flu season

cranes in white nylon suits will feed you with

their metallic beaks feeling around your tongue.

hold still. trust me it'll be

nothing like how they'll say it'd go.

in the reflection of their glass faces, let's play

pretend. I'll be congress, you'll be the

law, and don't worry it won't

be sexual or

awkward

at all.

Spanish-Chinese girls look different than Ameican-

Chinese girls. Both are willing to show more

leg than Chinese-Chinese girls.

18 ounces, and you'd be that much closer. I dare you to

unclose me to find me thinking about my open mouth,

find me thinking of the poem in the shadow

the cicadas making the forest quiet, the lightness of

birdsong that deepens the forest, the wind stopping so still it stirs the petals

off flowers.

I am thinking of the word "benight".

I am thinking of the puppy who circles us,

how I'd love it for a moment, how I wonder what he knows,

sniffing at our ankles.

I am thinking to close my eyes to become a narrow shadow, my body dissolved, embraced by a warm feeling of a tenor voice soaking through the transparency of my being, water warm like a hot spring. I am not even thinking. I am someone else, turning to the wall while I receive fever.