Two Poems

Let Me See

Sometimes she made keema,
and Lord help you girls
if it gave you brains as well—
what they called results
made its way to our plate.
We have photographs.

–––

She never let me see the lambing.
That’s how she sold the meat, she said.
So I learned instead
from what came home in plastic,
caught her once or twice
in the lot—small splash on her shirt.
In winter, when transients weren’t
hard to find, she translated
Cantonese films into English.

–––

I suppose I wanted to see
what I thought I felt—
the taste of it
in my mouth
each morning.
But she said no.

–––

I gave birth twice,
and each time I closed
my eyes to it—
until they returned,
wiped clean,
wrapped in striped sheets—
as if I hadn’t nearly died,
my legs to the sky,
so close I could smell it.

–––

When I first bled,
my mother shut the door,
cornered me,
held both my wrists
in one hand
and with the other
slapped me,
saying whore, slut,
until I said them myself—
and tried to praise it.

–––

What I mean is—
it’s complicated.



Siphonophore

It takes eight minutes
for the sun to touch us
from outer space.

It took me
eight years to forgive myself.

On the radio
someone asks — Amityville
or The Conjuring?

The whole universe
divided into bloated
bags of days,
swelling like man-of-wars:
not one body but a colony,
its gas float a sail,
its house also a weapon.

I never learned
to be a copy machine.

The sun retreats
and the leaves answer
in blood.

Down far enough
there is always
a philosophy in trees.
But I’ve found only
Silence.

My friend tells me
her mother is depressed,
whispering it like some
Contagion.

Everything is wrapped so
tight I can’t open it.

Sometimes I lay things
before me and
contemplate: give up?

I really do.

But then another part
gets up out of me —
I don’t know what shape it is,
not this gelatinous
blob that has become my skin.

I keep moving, wondering
what home is.
At forty you’re supposed to know,
begin the settling, you know?

I never learned to dance
but when I move —
jeez, when I move —
I am someone
somewhere else.