poems are abandoned, never finished

What to do

The dishes were unwashed, for twelve hours

The sink is brimming with sin

What were you doing, rolling?

Like that plastic you roll down, each time

What to do, you’re tired of cooking

And my legs are not flexing.

We wait for the onions to cut themselves,

The broom to start sweeping,

Turn the heat down, the fish is burned

like my crotch—a convenient store,

a fire hose. or are you too spent

to move, after all it’s a woman’s job—

what else is not. along with pouring the self

into tea cups. I wish the smoke from your mouth

blows dust away from the corners

of our walls, the ceiling, that room in my head

where I keep little sanity. 

My lines overrun, I have a problem

knowing when to stop. Restraint, they said,

‘lock your legs’, ‘this should be enjambed’.
Isn’t a word a pilgrim who find its place in phrase?
You don’t want to know, I’ve been around.
I was lost more often than I could count.
It starts with a glass of rum, a bat
of an eyelid, a blinking cursor, an empty page
a dirty heart.

The weather affects me greatly. On Sunday, I woke up two hours past noon.

I was greeted by the absence of sun, the sky was endless gray above the mismatched roofs

of houses. It rained that day, and it smelled like June. Remember June? Back then, the weather wasn’t as unpredictable. At the start of classes, it always smelled like damp soil, morning dew—

whatever you call it, like wet papers. I found myself looking at the sky intently, like a lover probing a question before shooting an accusatory gape, “what’s wrong with you today?” So I proceeded to make the bed, picked up crumpled papers, brought the wine stained mug to the sink, swept the floor and arranged my thoughts—I need to go to the grocery, prepare food for the whole week, send my clothes to laundry, buy a bottle of shampoo, what am I eating? What’s eating me? These banal things, they’re taxing! They use up all my sanity, when I have little left. 

I brushed my teeth, had small talk with my housemate, “have you eaten lunch?” I asked him. He said he did when he went out to buy groceries. I said I’m about to do the same thing. “It rained today,” he added. I know. We’re having the same Sunday. How boring. When I went to the supermarket, I saw vegetables packed in the similar manner, a tight plastic wrap with square – inch barcodes. It took me half an hour to decide if I should buy some apples. When I got home, it took some time to convince myself to start peeling the cucumbers. It wasn’t laziness, more of unwillingness to do things over and over. The fuck with the mundane. At bed that night, I wished for tomorrow, a blue sky.

elope

It’s morning. I’m sitting

on a porch, or a hammock, or a log, basking

in the sun’s white light. My pupils—pin dot

trying to see through all that’s around

my hair is sticky, all tangled, I’m wearing last night’s

tank top. I’m smoking my day’s first stick while waiting for you to wake up.

We live in a hut, a tiny cottage, or a makeshift house,

it can be anywhere, but there is a beach nearby.

Our kitchen is a mess. Peels of vegetables, empty bottles, plates and glasses

we only wash when we need them.

I hear the door shudder, and you come out—

look for a cig, and ask for the time, I say we don’t have a clock.

Between our puffs, we don’t need to speak. We stare at the sky,

pick at my chipped nail polish, wonder what’s wrong with the faucet,

search for something to read—we’ve been doing this,

this doing nothing—for quite some time, taking menial jobs to get by.

But we live in Paradise—

a stranger to us. No one speaks our native tongues.

Away from our cities, from everyone we know,

from everything that we were before.

We have little but we have all— the sun, waves, mountains,

and a bed fit for two.

Then you say, let’s get married. I ask, today?

and you answer, Yes. 

Sea urchin,

I had you. Six spikes

under my skin. Tiny needles, headless

deeply rooted in my foot— a huge prune.

A boy made cuts in my sole (and not just all)

with a flamed blade until it swelled.

His lashes touched my nose as we took

your black spears out. You had no mouth

but you bit me as I longed for his.