POEMS
YEllow Stickies
When language dissolves like crystals into aphasia, there is no syntax.
Putting the packets of the onsen bath crystals away
Onto the nook for it
on the lower level of the bathroom cabinet,
I hit my head coming up
on the overhang
the upper cabinet extends its arm over its
domain
a corner of the bathroom
It was waiting for me
like a WWII bomb
Long drowned
in the Spree
or mines they are still
stepping over
in rice fields
blooming
in Cambodia
Yesterday
I went to the ER
The night before
I felt intense pressure in my chest
At 14, we wrote confessional poetry
signaling how uncomfortable we were in
our own skins
we invested in self-deprecating
salvos of martyrdom
Hoped it would stand
for pathos
art was therapy
and we were good at making ourselves
small
During growth spurts,
I suffered bouts of angina.
It was inconceivable that art
could be a passage to happiness.
It was just
a practice
of pressurizing
My heart
I woke up with angina at 4am
Sitting in the ER
Waiting for blood work
I am reading Mei-Mei
and surprised at my
due diligence,
preparing,
even now, for Monday’s reading
“I aspire for transparent space to diffuse inside me to its quantum complement; sky lightens” – Mei-Mei says.
waiting for hours
I am impressed at my foresight
in bringing poetry to read
I hear the nurses
Their idle chatter
They come and go
I watch a nurse
add
to her
Collection of yellow
Stickies
Her “to-do” list
Stuck
Almost haphazardly
Along the bottom of
Her computer
Screen
Wild and fresh
Like
Teenage stubble.
This, too,
Is a kind of
Measurement,
I think to myself.
How many times had I abused my body?
Countless all-nighters
Distance running
Concussions boxing
skiing moguls
I never sleep.
Four years ago,
I slid into a tackle,
a mid-field
defense,
hyper-extending my leg,
it made a POP
audible
for MILES
I didn’t accept it at the time,
but I had torn my ACL.
I nursed it
for months
until
the swelling
subsided
Not knowing
that one could
walk on
a leg with a torn ACL,
I was in denial
and even went running.
Then,
one day,
as I was making my way
onto the stage for a
pre-concert lecture
and climbing
a few stairs
my leg buckled
It was at that
precise moment
that
I knew I was old
Due diligence.
I tried my best but
I screwed up
During Monday’s reading,
in my introductory question for our
three esteemed guests,
in reciting a bit of Aja’s poetry,
I couldn’t get my
Mouth to say
the word
“surrealism”
I was horrified.
It mattered to no one else,
I’m sure
But this was a battle
I have been fighting
My whole life
To be perfect
Not to give
them an inch
to
ever say
again
“You should learn to
speak English”
In high school.
I was a champion debater
And excelled in competitive
Speech.
I was a track star.
Founded a radio
station
and
A chess
Club.
As shiny a
Student
As you could imagine.
I was that kid.
I earned a congressional
nomination to attend
West Point.
I was going to prove
I was American.
During
my senior year,
I was the lead on
The Mock Trial team -
My teammates,
unfortunately,
were last-ditch
conscripts.
We were awful.
Losing in the first round,
after which,
our do-nothing coach,
a former marine
who’d been
at Khe Sanh,
took me aside and said,
“son, you need to learn
to speak English.”
I was the scapegoat
for it all
His failings
years
spent in that jungle
His manhood
Framed
and frozen
In a buzz cut
I was,
Also,
The catalyst
For
the best years
of my teammates
being
hermetically
Sealed
In the
Snowball glass
Of what we
Were about
to leave behind.
I
am still
Running
Away
From
High school.
The irony
Is
That
That which
I could not
Say
My mind
And body
Had been
Living.
What used to be
a word I never used
having
thought it
was
a catch-all for
Something
For which
Surely
There must be a
More precise
Word
I have now discovered it.
Frozen and framed
In the ungraceful
contortions of
my mouthful.
The surreal.
The double reading offense
Of Monday
Was that I mispronounced
Aja’s
Name.
She quickly corrected me
mid-utterance
like a superhero
leaping to catch
a falling baby.
In a second
I knew she was
Recalling a lifetime of being
Mispronounced.
I know that pain too well.
At West Point,
My last name
Was a compound
Which stood for
Both the
Set up AND
the punch line.
Weeeeeno
Weeeenie
WAY-no
You-eno
Uno
So many creative
Ways to say the
Same thing:
You don’t belong here.
The second Aja
Corrected me
I knew
I was older.
When I tore my ACL
I realized my body was old.
When I mispronounced
Aja’s name
I was hit with
the
Gathering evidence
Over years
Of forgetting names
Pages and
Citations lost
My mind is
Rust
When I was
8
I memorized
the
Whole
World Book
Encyclopedia.
Save for
what was
In Volume E
The large photographs
Of Embryos
Used to scare
Me.
That moment
Aja
Corrected me
Is the
Grain of ontology
The measurement
Of the distance
Between
How you
Think of yourself
And how
You actually
Come across
To others
Sometimes
we get
to
hear
our voices
reflected
back to us
from the chasm
of human
communication
and realize
how wide
The valley
Is.
Mei-Mei says, “Inner space and world give rise to each other,
Photon and wave; a person alone is in a context.”
I am
14 again
and
resorting
to confessional
poetry to
foreground
what
lurks in
the shadow
behind
this
face.
I am writing
This
On
3x3
sheets
of
yellow
stickies.
After
I am
Done
I will
rearrange
the crystals
and
affix
the
yellow
squares
like feathers
onto
my
Naked
Body
and
will
dive
into the
Spree.
But
Maybe
It is possible
To find
words
that sound like how
you sound to yourself
on the inside,
not just
notes stuck on
the fringes
of your computer
screen
and releasing them to the world,
naked as a skinless
specimen,
strangely,
from the exercise of it,
you get more
comfortable
being,
just being,
and less afraid
And every so often,
someone says
something to you
and you think,
“oh, they understand,”
what you said
reflected back
without an echo
or muted
you recognize it
as
indeed
what you said
scars
‘n all
and you
are glad
for having
survived
this long
to
witness
the miracle
of your
heart
on
the
outside
Putting the packets of the onsen bath crystals away
Onto the nook for it
on the lower level of the bathroom cabinet,
I hit my head coming up
on the overhang
the upper cabinet extends its arm over its
domain
a corner of the bathroom
It was waiting for me
like a WWII bomb
Long drowned
in the Spree
or mines they are still
stepping over
in rice fields
blooming
in Cambodia
Yesterday
I went to the ER
The night before
I felt intense pressure in my chest
At 14, we wrote confessional poetry
signaling how uncomfortable we were in
our own skins
we invested in self-deprecating
salvos of martyrdom
Hoped it would stand
for pathos
art was therapy
and we were good at making ourselves
small
During growth spurts,
I suffered bouts of angina.
It was inconceivable that art
could be a passage to happiness.
It was just
a practice
of pressurizing
My heart
I woke up with angina at 4am
Sitting in the ER
Waiting for blood work
I am reading Mei-Mei
and surprised at my
due diligence,
preparing,
even now, for Monday’s reading
“I aspire for transparent space to diffuse inside me to its quantum complement; sky lightens” – Mei-Mei says.
waiting for hours
I am impressed at my foresight
in bringing poetry to read
I hear the nurses
Their idle chatter
They come and go
I watch a nurse
add
to her
Collection of yellow
Stickies
Her “to-do” list
Stuck
Almost haphazardly
Along the bottom of
Her computer
Screen
Wild and fresh
Like
Teenage stubble.
This, too,
Is a kind of
Measurement,
I think to myself.
How many times had I abused my body?
Countless all-nighters
Distance running
Concussions boxing
skiing moguls
I never sleep.
Four years ago,
I slid into a tackle,
a mid-field
defense,
hyper-extending my leg,
it made a POP
audible
for MILES
I didn’t accept it at the time,
but I had torn my ACL.
I nursed it
for months
until
the swelling
subsided
Not knowing
that one could
walk on
a leg with a torn ACL,
I was in denial
and even went running.
Then,
one day,
as I was making my way
onto the stage for a
pre-concert lecture
and climbing
a few stairs
my leg buckled
It was at that
precise moment
that
I knew I was old
Due diligence.
I tried my best but
I screwed up
During Monday’s reading,
in my introductory question for our
three esteemed guests,
in reciting a bit of Aja’s poetry,
I couldn’t get my
Mouth to say
the word
“surrealism”
I was horrified.
It mattered to no one else,
I’m sure
But this was a battle
I have been fighting
My whole life
To be perfect
Not to give
them an inch
to
ever say
again
“You should learn to
speak English”
In high school.
I was a champion debater
And excelled in competitive
Speech.
I was a track star.
Founded a radio
station
and
A chess
Club.
As shiny a
Student
As you could imagine.
I was that kid.
I earned a congressional
nomination to attend
West Point.
I was going to prove
I was American.
During
my senior year,
I was the lead on
The Mock Trial team -
My teammates,
unfortunately,
were last-ditch
conscripts.
We were awful.
Losing in the first round,
after which,
our do-nothing coach,
a former marine
who’d been
at Khe Sanh,
took me aside and said,
“son, you need to learn
to speak English.”
I was the scapegoat
for it all
His failings
years
spent in that jungle
His manhood
Framed
and frozen
In a buzz cut
I was,
Also,
The catalyst
For
the best years
of my teammates
being
hermetically
Sealed
In the
Snowball glass
Of what we
Were about
to leave behind.
I
am still
Running
Away
From
High school.
The irony
Is
That
That which
I could not
Say
My mind
And body
Had been
Living.
What used to be
a word I never used
having
thought it
was
a catch-all for
Something
For which
Surely
There must be a
More precise
Word
I have now discovered it.
Frozen and framed
In the ungraceful
contortions of
my mouthful.
The surreal.
The double reading offense
Of Monday
Was that I mispronounced
Aja’s
Name.
She quickly corrected me
mid-utterance
like a superhero
leaping to catch
a falling baby.
In a second
I knew she was
Recalling a lifetime of being
Mispronounced.
I know that pain too well.
At West Point,
My last name
Was a compound
Which stood for
Both the
Set up AND
the punch line.
Weeeeeno
Weeeenie
WAY-no
You-eno
Uno
So many creative
Ways to say the
Same thing:
You don’t belong here.
The second Aja
Corrected me
I knew
I was older.
When I tore my ACL
I realized my body was old.
When I mispronounced
Aja’s name
I was hit with
the
Gathering evidence
Over years
Of forgetting names
Pages and
Citations lost
My mind is
Rust
When I was
8
I memorized
the
Whole
World Book
Encyclopedia.
Save for
what was
In Volume E
The large photographs
Of Embryos
Used to scare
Me.
That moment
Aja
Corrected me
Is the
Grain of ontology
The measurement
Of the distance
Between
How you
Think of yourself
And how
You actually
Come across
To others
Sometimes
we get
to
hear
our voices
reflected
back to us
from the chasm
of human
communication
and realize
how wide
The valley
Is.
Mei-Mei says, “Inner space and world give rise to each other,
Photon and wave; a person alone is in a context.”
I am
14 again
and
resorting
to confessional
poetry to
foreground
what
lurks in
the shadow
behind
this
face.
I am writing
This
On
3x3
sheets
of
yellow
stickies.
After
I am
Done
I will
rearrange
the crystals
and
affix
the
yellow
squares
like feathers
onto
my
Naked
Body
and
will
dive
into the
Spree.
But
Maybe
It is possible
To find
words
that sound like how
you sound to yourself
on the inside,
not just
notes stuck on
the fringes
of your computer
screen
and releasing them to the world,
naked as a skinless
specimen,
strangely,
from the exercise of it,
you get more
comfortable
being,
just being,
and less afraid
And every so often,
someone says
something to you
and you think,
“oh, they understand,”
what you said
reflected back
without an echo
or muted
you recognize it
as
indeed
what you said
scars
‘n all
and you
are glad
for having
survived
this long
to
witness
the miracle
of your
heart
on
the
outside