​something happened to me / the swiss knife chipped off a strand of my tooth / now i miss zero point zero zero one percent of enamel / nobody notices it is gone / my tongue laps the cliff of my incisor for the downward jag / is this not how damage works / nursing what is not with you / yet we all go –
 
swimming in cesspools of lachrymation / so much of salt would look like white sand / i have not been to a beach in a loop of weeks / my skin verbosely dilates like a profane sore / there is so much of my body / if he started kissing me it would never end / play with my hair / play with the dead / it makes me –
 
wonder about desire / how it devours its own skin / leaves a festering cavity / but make a habit out of something it becomes a chore / you brush your teeth / spit lust into the sink / turn off the tap / zip up your pants / you end up no better than the parasite wildflowers / in nondescript backyards / someone deigns to water you / lustily lick each molecule / that seeps through your fissured tooth

​crowbar trail mix batteries flashlight.
water, water everywhere—you know the rest.
 
for some godforsaken reason, or perhaps none at all,
it's 90 fucking degrees. (fahrenheit.
this is america, after all.)
 
the air is still, save for static
between our bodies. strands of hair
bridge the gap, cling together. the ends tangle.
 
billboard evangelists beam down
benignly from their roosts,
smiles weathered, worn.
 
the heavens have opened and shut.
their deluge was rapturous, so naturally
we were left behind.
 
car engine cicadas pop radio.
 
here, at priceline 103
beside our lady of sorrows,
we sit in your sedan and pray for deliverance.
 
(the national guard turned us back
like we have somewhere else to go,
 
two college queers with ten bucks total.)
 
here, you tell me your parents are stuck,
water halfway up their driveway,
road an unnavigable river.
 
we're worse off, i don't say.
"isn't that awful," i say instead, pressing on the wound,
preoccupied with pain other than my own.
 
for once, you don't cry. you don't even answer.
(it wasn't a question anyway.)
 
here, i am alive, vibrating with
anger fear agitation hostility boredom,
and i don't look at you but i hope you are too.
 
we're seconds from either killing or
kissing each other. i can't decide
which would be worse.
 
i'm ready for an end, one way or another.
 
floodwaters ebb, but
dams can't hold forever.
 
we don't know much yet--
we haven't even had real girlfriends.
we're majoring in language left unspoken,
 
and from it, we divine two truths:
 
something will give.
it will be us.

grandma—you live in your Obsession perfume bottle, i talk to it every day, telling you how good you smell, that i long for your root beer kisses that stay sticky on my cheek, that you are magic. 
grandma—you live in your flannel & it goes unwashed for too long, but if i can call you mom
on accident again and go without socks in the house, i promise to clean it.  grandma—you live in my rosary beads, that i never hold loose, & i beg you every day for something that i cannot control without being soothed— 
                                                                    say Julie one more time…
spoon feed me sweet truths
catch the word more on my lip
trying to slip out

For me, if you breathe
please and thank you, I will fall asleep.
 
If you frolic obnoxious, if you drop kick
books at me, if you spill coffee
 
on my boss's vest, yes, I will
kiss your boots.
 
The courteous patron
becomes the forgotten.
                       
It's the headache, the crass handful
the staff member remembers mid-dinner.
 
It's you in the crewneck
with the faded alumni card.
 
It's you in the crewneck
with a stack of back catalogs
 
hiding your face. I'm holding
your hand as you stab my side. 
 
I bleed out and check out
your books. You drum your fingers
 
on my forehead. I return to you
your card and remind you of due dates.
 
My brain is a name tag. You remove it
through my nostrils. I cry such
 
rainful joy as I waive late
fees and hate to clock out.

to live in the diaspora
is to return to your homeland and appear as a stranger while there a stranger approached me and spoke some english that was broken carried by pidgin – i received only a few pieces.
 
half at peace and half uneased.
i’m nigerian: i could regurgitate a reply in my stale, remnant accent from childhood
i’m american: he’d smell the tainted accent and perceive how rotten it is.
 
to live in the diaspora
is to be in your homeland and appear as a stranger while here strangers approach me to question where i’m from because of the lingo spoken with my people – igbo.
 
half at peace and half uneased
 
i’m nigerian : i’m american

​Say you are hot water
running rills of warmth
across my stomach
 
Say this room is earth under a tree
this room is bare, aching earth this
room is my open palms
 
Say you are a tangerine
whose skin
falls away like foil or a winter coat
 
Say I expect nothing of you
I am not waiting ⁠— I’m up to my elbows
​already in tomorrow — I am not waiting ⁠— 

​The real trick is to realise that
whatever the fault (glass spidered,
waterlogged circuitry, sniping texts and
friends’ voices slipping to sugary nothing), it resides
 
in you first and foremost. The phone
itself is nothing. The phone itself
is your clenching heart.             In the grey morning
⁠— the sky yellow as  orangejuice
with streetlight light, flu-pallid with dawn⁠ — 

go out into the garden. Dig into

mouthmoist loam. You’ll find
three egg-shaped stones
an arm’s length deep. Place your phone
with them and cover it over. Mark the
spot.
 
Return on whim           one evening in spring
​before its bulb
splits, sprouts.

This is the drink of a cardboard uncle gummed up with ambrosia. This is the drink of myself, a condemned mansion with hedge-maze arteries & I am flocculent with cabbage roses. Do you remember shooting my old blood between the eyes like a rabid dog? It is wrong to believe the bread is Christ & eat it anyways, so I shrike it to the bottom of the pew & tip the table once a week. There I come blooming from your nostrils in clumps of atom-less peonies & yet you’ll still cluck your tongue at the snap of my toe. ​

We carried our poverty on our rib cages,
          nicotine stained fingertips,
          grizzled dreams,
          and in our veins--
                     thick
          with the abandon of what was,
and the romantics that could be.
 
Our connections to each other
were ultimately built upon our
                                                               lack of connections
to the people
that culture told us would
care the most.
 
So we shoveled our histories
into compartmentalized valves;
hoping that
t i m e and pressure
might condense them into
something more
manageable.
 
And then:
                      rebuilt
with our only tools,
                      a FORTRESS
to withstand the blows
of those who told us
we were not enough.
 
What we failed to realize
is that you cannot build a barricade
                                                                  | To keep out
an enemy that is settled in your
           gut.

Sometimes I remember
he carried that ankle bracelet with more care
than his child,
            wrapping it tenderly,
                    bathing it with a soft,   wet,    sponge.
 
            And in the early morning,
on our family outing to the alley,
behind the grey building,
where he peed in a cup,
to prove his worth--
            we would cross our fingers for him.
                           For his son.
                       For ourselves.
 
And in the afternoon
we would park-hop with the baby,
playing P-I-G or H-O-R-S-E,
            swinging
on creaky play-sets,
            until the sun rested its brow
                       on the mountain’s ragged edge.
 
We would part
            when the messy family car
                       pulled out of the parking lot,
leaving me behind to
prove my worth--
 
It still amazes me
how many
different varieties of grease
can coat your soles
after a night of work.
 
How slick it makes each step
 
            ​as you walk home along the highway.

Here, we laid to rest the bones
Of my grandmother’s house
In the country dirt
Velvety with worms.

As we light the wooden foundation,
I realize
​In the blink of an adult eye,
A year disappears.
That’s why as children,
We can’t understand the value
Of staring contests.

Fighting the humidity
The fire climbs eagerly
Pulling itself along the peeling roof with blue-tipped fingers
Hungry for asbestos
Watching below, I remember:

Coffee, splashed with milk
Armed to the teeth with sugar
Marching across my mouth at the breakfast table
While she fanned a grease fire
Toward the open screen door.

Later, while searching for soda pop
In the back of the dusty pantry,
My cousins and I shrieked
Over the gams of a passing daddy long-leg.

Her nearby barn had a steeple
On top, a cloudy glass ball
She said it wards off lightning, 
But I know the truth.
There is magic in this place.

As the flames engulf the porch,
I can hear screams inside
The living room several Christmases ago
Tearing of wrapping paper, siren-bright.
Bodies everywhere
Flopped across pillows, swollen with ham and potatoes.

Now the house dissolves like a sandcastle,
On the beach of this bucolic landscape
As the moonless tide of prairie grasses
Sweeps it out to sea.

Here, we laid to rest the bones
Of my grandmother’s house
But in restless peace I find longing,
An ache for a home where magic from the sky
​Finds new passage underground.

​tired muscle
fractured memory
let me soak
in the uncertainty
of corrupted data
let me exist
within the gap between
reality and projection

​my lacrimal sac drained into the walls of my heart in a dream.
tears leaked and bloated the muscle to the point of near explosion.
the next morning I woke up with a faint sensation
of having survived drowning,
a twisted tongue,
and the trace of a sour half smile still warm on my face.