brilliant elixir 
fuck me up
fuck me dead
why does
academia 
hate me 
i’m ready to
sacrifice 
my body
to a career
something 
boring like
teaching teenagers
why romeo and 
juliet did or
didn’t die make my
grandparents proud
of me again
i pour this 
into my glass and
pour my glass into
the bathtub full of
rejection letters that
call me ‘jessica’ 
instead of 
jessie
this is the year
of being normal
let’s get married and
request fuzzy bath towels
let’s get married and
i’ll wear the white dress
and makeup
and smile 
for 12 hours until
my teeth fall out
or my chin
rots academia
what did i ever 
do to you would
i not make you
proud either
are you scared
of me am i 
not worthy enough
to pay you to 
rub me raw
kill me deader
than i already am
academia all i want
to do is 
walk down your
pathways and
smell your 
million dollar
flowers i am not
so full that i cannot
hunger i am not
so tired that i 
cannot stay up
for two years 
straight 
in this scenario
you are my grandparents
and you are proud
of me and i am 
sitting at the piano
with straight white
teeth and slender
fingers men can be
proud of and i never
get too drunk and i
always stay
in this line in 
this scenario 
we never fuck
up we never 
drink 
the sun on accident
we never forget
to turn faucets 
off magical
drinkable liquid
elixir
you promised me 
more than this

I was on my back that morning
standing still & running
half-turned, fetal &
spread eagle 
& curled up 
along the edge
of the hospital bed
and the doctor says
“It’s time,” 
& I already know because
it has always been
time, time to push & she
is explaining to me
how to push, how to 
undulate you from my body
& as she explains
I bring my chin to my chest
even though my chin was already 
there & had never been there
& never would be
just like you were already there
& had never been 
& never would not be there
because I already knew & know how to push
& so I push & was pushing because
I’d always been pushing
& you appeared
blue and be-limbed
because I push you there
right there, little boy, into the world
& onto my abdomen
right where you’d forever 
never been before
and after amen.

as silent and holy as an empty church. 
a polished row of pews. you, moon
in the sky, how do you do it? 
your one-handed gravity
holding still the earth. astral magic trick, 
you newly christened old god. 
every family’s forgotten dance is a scar 
on your surface. memory like a bear trap. 
worldfodder magnet. wise old sledgehammer
once smashed through our orbit longways. we were just a pie cooling on the galactic
windowsill. now we say Light &
mean your face, stretched our whole lives
and once reached your shadow. pockmarked
queen of all ships. all flags. can’t sing
a note of worship if it doesn’t include
a word of pain. the night sky’s
opening bell and serene last call, 
nursing your craters like old wounds 
nursing your craters like children. 
your face held high and regal
through eons of the same steady bruise
and somehow you arrive to us with a bouquet
of escape of routes. i have so much
to learn from you, and not just about physics. 
how long did it take you to learn
such luminescent confidence? your brilliant
backlit halo, the way you just float and move
everything, shine your own ligaments to dust. 
when people say they love each other 
to the You and back, is it about distance
or about damage? about some man’s
lonely footprint? and what do we know 
about damage next to you, anyway? 
all our blood clots thick with time
but you have no winds to whisper
your name. sometimes the healing
does not rush through you. prehistoric ocean
or otherwise. there are no channels
you didn’t cut yourself. no way to say Over
in the dead space. no one there to hear it
but a silent star. 
and a billion other stars.

remember bodies at night

how they glow

how they bend into us

like refracted light

the memory of where a body was

after it has left its phosphorescence

you cocoon into

the spaces around things

find yourself

in auburn eyes and hazel skin

the red that flows from you

you learn that aloneness is a softness

a sky that pulls you through

you see bodies as they are

things that love you and then stop

when you wake up it’s heavy water

write down the deep green blue feelings

like paua shells

there is a pale existing in your head

a light moving in your hair

behind a colour

in the lunar month you return home

the whenua moves its arms up to greet you

climb up the hill to see the faraway beach

feel lonely like mislaid keys

it’s good to be there in the quiet

saying to yourself i’m real i’m real

as the feelings inside shrink red into shape

yeah i’ve got a lighter. can fix your filter. give you honey stick secrets and light tight roll laughter when you call me blue dream like your favorite strain like your favorite character ramona you know the blue of your dreams? yeah they’re both pierced. few things hurt so good like a needle. addict in a cute way. smoker with a toothbrush. dreamer with insomnia. liar and a poet. dream girl without problems. will ignore your worst for a sprinkle of the same. won’t shut the cartoon off till you ask for the remote or a shaved head. will lay alone with you and all of the dirty dishes. or i can wake up pretty if you want me to. i can be your party now and your home in the morning. feed you jewels of deep red pomegranates and suck the stains from the bed sheets. let you call me by any name you want when you fuck me. lick your wounds so you don’t have to. pretend you don’t have them until you don’t. and i will say goodbye before the jump so you don’t have to see me splatter. or if you want, i could rewrite the closing scene. i could change this to a happy ending. i can make you everything you want. i will make me anything if you ask me to.

In the palm of my hand I harbor
Fault lines, one-way streets,
A famous bridge half-crossed and
Another I steered from the passenger’s seat
While the driver smoked weed
Such honking dreams in the patchouli, 
Of frolicking unhindered, of
Slapping my feet in my Sunday shoes
Down my aunt’s hardwood hallway.
The earthquakes always come.
I’ve cracked off into the ocean. 
Every day’s dawn yawns a 
Salty horizon, and the fog rises off the water
And the fog rides into town, and the fog bowls me down, 
And sits on my chest, reading off a checklist of regrets
I am so thirsty
And my irises are turning gray and 
It never snows in San Francisco no matter what
The souvenirs say.

A man in a powder blue suit
offered to tell me my future
on Olive Avenue. When I tried 
to say no, he said Baby, please,
in a way that told me that he 
might know something that
I didn’t, so I held out my palm.

I used to hold out the same palm
on the playground for other girls
to read. They would tell me that 
I was destined to have five kids
and a loving husband. Maybe a 
mini van. They told me my future
with such certainty that it was 
difficult not to see some truth,
some sincerity, some genuine 
desire to wish a happy future
upon each other. So I believed them.

The man on Olive said he could see
Los Angeles and its sprawl. He
could see me there, too, but he 
wouldn’t tell me what I was doing
without another five dollars.
I looked happy, though, he said. 
Happy in Los Angeles and 
laughing in the sun. There,
in Fresno, I sought to find
an intersection of these futures.

I stay in bed til 2 then get up 
and open all the windows. 
Make coffee and walk around
the 5 x 10 space I call my living room. 
Turn my attention to the postcards
and photographs on the fridge. 
Stare hard at all that evidence. 
Whisper: See, there’s no reason to be lonely.
Smoke one cigarette and then another
on the steps out front. 
Begin to cry over my own good luck. 
I never told you this but the truth is 
I would follow you to the edges of any map. 
I never told you this
but that’s what scares me. 
And it’s not just that I love you. 
More often it’s a mixed melody
of the same idea, 
which sounds quite a lot like: thank you. 
Forgive me one last time. Come back. 
This time I mean it.

I.
I fall in love every time I fly.

Leaving Dallas: 
the medical student 
wearing headphones and 
a full headscarf just to forget her 
be-planed predicament.

Above Tucson: 
the sorority sister 
with the strawberry hair whose 
father is waiting 
at the baggage claim; they leave, 
arms over shoulders over arms.

In Denver. 
The woman in security: 
her bright eyes contradict
the softening skin on her hands
like Kleenex,
like my mother’s.

I desperately want 
to be travelling away from here 
with someone,
with one of these 
walkabout-women at my side 
on a midnight-plane to anywhere:
companionable silence, 
holding hands in anticipation.

II.
My parents call from 
twelve-and-a-half 
hours in the past 
to tell me that 
when they dropped me off 
for my flight to Seoul

on the way out—
they saw a woman
striding confidently through 
the winding Sea-Tac security, 
carrying what they were sure was 
her whole life on her back, Emryse. 
She was going off 
somewhere. 
On her next adventure.

I like to imagine 
her lived-in day-pack,
her tried-and-tested shoes;
her threadbare smile.
I like to think she was happy

because
they told me they knew 
that would be me, 
one day, and
they told me she had been 
alone.