Registry

A modern set of flatware
in brushed stainless steel
is the only thing I still have
from my wedding.
Everything else
has been taken
or broken
or lost.

There's a chance

There’s a chance you remember
your third-grade teacher confronting your Mom
about how you sat scowling all class,
arms crossed in feigned disrespect

while you pled ignorance, not letting on
the melancholy was pretence,
your best affectation
of being handsome.

And there’s the same chance
you’re still heartbroken wondering
why that nine-year-old felt ugly
behind the most unadulterated smile.

Maybe you spent the next two decades
at a mirror turning left and right, deciding
whether you’d be beautiful later
or if you already missed your chance.

You might have asked each of your partners
to pinpoint the parts of your body
they liked least so you’d have
a companion in self-hate

or you might have questioned
if your circulatory system existed only
to pulse warmth through fingertips
into the side of a cold drink.

You could have dreamt of burning
every thread in your closet as if
the ill-fitting shirts themselves
were the obstacle

or dreamt instead of silencing
the inadvertent words and thoughts
that trample you like heavy boots
on seedling grass.

You may exist in the space between
your body’s unforgiving catalogue
of past decisions and the contours
of who you’ll be next

but you might still bet the odds
that this physical contest
can be won. You might,
if you’re anything like me.

I've met many experts

I’ve met many experts on my country 
who’ve spent a weekend in Vegas 
or New Orleans or New York

or taken a wandering road trip
down my highways like some moral 
Humbert Humbert redux,

but on their exotic holiday
to validate Hollywood tropes
and marvel at our faults,

I hope they trip on the truth.
There’s at least a million
ways to be american.

You shouldn't shave

“You shouldn’t shave your chest,”
she said, pointing to her
red collarbones.

”It feels nice when I’m biking,” I said.
“Well,” she said,
“you’re not a professional cyclist.”

”You’re right,” I said,
”but I’m not a professional
at this either.”

You have to be both

You have to be inside your body,
contained in a blood organism
that’s decomposing since birth,
while your planet and your sun
race neck and neck to heat
deaths of their own.

But while solar radiation
makes your home a Pompeii tomb,
you must be the ivy on the stones,
still facing toward the light and 
fuelling your green new growth.

When your cynicism begins
to look more and more like truth,
hold onto movie naivety,
the idea that words are enough
to talk your way out of anything,

like your high school boyfriend
who made his final appeal 
in a 7-Eleven parking lot
before pealing out in his coupe
with the horn held down
in a sad and angry wail.

And believe forgiveness exists
though you’ve never had an apology 
offered or accepted, and stay alive
for the person you’ll be next
even if it feels like you’re becoming
just a collection of trauma.

Be content with your empty 
apartment, though every friend 
and warm body you bring home 
explains what you’re missing—
a TV, a coffee table, a desk,
or food for your cabinets.

So when you’re asked to choose
between your two narratives, 
either hung-over shame and despair 
or the hopeful self-love
you still find in the mornings,
always tell both.

One hot London

One hot London weekend later
and the gold necklaces have come out
from their forgotten bathroom drawer,
where they lay tangled all winter,
waiting for your shoulders to brown.

Heavier

I take a heavier backpack
than the schoolchildren 
on my morning bus

and I hope they don’t think
their only reward for hours sitting
at adopted desks and lunch tables 
or on the eastbound 94

is dark circles
under their eyes and
more weight to carry.

A woman laughed

A woman laughed 
and told me
I owed her  

a souvenir 
from every city 
on my trip.

And afraid 
of some secret 
earnestness, 

I returned 
with an armful
of trinkets.  

But she had already
disappeared, so 
I kept the flowers, 

liqueur and soap
and was better
for the trade.

I watched my body

I watched my body expand and contract
with the Thames’ wet tides, in denial
that I was the one inside that soft fat,
the hard arteries and tendons,
and neuroses disguised as character.

I carried a heart so metaphorical
it stopped functioning as an organ,
though tonight a Basque singer
makes her case with melody
for my blood to be blood again.

“Maybe you identify as the child
in class that was different?
It would be great to be normal
in your own way. I haven’t been alive
always, but it feels that way.”