And the Soviet Union sent a probe
the length of a broom handle 

to greet her, held together with sugar,
like our intentions 

could be a candied-coated,
our banishment licked clean 

I shouldn’t talk about the throbbing, finger condoms,
the high of pain relief.
Like, as a married woman, 
I shouldn’t talk about my first love’s. 
backseat overdose. The droplets 
on the window, the smell, his bloated body. 

When she handed it to me, brown and bulbous like an onion, I didn’t expect it to juice with perfume at first taste. A kiss from the pink mouth of a flower grown inward.

I, ever rational, handled my alcohol.
I took what I wanted; sovereign,
stoic.  I marked my boundary lines.
I was one of the guys.

To this day
I'm swifted back to those lean,

hard-drinking years by the scent
of cigarettes overlaying the spicy musk

of still-crisp, newfallen leaves,

The breeze passes heavy, carrying
the guttural voices of the daily dwellers.
Their ingrained presence never redeemable,
fossilised within the billboards and bus stops,
which cradle them each evening. They never
seem lost as long as they remain within these
stretched parameters.

his mother thought
he would be as tall
& violent as his father,
but instead his hazel
eyes softened into the muddy

brown of a warm
house inside a cold
window.

I call the urgent Nespresso line, 
whose appointed representative
reassures, as I wish our leader could—
they understand the crisis

(How I policed me. How I cuffed my own hands and bound my own feet,
            shuffling about in my orange shame, sitting myself down in my cage.
                        Scratching prayers into the cell wall, which my own nature answered)

On day 3 of the binge, I dragged
her favorite bookcase to the lawn, shook
a can of gasoline over the wood and gazed
as the flame stole across the shelves.

I love Vicente Fernandez &
Brittany Beyoncé & Gaga
Ketchup with my torta
Wine with my tacos

like the beautiful lotus-bud arguing with the wild dandelion
the night stays with us, we stay with it too
not knowing what new name to give to our children
who are beginning to ask: “what is in a name anyway?”

nightmare brusque dark
it has to go somewhere

why not your clavicle?
she wishes she could stay

vulnerable: open like a barn door breeze
beasts shuffle in, smell sweet H.