The lights of the city shine brighter than any star.
a cool breeze cuts through the humid night air.
the sidewalk is cracked by too many steps in everyone’s one-thousand-mile journey.
Brick and concrete towers fly high into the sky, close enough to reach the stars.

clouds
pink and blue smears
go over my head
like the moon
or calculus.
i long to float up there
where i could eat eclipse and crackers
and differentiate my thoughts.

look at them,
so cavalier, drinking
future-liquor in a future-

                bar kissing the wounds
                of future-lovers and
                crisscrossing their future-

scars
look at them,
so ambiguous, with

The night was warm and a blue haired girl sat alone at a bar. She was at one end, trying to catch a glimpse of a woman sitting opposite, a woman with long dark hair and caramel skin. Robyn knew her from somewhere, she was sure of it.

She stood in front of a mirror
Clean and sober thinking about how she feels taller than her own reflection

Then she took an injection

They’ve run out of garbage bags to use as body bags.
Power lines cracked in half like splintered pencils are strewn through the streets
neighborhoods panic as the ground forgets what being solid is again
aftershocks bigger than most earthquakes bend steel and rebar

“What is one factor that affects the Blood Alcohol Level and is an extremely important factor (in order to ‘sober up’)?”

It’s midnight, and he finds that it’s impossible to sleep. He isn’t exactly sure why, though he suspects it’s because his mind has wound itself into a series of complicated knots. There’s an abundance of loose ends as well, and he wonders which one carries the most weight. 

Another black kid got shot by a white cop.
ANOTHER BLACK KID GOT SHOT BY A WHITE COP.
ANOTHERBLACKKIDGOTSHOTBYAWHITE COP.
ANOTHERBLACKKIDGOTSHOT
ANOTHERBLACKKIDGOTS

Ten . . .
Nine . . .
Eight . . .
Seven . . .

you are like the sun:
oblivious to time’s existence
wake up at noon to eat dessert
and watch television reruns.
you are sleepless nights
and grease stained fingers
covered in cuts and bruises and scabs.
you are like the war

Like clockwork revaluations to new forgotten ideas lined up in my mind like young adult novels on my ratty old grey bookcases, I live stories lined up in many different tenses    dog-eared identities taking place in crises fueled hourglass clocks, if there is one thing I’ll never run out of it is

My blood is not pure.
Siphoned through custom it puddles as an unholy poison. 
A mixture between castes that courses sin through my veins
Broken tradition seeps through my marrow
and pools black in the hardened pupils of my grandmother

As the years go by and we outgrow our old faces and our old skin and our old identities, 
I wonder to myself if we are really becoming new people at all, 
or if we are simply just accumulating more years and more selves 

It’s not January. It just isn’t. The leaves are green and dance together in hoards above my head, almost mocking me in their togetherness as I shrink into my loneliness.

You ruffled dress.
You lip glossed, 
clean tongued, classy individual.

If time could be measured in words
I would handwrite novels until my knuckles bled
Analyze every single piece written by Steven King twice
Type poems so complex so that the meaning gets lost
Construct every screenplay to give you the ending you deserve

Hours are not spent well in lethargy
nor in deep-seated exhaustion
Hours are rarely spent
more – lost

The boy from the apartment below yours writes you letters about the birds and calls you a sunset.

“Tu sei il sole del mio giorno.” You are the sunshine of my day.

I break down in the supermarket grocery aisles
because I only have five minutes to make the choice
between a variety of granola bars.

I won't remember this in the morning. The way her arm feels wrapped around my shoulders. She is helping me into the car, her car, which is red like mushed up cranberries. The last time I ate cranberries was when I was seven.

mango juice drips from my fingers seeps into the brown dirt dirt that holds roots that reach across countries roots that stitch together centuries roots that spread and cannot be confined mango juice drips from my fingers plunges to the earth earth my mother raced across earth that felt the weigh