i like you because we’re full of the same celebrities

at the next station the doors will open on the right hand side

and celebrities will be released into the carriage

*bleats like a goat*

that’s right

this goat loves to sing

i like you because of the national anthem

but only if the lyrics to the national anthem go something like: ♫ i carry a USB everywhere at all times with conair.avi on it no matter what ♫

*bleats*

at the next station the doors will open on the left hand side and somebody will canoe into the centre of the internet and begin the evacuation by convincing a family of whales to beach themselves

*unceasing bleats*

holiday idea: printer/scanner/beachball

i like you because pluto is a planet again but i don’t think pluto really cares what you call it

“i am an imperfect celestial sphere of ice and memory and awesome,” said pluto

*bleats as the goats do*

current mood: washing the back of a platypus with a tiny mop as being the highest paid job in the world, higher than any CEO

poem: you are loved

earliest childhood memory: waking to the sound of the invention of flavoured salt

brochure: printer/scanner/chicken salt

*bleats*

my oldest friend is a vending machine falling over in the tall grass

question: why do ppl always profusely apologise but never profusely pole vault?

myth busted: bob dylan is banksy

start-up idea: re-term ‘human’ and ‘humans’ as ‘non-platypus’ and ‘non-platypodes’ respectively

*weak bleats*

next stop: a salt and vinegar grease streak across your phone screen

but also across the universe

career highlight: you know you’ve made when there’s a pizza in the tree behind you

*bleats*

areas for improvement: we can’t see moths in the dark

strength: a moth’s unkillable commitment to the moon

last words: we hear their tiny moth bodies collide with kitchen appliances in the dark

I invite you to butcher my name.
No, this is not a test,
Not a trick.
If you must take a cleaver
To this foreign critter
So you can swallow
Me in bits, then do.
This identity is open for business.

Scrunch your eyebrows and cheeks
As you chew, perplexed,
As long as you reach a bit more ease
By the time the aftertaste settles
Underneath your tongue,
So reliant on muscle memory.

Take this opportunity to ask my name’s origin
So I can tell you it’s the baby name my parents did not give me.
Ask me about my homonyms
So I can explain how Mandarin
Is more of a masterpiece than you thought
When you first gazed upon a tray of transliteration.

Next time you meet an East Asian name
Don’t sass the sounds you cannot yet spell
Or laugh at its place in English-speaking arrogant America,
Rather taste it like a new wine
Let it sit in your mouth for a moment and think.
Feel free to ask the expert to say the word again slowly
When you forget what you’re digesting
Because you’re still processing.

I invite you to butcher my name because
I don’t mind your sharp knife reaction.
Slice through this confusion
So in the future you can dine elegantly,
Eat gingerly,
And make your new friend
Feel at home.

for Matthew Wayne Shepard (12/1/76- 10/12/98)

When the wind whistles
through any barbed-wire
fence you can hear him
sing your name, you

who left him hanging
there like a scare-
crow, through a
black, never-ending night

and a Laramie
prairie chill, a torture that
even the killdeer’s scree
could not see coming…

kidnapped, robbed, pistol-
whipped, then eighteen
hours in crystallizing temps
tethered to a fence

his coma was so quiet,
one of the killers would
later say, you could almost
hear ice rattling down the canyon

My hands sloppily on the wheel,
pressing, molding the spinning cylinder
thinner & thinner, until I stretch it too far
& the too smooth clay flops limply into itself.
I push things too far, I know.

You said something about how I get too close, how I smother, but I didn’t get close to you, not once.

Look here where the clay is lighter-
This is where I talked you into a corner,
my lips moving faster than my mind
knows how to keep up with,
sound bombarding, ricocheting
off blank walls & blank canvas.
I don’t want you to hurt me again, but perhaps your hands are flames.
I remember how their hot touch brushed against my skin & turned to cinders, how they once fired clay.

There was a pot we made together. Perhaps I held your hands gingerly over clay, perhaps I spun the wheel before you, perhaps I whispered.

I only wanted to make something beautiful & permanent.

I’m in fragments, fragmenting

I want to be whole again
I searched for solace in a man, perhaps I made him
of clay. Perhaps I sung life into him, I don’t know because I was busy looking

In the dark I see white bones along the side of the road and think of you.
Small, white, thin, fragile-
I am blood.
I am wine mixed with so much saltwater & lead. I poisoned the mouth of a river where they poured me in.

a fork with three tines / cracked rubber bands
snips of string in varying lengths / four nuts / seven bolts
six bits of metal / unidentified / found oxidizing in dew
a postcard from where / you wish I were
Philips head screwdriver / twenty flat head screws
expired coupons / expired aspirin / expired cheese powder
& here are speech patterns I picked up / when you were
here / a nickel / from the year your father was born
scrap fabric / nails for finishing
I spend hours in the drawer / though I know I shouldn’t
I know I shouldn’t / because I know / I’ll find what I am
what I am / looking for / the parts of you I saved intentionally
parts of you I meant to throw away / parts of me I can no longer place
& parts of me that had no place to start

Where we come from is closely related to how we die out. Some sprinkle into ash trays in Cuban bars with topless girls and dry aged tobacco. Some just die out. Much like infertile wombs. Much like stolen lunch boxes. Much like the first time you cut all your hair off, and your mom doesn’t talk to you for a while.
Our parents all look and speak a little different and our skins are pierced up in shapes a little different.
Rosary blood or pressed linen blood.
But we all save our prom corsages.
We all saved our baby teeth, Some of us just swallowed them up whole.
But I know that my feet came out first then my heart then a bunch of dried grass from my family’s graveyard then my blood, all at once. It smelt dry and forgotten in the room.
My sister was born hands first, prayer style. Asking to be saved by white doctors with blue gloves. Her lungs were filled up with June Bugs crunchy and dead. We saved them in a jar for two years, until she needed to make a trade.
When I disappear, they’re going to slip me back into the sea water where my Taino family will coat me in sand.
My flowers will all come back.
My sister is going to quietly walk into the snow before the night stars explode without warning.
Shes going to rewrite her brown anarchy.

It must have been March.
The Palo Verde trees looked
particularly lonely, but
their leaves would return
soon enough, when the
spring rain soaked their roots.

I must have been five,
maybe six, maybe child,
maybe monster. I could
never tell. I only knew
that time was my enemy.
I was growing into a body

that everyone told me was
Boy. I was fat and weird.
I cared more about the
spelling bee than football.
I played violin and had books
for friends. I called it being

happy. Other people
called it faggot, called
it dangerous, called it
too much like girl. I was
always too much sorry,
not enough fist.

The difference met my
skin like a glacier, left
craters deep as my fear.
I retreated like Palo Verde
trees in winter, surrounded by
gender’s cold touch.

I only understood Boy
when other people
branded the word on
my body with
their confusion.
Boy became bruise,

became bully,
became the laser beam in everyone’s eyes.
Boy did not live in this skin, only tried to
make itself at home here
when other people stared,
dressing me in blue and pink.

So I became green,
became Palo Verde tree.

When I first heard the
term “gender violence,”
I thought yes, it is.
I thought every inch of my
body is scar tissue, every pore
trying to erase its memory.

I thought it must be March.

I don’t take back my birth.
An end is not always undoing
Beginnings. I carry you with me
In the coincidence of my face.

The resemblance of my feet
To yours, crooked small toe
With magic shrinking toenail.
Let’s say I go back to your bedroom.
Let’s say I find you there, though
Neither you nor it exist in a shape
I recognize. Take me onto your lap.
Your bed with no sheets. If I cry
Over the purpled scars on your leg,
They’ll fold up into themselves.
You can quit wearing jeans in summer.
You may unkiss any mouth.
This is what my tears can do for you.
A bad love can’t be called a love;
Let’s imagine you taught me this
Some other way than how you did.

you and i are
living, breathing, aching proof
that there is no way for two objects
to simultaneously occupy the same space.

you and i are
parallel lines, our slopes equal
doomed never to intersect
for all infinity

there will be no formation
of something pure and new;
no marvelous reaction
to observe if you and i combine.

i have abandoned the hard sciences
for philosophy and
if your tree falls
i will not be there to hear it