Today my mum said she doesn’t remember
arriving at my house with a dishcloth,
doesn’t remember me telling her
my kitten stayed overnight at the vet,
that I’d be coming over to help with bills.
What she remembers is now.
She knows her memory is a ship
leaving port without permission,
her memory is a cloud she can’t hold.
When she asks, Why is everything so hard?
I say, I don’t think you’re the only one
asking that. When I say, I have trouble 
with loss, she says, We are all leaving.
She adds: I know I won’t be around
much longer. So I ask her 
what she’ll come back as? A pig, she says, 
then laughs. I tell her I can’t imagine 
seeing a pig and having to say, 
Oh, there’s my mom! She smiles 
and says, Then maybe I’ll return 
as a hummingbird. Another conversation 
in the present. Another conversation 
I will remember alone.

I burned my life, that I might find 
A passion wholly of the mind, 
Thought divorced from eye and bone, 
Ecstasy come to breath alone. 
I broke my life, to seek relief 
From the flawed light of love and grief.

With mounting beat the utter fire 
Charred existence and desire. 
It died low, ceased its sudden thresh.
I found unmysterious flesh—
Not the mind’s avid substance—still
Passionate beyond the will.

On our first date, I admit I haven’t left since arriving to this country.
So, of course, being dramatic, I became a poet’s country.

Years after divorce, I lost a custody fight, in part, because of
my status—so, indeed, a free country.

Pho in the South End. Oxtail in Queens. Tinned fish. Cannoli in
Little Italy. No-contact delivery. The food of my country.

Fifty or so provincial patches of grass—upon closer look—leaves. 
The edge, where people live, frays in this country.

“We can work on human rights while negotiating,” the Senator 
says, “the prospects of nuclear war in our country.”

I was born in the Philippines, so my native tongue is partisanship.
I’m many parties. I’m made impartial by my country—

a professional, ministerial office holder. A biblical fortune.
It’s libidinal, the we in the ballad that makes a land.

It’s provisional, the line that cuts through sand. I is a line
with a place to stand. I is a framing device. What good is a nation. 

Parts of speech like mine fragment. Cut. Clean. I’m rightless 
but I have capital. Charge me, Dujie, precis a person. 

A firm hand. The shadow waves of satin.
I am not yet flesh. He calls me baby,
and I touch my face. I’m searching for god
when I oil my body in the mirror. To love it
means to love a man means an opening
to another man. When I take my glasses off
all the lines blur. A body is a body without
language, I tell my girlfriend and she laughs,
mouth wide enough to hide in. She shows me
my softest parts. I dissolve into what. I forget
hiding also means a good beating, the way
passion can be suffering. I can’t believe
my whole life I never touched what made me
holy. We have bread, butter and nowhere to be.