again, been trailing
behind my lace                

                                       again, been

telling all my suns they need to hold
a holy but even summer’s a slicker,
mama, a wash,
                           & another thing is

thunder, I may wish
                      for the sword but I’m soft
in the skirt when I see

                                     the girls soft
in theirs, I know, the unknown
                                                  parts

from them, & then it’s a fury in the
May my mind lost

                         as if the garden God
pruned His men out of
                                    fed the fire out
from under feeling

                          what I feel what I tell
myself to remember

                        sulfur, smoked between

her lips I heard
                                  the coming of
the Lord but couldn’t loose
                                myself, mama,
couldn’t burn my bad

                                old beauty down
to the cherry topping a tube of paper
rolled around then licked, livid,
                                                 was her
tongue dried
                       honey, burnt marvel,
the slats of a barn raised up
                                          hallelujah
the hands

                 said they feared a Lord with
ugly lips, I know

                       it’s not right but I
don’t

            know what my left is doing,
mama, under
                        the hunger I found my
self in half
                   a mine & half
                                             a her

bodied, cold as cut grocery
                                roses, a bloomed
sickness all pink smelling, mama, & I
don’t know if it’s my

                               self or your God
I should blame.

Dad thinks my forehead is too Godzilla, too Tarzan, too Wonder Woman,
tells me not to tie my hair back,
exposing it, like it’s the Frankenstein Monster
from beneath my childhood bed,
or the mollusk that challenged the world,
and Dad, I love you, but you should know
that I’m a nightmare as a woman
who can make the earth stand still,
calling all UFOs from planets beyond
to paint me on canvas just as I am:
a Chinese girl nicknamed Yellow Fever,
chowing down on all the pork buns
and chicken biscuits and shrimp bánh mì,
at the buffet, and of course, all the men

as I star in my own B-movie, give it an XXX,
every girl’s dream of playing opposite
King Kong, and you know I’m not some Fay Wray type
who screams at the sight of a hand,
and Dad, I think about all the ape toys
you bought me when I was a child,
because you never wanted me to be alone,
never wanted me to go a day without
laughing or plotting, and did I mention
that you were born on Halloween
which makes me half evil—I’m joking,
but Dad, you’ve got to let me keep my forehead,
despite your old school Chinese beliefs
of girls hiding their warrior brains,
and I know you’re just looking out for me,

but my forehead has its own life,
like an invisible screen—one-way glass
where the ad men are watching the women
try on lipstick, but in my forehead
it’s the other way around, because let’s let
the boys play, and the girls watch for once,
because every lip could use a bit more
rouge, purple, crimson, burnt orange, hot pink,
how at once, I want to dress up
as a flight attendant, an accountant,
someone at the front of the class holding a ruler
and yes, if I fill out a survey
from a sex magazine, I’m checking off
forehead as my favorite body part.

Red-throated hummingbirds spar above

the magnolia. Upwind, something grilled.

The dogs are still alive, yap at whitetail in

the cornfield. The rooster hasn’t chased us

down the driveway, so no one got fed up,

loaded the shotgun. Father’s heart doesn’t

yet float on a pillow of fat. The miscarriage

is years off. Summers, we bleach hair with

lemon, are warm as gold on skin, haven’t

glimpsed the shapes we’ll be hammered in.

Today, I read of scientists’ warnings
about the potential dangers of sex
robots and thought of you. Some blame
the rise of right-wing populism
on postmodern windbags like you, holed
up in your university office, giving head
to your shadow. But Jean, you were right—
we are living in the desert of the real,
where signs metastasize like cancer cells,
and who hasn’t felt the Foucauldian
grip around her wrists, her ankles?
Even desire a simulacrum of itself.
I drowned in you as if in a frozen lake,
but either I or the lake was dreaming.

is if you ever strapped yourself
to a giant eyeball or tried to hold
a beach ball underwater or thrown up
on a whale watch or listened to every
King Crimson box set at least twice
you know what I mean when I say a crash
helmet’s useless when the crash is in
your own skull. I doubt many of us would do
what Jim did when bears came to his bird
feeders and the end-of-the-world witnesses
came to his door. See what I mean about
the eyeball? The idea is the mind
has wings. The idea being when the dog
runs off in the dark, darkness is your dog.

Historically, the unknown was used
to staunch battlefield wounds.
Now there’s a spray. The unknown
assumes too much, objects Annabell
trying to break up with herself,
like anyone’s here is the first place.
There are rules about touching
someone else’s unknown no one’s
learning in grade school anymore.
Here’s one now.
Boiling point unknown,
cleave disposition, event horizon,
its animal origami unknown
so stop poking.
I thought the idea was not
to have our brains sucked out
by a giant radioactive leech
or an English department
or is that just me? After
the third surgery, I don’t scare
so easily but who isn’t jumpy
as an astronaut recollecting
crash-landing spontaneously
in the Sea of Tranquility,
O2 running out?
The news from the moon isn’t good.
The news from the elephants worse.
Centuries ago, a little girl could
watch a funny bird kicking leaves
until the hand of god came out
and she became Emily Dickinson
and the universe milkweed
as the quantum predicts.
A lot harder now.
It’s all paved over.
God’s institutionalized, murderous.
Most of the universe won’t show up
and it messes with you
so you invent fish blowing tubas,
yo-yoing angels to flesh things out.
Layer after layer of shellac.
Screws in pianos.
Fingerprints in snowflakes.
First you have to love death
says Eluard like it’s not
his black raincoat saying it,
like anything his raincoat says
isn’t stolen from the rain which
everyone knows around here
never touches the ground.