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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
AN INCANTATION TO MAKE AN EMAIL ARRIVESay 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 — A CHARM TO REPAIR A BROKEN PHONEThe 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. 
MATERIALIZATIONThis 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. PSYCHOMETRYBack barn, wooded over & zapper-lit. A piece of top-skull, curved. A tiny moon or enlarged fingernail. Hands placed around it, finger bones feeling the hollow of their ancestor. Hair still mossed to the head, stubborn against plucking. A prayer. And then another prayer. And then a question. To what lock does she belong? In the aftermath, the death-mess keeps its chosen pronouns. She-bones, their-bones. Re-forms a whole identity. Something to feed. Tea sloshes around the bowl & the aftertaste of calcium & dust delivers us to the old bride.
PART I: MAKING UPWe 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. PART II: MAKING DOSometimes 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. 
</3tired muscle fractured memory let me soak in the uncertainty of corrupted data let me exist within the gap between reality and projection i had so much to say but my lungs were emptymy 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.
All the men I want are fallen fruit, not so much forbidden, as inadvisable to the salubrious a tad fermented a worm burrowing through dark spots and dull skin Not looking to play savior I am so fabulously saved, like red wine on a white shirt, like seeds weeping into black dirt, like a number in my phone I never called Do I want to be beneath the tree soft and tired like holed-up holy fruit I'm not addicted, but it's my favorite kind The stuff that's started to live why does live mean leave Why do I always compare the hairs on your chest to winter vines Why do I crave to make kiddush over your body Sinking deeper into the earth hope a distant, circling bird my mouth comes upon you hungry, tasteless animal But in reality, I turn the pages of the prayer book and wonder if I'm rotten 
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