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.

earthquake season

rabbits will warn us, but we will ignore their warnings,

most of which will be too small to be felt.

magic markers will determine plate tetonics, two-dollar

packets of gum will cost $4.99, murderers will claim

the homicide was consensual, and at Christmas time, the best pears

we send to your grandparents will smell like sweat

on feet.

actually,

everything might end

up ok. the ceiling and walls and

antibiotics are in place, sad people

can be fixed, and from a distance, we can see

grandma walking home holding a huge leg of ham.

she says, she

says,

roses are a kind of people,

smiling is an kind of spring:

a contemplation allowing steam

to escape from below the surface.

she really meant to say,

I really hope I don't get the swine flu.

school season

mother said one time I came home from 5th grade really bummed because I had a substitute teacher and she sucked. I don't even remember who my real 5th grade teacher was. I just remember standing in line after recess this one time, finally gathering enough courage to tell the kids to stop making fun of this fat kid named Robert Qumar.

Later in 6th grade I would come to hate this Qumar kid because he was socially awkward and liked Sailor Moon, and boys weren't supposed to like Sailor Moon. I liked Sailor Moon.

I think my 6th grade math teacher was gay. He was small and diabetic and sadly loved chocolate.

I think my 6th grade homeroom teacher was mormon. I have no basis for this other than the fact that one time he used a mormon website to show us an example for our genealogy project, and that he was very pale.

We made fun of our 7th grade science teacher, Mrs. Willensky, for being obese and having a habit of bouncing in her seat. This might have been due to a restless leg syndrome that made her bounce her heel up and down constantly, but we didn't care. She had a mean face and called Jolly Ranchers Jolly Rogers. I heard later she got liposuction. And that she finally noticed a kid laughing and pointing at her bouncing, stopped abruptly in embarrassment. I'm not sure if this was before or after her liposuction.

In 6th grade when I hung out with other people during lunch, Bonnie Tran stepped on my ID card in the locker room. The absurdity of this malicious act confused and bothered me the entire day.

After sex-ed all of us rushed out of the classroom disgusted with our bodies. Popular kids' names never get made fun of, even if it sounded like 'semen'.

Danny had this backpack that said "Bad Cop/No Donut" and I had no idea why other kids thought it was funny. I get it now, but I still don't think it's funny.

Cory Woodall and I had the same schedule in 7th grade and we joked that someday we'll find each other at our future workplaces, with the same work schedule. Then we reminisced about an old computer game featuring Putt-Putt. Secretly I wished we had the same schedule for the rest of school.

One time we made a big deal that she wore a skirt one day and she was embarrassed, having been labeled a tomboy up until then. I wondered why she wanted to rebel against it because I was always jealous of the tomboy label, as if it gave the wearer a sort of power against the weaknesses associated with the regular girl label. It would be long before I'd realize it was as much of a stifling label as any.

In 4th grade we watched a documentary on Big Foot and I was scared out of my mind. I still do not understand the educational value of such a film.