Now I have time
to experiment
preheat the room to three twenty five
saute the onions in butterflies
pour in garlic and butterflies
milkwhisk the butterflies
scrape the wings off my heart
and wait wait sixty-five to eighty–
to say what I have to say to you–
I can’t wait another minute.
(originally published in The Gorko Gazette, Summer 2024)
cooking
Tamales at Andrea’s
At her Penn Hills home an endless view
of rain green wide windows. With sink hot
faucet water we tear banana leaf a piece
of wallpaper press the masa they prepped
into dried dark a sturdy table.
Drop sauce, fork pork, wrap ribbon
makes pride and we learn to live
again. Almost a year still fresh
the big bowl of dead animal we gather
around. Andrea says steam in leaf
adds floral flavor, a life
to death jiggling within us–
oh, sweet touch of camaraderie,
hugs on a late December
Saturday. You were afraid
we started the day too early, but
we are in our mid-thirties. I wanted
to begin yesterday the festivities
that let us remember why we
remain alive– brown butter cookies
and the love, so much love in the living
room. When we get to the presents–
having already unwrapped our proud
banana leaves, there are Penguin
classics, band t-shirts, soy candles
but what we’d trade for anything–
white elephant– is more time.
(originally published in Triggerfish Critical Review, Summer 2024)
I Convince My Mom to Write
For a time, I convinced my mother to write
mini memoirs of her farmer childhood
in the Philippines. In one, a monkey bites
her during a nap in a hammock; in another,
she falls from a tree onto a snakebite,
and her father tosses her into the Pacific.
This morning, she tells me of
leading a goat on a rope
up a hill. At the top, it starts to rain
and the goat runs back down.
I tell my mom she should write this.
She says, no, you should.
So I ask how did you feel
being dragged by a goat?
My mom looks to the ceiling,
patterns of neural pathways
on a sea of white.
She says, I wanted to cook him
for dinner. He scratched my arm
I couldn’t untie the goat from the tree
to eat grass but he didn’t like rain,
he smelled rain, smelled the smoke
out of the fog, the smoke up the mountain
smoke from where the ground is so warm
it evaporates, and you hear raindrops, the wind
blowing while crying the goat was very strong,
when you’re a kid it feels like a water slide
only no water on top of hills going down
trying to run – in the Philippines that’s how
it feels when you get dragged by a goat, she went into
water – jumped into the river – a forever pool – rock you jump
over it’s deep – after rain and flood washed out all dirt
when water turned clear back when I was kid – like after
the flood no leeches would come with leeches I hollered
and nearly stabbed a leg with a knife – neighbor cut
his leeches and his leg – plenty of leeches in our river – flood
clears leeches – flood clears everything – the flood will drag you all
the way to the ocean
(originally published in Hello America Stereo Cassette, Winter 2022)
Bundt Cake!
The recipe I research online
calls for Mountain Dew
(or Mello Yello, if one prefers)
and I’m curious if it becomes
a lemon tea with a reservoir
of sugar in it. What happens
to the bubbles? Do they turn
into a slime? I buy a liter
from IGA, ignite the oven to
a torrid Fahrenheit, hotter than
my usual showers that set off
the second-floor smoke alarm.
Grease and flour in the Bundt
pan, fluted and grooved and
eternally circular– my partner
wonders if I have the expertise
to do this, and I read her the
recipe, which she says is not
typical– the carbonation nor
instant pudding it calls for,
the boxed cake mix plucked
from a million others at the store.
But in a large bowl I combine
everything: the oil, the powder,
the eggs, one at a time, and stir
in the lemon-lime soda.
It has a texture like roof tar
when I tell her I don’t even
enjoy Bundt cake, I just wanted
to do something productive with
my day after being laid off.
She helps me pour the sludge
and bake until I insert a toothpick
into the center. We let it cool.
(originally published in Sybil Journal, Summer 2023)
Catcall / Catastrophe
So you made a carrot soufflé–
no one cares about the mush
orange and earthy you made
in the oven. That shit is under
control. Look instead at Joshua
trees burning down the desert
runway. That’s a catwalk. A
catcall to the Earth from
your rolled-down pickup
truck window. See
how hot they are? It’s
like those cruel videos
where the cat’s caretaker
places a cucumber
behind the off-guard animal,
and people laugh
as the creature flees in
surprise terror.
These videos were big
for a summer. This
slideshow of tiny
cruelties– it’s harder
to find new spaces
to hide.
(originally published in G*MOB, Spring 2022)
Hog
there is no wrong way to eat
a hot dog there is no right
to eat a dog there is no hot
dog hot popsicle of pig
meat slathered in existential
ketchup bread-claustrophobic
*
once on a drive home from Central Catholic
I stopped at the Dairy Queen Drive-Thru
and asked for hot dog wrapped in lettuce
I was more hypochondriac at sixteen
than at thirty-two anyway the kid
at the window said they couldn’t
but I insisted and the manager
smuggled the long sizzling dog in wet
lettuce I carry that shame in the trash
bag of my trunk to this day
*
pig meat
pig meat
in a sleeping bag of green
*
there is no way to eat a dog
there are ways to eat a hot dog
I am a bog I am the bog I am
breakfast lunch dinner brunch midnight snack
everlasting bun communion holy
water life I down through days and lick my fingers
after rough vigorous handwashing
I’ve opened plastic package
set skillet to flame
lain logs on drizzled oil
*
the celebrity chef in my mind
is me I documented cooking when I lived
in my car. That was my true potential. Oh, swine,
you’re years beyond capable
yet I drove halfway across the country
to do what competitors do, which is down
hundreds of you. Joey Chestnut the undisputed
master after decades of dogs.
*
Went to a dollar dog minor
league game twenty cents per dog flies
buzzing in orbit of condiments
five the limit at the window so all
could see I had the buns. One each for
STRENGTH. ACCEPTANCE.
CONFIDENCE. GRACE.
AMBITION.
*
One inning was all
it took and I was alone in my new
city full of my father’s love
of baseball and barbecues. Now
there was an undisputed grill master.
Everyone knows one. I am not one.
There is no way to cook.
There is a way.
Wayne was over and we flicked
lit matches with our middle fingers
from thumbs into ready
charcoal to get the grill going.
We walked away and waited for
an action-movie explosion
but there was no ignition.
*
My whole life I have been walking
away, not turning back to look.
(originally published in HAD, Summer 2022)
The Days Are Bored With My Language
we are sitting closer
to the television in a brand
new bedroom not
that we bought a new
house rather rearranged
everything the television
Playstation mini
tables dustballs morals
we never labeled
outside obvious
corners the air
conditioning vents in the faraway
summer I hope never
comes yes I am this
amount jaded the new colorful
reflections of the TV
beside its fresh horizon
almost like the screen’s
outside where I can finally live
my real life in pixelated terms
I know I know I am
conflicted about even
the architectural oxygen the wood
was inspected man just not
by me I mean girders in the semi
shallow underground been
scrubbing raw potato skins
only still to grok the boiled
intentions steaming the
mind’s kitchen I don’t got
knives I don’t got any
memory of the chicken
carrot stew just I often
feel infinitesimal I can’t
stop filling overfilling
the pot hot water simply
abundance very thankful
for plastic bags stuffed
in the cold seam of the
world our window
won’t open
(originally published in datura, Summer 2021)
Noodles
tin colander holes parts of me peeking
out into the kitchen horizon past the stove
which so very recently burned blue &
contained above potentially dangerous
gas of which you were in control
unlike last night you did the right
thing begging cathy not to drive
home her slurring sentences
& drunken desperation just
hours before all three of us
together I had to walk home
after downing Nosferatus
and you were there with her
drinking tequila when you called
to say now I really
have to say goodbye
but everything was fine you
arrived at your destination
but she wanted to
drive again the night
air thin
& shivering &
blue when she
departed
(originally published in Gingerbread Ritual Literary Journal, Winter 2021)
In Another Life I Am Content Enough
What simulation’s numb you ask
if I want children this time
definitive we boil Kraft mac
and cheese. I toss our meager sweet
potatoes in oil and ramble about financial
self-worth the oven nearly at four hundred
degrees. I can’t stop petting your shoulder
the ashy cat roams in the loam of our love
our newly swept hardwood the house
our home for now so limited already
steam from the inside a pressure
cooker of different timelines. What river
these converging lives to seek meaning
in the biological job postings some of us
are born to call. My dad was sixty-one
when I was born my grandfather clock
ticks nonexistent. We have gorged in all
our broken cabinets to rustle the blue
plastic grocery bag pile. I can’t stand
to live another day preoccupied.
(originally published in Flights, Summer 2021)
In the Future I Will Drink More Coffee
in the future i’d be watching you smoke
cigarettes
waving your smoke away
with cleaver hands
breakfast would come
we’d slice cucumbers in the wet-
snake leather kitchen
rectangular blade neatly fit
sink-soaked
the yolk in the sandwich a little drippy
warm & familiar
the electric stampede of spiders’ feet
never did the future weave
faint spiderweb strands
(originally published in Sobotka Literary Magazine – Issue #3)