apricots & brown teeth in browner mouths nashing dates & a clementine’s underflesh under yellow nail & dates like auntie heads & the first time someone dried mango there was god & grandma’s Sunday only song & how the plums are better as plums dammit & i was wrong & a June’s worth of moons & the kiss stain of the berries & lord the prunes & the miracle of other people’s lives & none of my business & our hands sticky and a good empty & please please pass the bowl around again & the question of dried or ripe & the sex of grapes & too many dates & us us us us us & varied are the feast but so same the sound of love gorged & the women in the Y hijab a lily in the water & all of us who come from people who signed with x’s & yesterday made delicacy in the wrinkle of the fruit & at the end of my name begins the lot of us

^{for my favorite auntie, Jeanette}

Sometimes I think I’m never going to write a poem again
and then there’s a full moon.

I miss being in love but I miss
myself most when I’m gone.

In the salty wet air of my ancestry
my auntie peels a mango with her teeth

and I’m no longer
writing political poems; because there are

mangoes and my favorite memory is still alive.
I’m digging for meaning but haunted by purpose

and it’s an insufficient approach.
What’s the margin of loss on words not spent today?

I’m getting older. I’m buying smaller images to travel light.
I wake up, I light up, I tidy, and it’s all over now.

::  lists  ::

genres
not-genres

survival
surveillance

::   lists  ::

bath salts
meds
nail stuff
grapefruit juice
keys
protein
tequila
other keys
gin
grapefruit juice
other other keys
hair

::   lists   ::

things i won’t be answering:
emails
voice mails
really any mail without a stamp
phone calls
call outs
call ins
ungrounded theories
anything that begins “can i touch...”

::  states  ::

potentially
pointless

surveillance
survival

::  states  ::

selfish
she invites
all the curses
(no curse for you!)

::  states  ::

how are we all so busy now
again

::  lists  ::

my name
the way my name
is said

yawn