The Dough Baby in a Box

Like that incomprehensible—
mind.

They say the mind is not obscured to itself. But for me, it’s like blowing out a candle from afar, the flame oh so tiny—only to pop up, big and bright as ever.

And I say
I don’t know, I’m not sure…

until

you would swoop over,
whisk, wind me through trees

until we were days away
till flesh under nails. bruised.
until. someone with slanted eyes. and you.

until I no longer needed you?

Revisions

I keep revising a poem I posted here last Thursday (Notes on There's a Cricket in the Wardobe), because at first it had seemed okay, but now, each day it seems worse and worse...and so it becomes shorter and shorter. maybe by the end of the week it will be entirely gone!okay, i think i'm finally done with it. I'm left with just three sentences and a new title.it is posted below in it's new incarnation. I've deleted the old one.

You Could Always Be Counted On To Tell Me When I Was A Hypocrite

there’s the real, and the not real.

"tomorrow?”

and yes, but no.

Can't Find the Edges

thin skin, like the see-through shell of a tiny snail.
later still, something uncoiled inside—i’m splayed.
not like a small bird hiding in long grass.

the deer crash through the forest. i hear them blowing air through their noses—hidden behind bushes. the doe chomps field grass, cocks her head to listen, prances before us.

and it is raining. and it is pouring. it is cool in the forest. sometimes the rain drips. he says we have all lost our minds a long time ago.

and who will eat the meat off my bone? it’s an overcast day, and my overcast mind.

Revision/There's A Cricket in the Wardrobe

We were on the bleachers in the gym—it was some pep rally. You had hair like my boyfriend. Long on one side, only more brown than black, brown eyes. I smiled. Now with a baby, a wife? In my dream, you called her, “my lover.” How bohemian. So we were on the bleachers. I looked up at you. And then?

Then we were at lunch and you ate my crusts. Didn’t you? You used to get so mad. Ignore me for a while. Sometimes we’d drive in your tiny car. You were concerned for my innocence.

In your pictures you look the same. Only there’s a little girl in your arms. When I had a headache, you’d put your hands on my head, pretend to draw it out of me. Right? And usually, everything under wraps. In my dream, you held a phone to my ear, I heard your tiny daughter calling you daddy.

Someone once told me you were a little ball of string I just wanted to unwind to see what was inside. She said when I finally got there, there might be nothing. We’d walk, your arm 'round my waist, hand on hip. When I gave you the pictures my dad took of us, you said, “Oh, were you trying to look sexy?” Sometimes, you’d turn away. That campout, again, you were mad. Still, there was breakfast.

Years later, you picked me up at the train, in the rain. Then, once again, you wanted nothing to do with me. One christmas eve, we met at the longhorn, one time we went snowboarding. You slept at my house on the couch downstairs, got a little mad cause I read the map wrong. One 4th of july you picked me up at the airport. My plane was late. Later, you came to stay, used the payphone across the street to call your girlfriend, slept on the floor, left early, came home late at night. I barely saw you that month. But one night, I layed by your side on the futon. We finally spoke. That was all. You left. I stayed, went to asia, went looking for you at your work--five years later. You called me that night, told me you’d fallen in love.

Now, it’s been five years again. In the meantime, I’ve gotten married, another useless degree. And you, you’ve fallen in love, had a baby. Your talent exploded.

You used to say you just didn’t know how to handle me.

Until Her Mind Split, She Was Someone Else

Because when she told him she looked a little different, he said, "Is your mind different? Your heartt?"

Sentences broke down over telephone wires till there were little bits of words nestled in hair, stuck to lips.

Because a chimera is "an impossible or foolish fancy."

It wasn't just the broken words that lost meaning. Even whole words came to nothing, as she became L.I.E. and language displaced.

Because he said the city had too many building trees.

And all the little things went unsaid.

Because he said he'd give her kisses and mashed potatoes when she was mad.

Still, she wanted rawness. Fingers strumming a palm, lips against the perimeter of a world.

Because how can love need nothing in return? He confused her.

So she imagined how she'd see him and be so happy and all the varieties of sweet smiles they'd share. Only she couldn't. And she had gone for a walk in the freezing cold with her cough and her mom's cell. Squatting on a sidewalk near Patterson Park, crying into the phone. Still not sure what to do sitting on an icy rock at the edge of the pond. At the sink, the sun reflected off the blade of the knife, she thought of bits of teeth growing in a stomach.

Because there were broken words, lines, signals, thoughts.

Oosa of the Purple Hands

So we're sqwooshed in a bicycle rickshaw
from Bhairahawa to Lumbini like we're back in time.
An hour and a half by houses seemingly made of straw
small kids with tangly hair
tiny girls-eyes outlined with kajal
a cow wearing a necklace.
There's the familiar smell of burning plastic,
everpresent staring eyes.

We pass teen boys on bicycles
holding hands as they ride across a bridge.
A young boy driving a bullock cart,
leaning back on hay heaped to sky.
Tractors and bikes
toting megaphones blasting static-ey Hindi music.
There're egrets and water buffalo.
Countless children who call hello,
wave after us.

And then a long line of people snaking across the road
accompanied by a uniformed marching band in red coats with brass buttons.
As we draw closer, the road becomes blocked
and there is a woman dancing--
everyone crowded around her,
but on second glance she is a lady-boy,
flutters her eyes in K's direction.

A young girl comes up to us,
asks my name, then says, "how nice,"
and that we should dance.
"It's a wedding," she says.
Dozens of smiling kids encircling us.

When we say it's time to go,
Oosa says it was very nice to meet us,
sticks out her purple-dyed hand for a shake.

So,

not everything I'm posting here is complete. There are some poems which to me right now, feel done. Others are just ideas, things I'm working on, things that haven't become poems yet. They aren't born, heck, they aren't even formed. They're just some sperm and egg thrown together.

Could You Know?

as the little girl came with fresh morning milk
as we ate curried peas in the dawn

in the dark, squatting,
holding a long stick wound with cotton
face lit by burnt butter

on the roof squinting back at the himalayas, down at rusting rebar

how garbage is not piled in the streets, lit on fire

no shopkeeper holding a rat by it’s tail, beating it against the ground

we don’t see the fingernail-ed stubbed hands of lepers

no little girl, body missing below the belly

how we don’t have bandhs, don’t light tires on fire in the middle of streets to get reparations for one’s child murdered by the Young Communist League

There Is This:

wake sleep wake sleep. and in between: cook wash cook wash.
the nighttime tapping on the wall/the noisy greeks.

but what of the water tank on the roof. the dry tap. the cups of cold water poured over the head.

cumin. turmeric.
the amulet round the neck.

it sticks: like a sock on a wet foot.

and so we find ourselves here—on a wooden bench at the edge of the sea—a bird cooing—a motorboat—a transistor radio. wearing ten layers of sweat. the deep pit of samsara slowly exposed.

small birds. he eats raw celery in bed. small tits.

he's telling of human cyclops' showing pictures online. whorls, fecund, glistery-to rip open one's heart. like the street aftertaste stay honest and good and pure and true. a steel plate. banana leaves. to make one's heart a bowl. luminous hibiscus women crunch glass beneath their feet. if i'm honest with myself bodies of rice grains swell hair damp, smelling of mint dizzy. is your mind different? your heart? purple crocuses poke through me. dizzy. the emptiness of a cherry pit. bramble thicket tomahawk. the way hands smell lemons, limes, strawberries. love enough to fit in a box? a thimble? and there is no longer the thought behind the thought.