next
what else to call it besides the afters, the very last afters

and if my girls are there with me
i’m good

we’ll know who to haunt and do it well
dressed to the nines in maggot-drenched couture

^{translated from the Chinese by Arthur Waley}

A long time ago
I went on a journey,
Right to the corner
Of the Eastern Ocean.
The road there
Was long and winding,
And stormy waves
Barred my path.
What made me
Go this way?
Hunger drove me
Into the World.
I tried hard
To fill my belly:
And even a little
Seemed a lot.
But this was clearly
A bad bargain,
So I went home
And lived in idleness.

III. Now rose in purple pomp the breezy dawn,
And crimson dew-drops trembled on the lawn;
Blaz’d high in air the temple’s golden vanes,
And dancing shadows veer’d upon the plains.—
Long trains of virgins from the sacred grove,
Pair after pair, in bright procession move,
With flower-fill’d baskets round the altar throng,
Or swing their censers, as they wind along.
The fair Urania leads the blushing bands,
Presents their offerings with unsullied hands;
Pleas’d to their dazzled eyes in part unshrouds
The goddess-form;—the rest is hid in clouds.

     “Priestess of Nature! while with pious awe
Thy votary bends, the mystic veil withdraw;
Charm after charm, succession bright, display,
And give the Goddess to adoring day!
So kneeling realms shall own the Power divine,
And heaven and earth pour incense on her shrine.

    “Oh grant the Muse with pausing step to press
Each sun-bright avenue, and green recess;
Led by thy hand survey the trophied walls,
The statued galleries, and the pictur’d halls;
Scan the proud pyramid, and arch sublime,
Earth-canker’d urn, medallion green with time,
Stern busts of Gods, with helmed heroes mix’d,
And Beauty’s radiant forms, that smile betwixt.

    “Waked by thy voice, transmuted by thy wand,
Their lips shall open, and their arms expand;
The love-lost lady, and the warrior slain,
Leap from their tombs, and sigh or fight again.
—So when ill-fated Orpheus tuned to woe
His potent lyre, and sought the realms below;
Charm’d into life unreal forms respir’d,
And list’ning shades the dulcet notes admir’d.—

“Love led the Sage through Death’s tremendous porch,
Cheer’d with his smile, and lighted with his torch;—
Hell’s triple Dog his playful jaws expands,
Fawns round the God, and licks his baby hands;
In wondering groups the shadowy nations throng,
And sigh or simper, as he steps along;
Sad swains, and nymphs forlorn, on Lethe’s brink,
Hug their past sorrows, and refuse to drink;
Night’s dazzled Empress feels the golden flame
Play round her breast, and melt her frozen frame;
Charms with soft words, and sooths with amorous wiles,
Her iron-hearted Lord,—and Pluto smiles.—
His trembling Bride the Bard triumphant led
From the pale mansions of the astonish’d dead;
Gave the fair phantom to admiring light,—
Ah, soon again to tread irremeable night!”

years from now they’ll ask us if it was still—the Quiet?
and yes we’ll say, we were stirred but it was still.
stirred?
we were stirred, we learned the shape of our own ears
the soft animism of mortality
we looked at each other’s skin, from a distance,
and felt we could break at anything at all
a piercing thought even
we thought we’d lose everything, we thought we already had

so we were stirred.
but it was quiet?
but it was distillery-quiet

and there was fear in our hearts but the love
it was decanted and poured freely
we still chatter about it like it was honey
and we learned how to be kinder to bees

we called our grandmothers and asked them for videos
and they sent us anything at all
grass
ovaltine
and we told our friends we loved them
and we looked at our uncles from across the street
screens
hands on our hearts, and they melted.

from?
stillness, fullness, sweetness, whatever we had.
we learned how big we were and how small
like those girls who broke your whole heart?
nodding
so you could see where all the pieces were
how capacious it was, anything can belong in there
anything at all
like those girls. but a whole earth.

He closed the door.
January bit through the walls.

The bed kept the warmth
seventeen minutes, then none.
No witness but the sheets.

I thought I stayed.

I inventoried the fridge.
The cream had turned.
I was late to the news of myself.

I didn’t starve.
I just never came back to the table.

Even hunger
has standards.

I left later,
quiet enough that air forgot me.
I went the way women go
who survive too long.

Afterward
I moved through rooms without arriving.
I lived like a light you forget to turn off.

The cream soured.
And I was elsewhere
long before I knew it

±That after all this I have still chosen life.
That I have made a way out of one death
in friendship and sex. My Virgil is weak.

The first circumstance the Georgics lead
me: to a question I can farm still in hell,
pretty as it seems to dig out a black pot

to return a shy sapling to itself. A rich man
buys a pasture, 4-acres, tills only a quarter
of his land. Wildflowers, the rest: seeds,

and hope drifting under. A green brigade
to surprise us: purple asters bright cut,
upside down, in reverse, hung to dry.

May I invoke Blake? A grand mother
hanging on the wrong side of the street.
Heliotrope-me from a distance: deadhead

greying and delicate to the passing breeze.
Fragrant after of oil and age, flake. Vigil
-me awake to a life worth saving past

my ken. Friends bear scissors to cut me
down. Press me to a book I have loved,
or so I may have said once in passing.

Asa will know I have born seeds, and slip
my dried life into an envelope, a red pen
taking my name:  JIMIN. Dust to seed

in the unbiblical cadence of a maimed poet:
JIMIN. Esther snips my stem to curl me
into a ring. How fond she is of the victor

in Victorian. Patricia comes bearing herself.
My oldest, dearest friend who has survived
herself so fully in ways I was never able to

gain. In my return my lovers come. Matthew,
first love who is married. Gabriel, my second,
married. In my failures you have found a new

way out and I am not unhappy. I suppose
I am to be farming, led as I am by a mystic
who has written before me. I have spread
myself in a sweat of a forgiveness I must

receive. I have not led a bad life but should I
like to do it better isn’t this what hell is for?
From a distance swaying with rake lifted. High
progress I give myself. Forgive me, myself.

on the subway lose control    of the rain     in her hair
by untying the tight pact of her bun

Help     is the new Amen     Amen, I’m drowning
in women who know what they want

you bread the tilapia   hands gloved in powder
while I tell you about the trip home
a woman spilled her groceries

on the platform eight oranges rolled across the dirty floor

I watched her recollect the planets
and knew something

small and bright as a lime    I bent down
Can I amen you?  and after being born
and born again I was born
again—

do you know what I mean, tilapia hands, let me
turn on the faucet    I know the joy

of Marie Curie sleeping with radium
women aren’t lovely   they’re love

we live in the bitchery of honesty
you, you     most especially
murdering lemon

over fish and singing
a dum-dum song about my ass
you, you     magentamouth transfixtress my magnet

those oranges constellated from yellow line to trash can
her fingernails
lurched fuchsia and turquoise
a cigarette parked behind her ear

cigarettes and fruit, what she put in her mouth
we gathered the flock of

at the top of those subway stairs
hugged in white light
a silver-haired woman

dressed to the nines and tens
pulled the leashes
of two saint bernards
mannish with drool
manifested their attention

and mine     a red kerchief’s splash and woo
at her throat
while down below
the stranger awarded me

an orange which I later peeled in one go while the snow ate my clothes like a man

the air smelled floral
like the earth

was ours     and bragging

& covered in smudges & peeling suede & sparked arguments
every time I wore them out of the house. Yes, I wanted to wear
those shoes, the ones that looked like we couldn’t afford anything

better.  I’d been practicing to clownwalk / glide / modeled my body’s
movement after Usher & slid on concrete smoother than slicing
an avocado’s flesh. I wanted to say: I don’t need beauty.

The first time I believed in sorcery was when I saw Jesse windmill
his six-foot-two body into a freeze, lifting his long legs
with such precision I almost cried. I wanted to become liquid,

for my body to wave & shimmer & never be forced into rolling
my hips if the beat was hard enough to six-step to. The best b-boys
uprocked with anchors in their feet, placed red cups on the floor

to show me where to land. They said if I could do a handstand
they could teach me to break, that my footwork was good enough
for an invitation to the crew, for their eyes not to linger on my chest

when I danced. But they couldn’t explain why every b-boy
carried loose change in his pockets—a second after the music blared,
they went airborne, littering the courtyard with quarters, laughing.

We freestyled every day after school but never prepared a routine.
This, like everything, was a practice in freedom. We needed the music,
each other, our specially selected sneakers to assist in the fantasy

that we too were elemental: water, fire, smoke, math. We defied
the teachers that hated us with our daily dose of Kanye, Nas,
gloves & cardboard boxes, horchata & gas station snacks.

Somewhere between snaking & signing, I forged my gender
into something my body could interpret. I found its humor.
I opted out of beauty & became something else for a while.

My mother never saw me dance.