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  Me: The whole observable universe though? The chances of us making contact with another solar system in our galaxy versus one seven galaxies over? That’s all within yr Googles huh?

  Wilkes: Let’s just say in our galaxy, if 1% of Earth-like planets develop life and 1% of those develop a kind of “civilization,” in our galaxy of 100 billion stars, that means 1 billion Earth-like planets and 100,000 intelligent civilizations exist in our own galaxy. My good bitch.

  Me: Then I’m gonna echo our dude Fermi on this one: Where is everybody?

  The idea

  is that a “true self” exists somewhere below the layers and layers of scarves—

  all squishy eternity and Cèdre Atlas Atelier toilet water

  and in the contour, a false self

  The persona

  we create to conform to society

  Maison de Parfum

  On persona, George Orwell says, “The job is to reconcile my ingrained likes and dislikes with the essentially public, non-individual activities that this age forces on all of us. It is not easy. It raises problems of construction and of language, and it raises in a new way the problem of truthfulness.” What would George Orwell say about Twitter. If you’re going to ask that, what would Susan Sontag write about Instagram.

  I’ve got Swedish Fish in my bag.

  Swag.

  “Kellyanne Conway is the biggest leaker in the White House” blares across the MSNBC ticker tape and gd it that intern deserves a job.

  A hot person farts on the tarmac and gets super embarrassed and I’m like this is what it sounds like when doves cry

  Fear me, beer me, from the rear me.

  Island of the Bi Dolphins.

  Attila the Pun.

  Dear reader,

  the truth is: I don’t understand

  I’m onstage every other night Sprite

  from college classroom to community center auditorium to main street bookstore to makeshift poetry library in an artist’s loft to bar backyard after hrs Chinese resto weird laundromat vivid variety show at the venue where R.E.M. got its start

  Around more people than I’ve ever been

  in my whole life but I’ve never been

  so

  CTA. MTA. the Metro. the Metro-North. Link light rail.

  lonely.

  Joe says it’s a quintessential

  American narrative—success that doesn’t lance

  to happiness

  Dear reader, don’t stone me for this:

  My apartment is centrifugal force, the tug

  of turning a corner on a

  narrow

  road I fall asleep in the hum of a grey

  thin sleeveless hoodie Wake

  up in Philly, fully Teebs

  The road performs

  a smile stretched over the drum of my

  “prepare a face to meet the faces you will meet”

  Teebs-inflated, it’s like the other “me” watches from the sunken

  place pushes

  that “true self”

  deeper dapper down deep

  until it’s like I gotta Dwayne the Rock Johnson

  myself out of a crevasse in the

  Himalayas

  via super dramatic helicopter rescue

  Do you think Selena

  hears our

  prayers?

  Is she somewhere eating a whole medium pizza by herself?

  In that way, doing something

  alone

  is an accomplishment

  A self-reliance

  Hands to the sky

  Assurance of the appetite

  My father is drunk flailing incoherent pissed but weak on Old English and my mother has him pinned against the wall so we could leave to Auntie’s place but We keep coming back We keep coming back We Keep We Keep We and looking up at her I knew the story recycles because it’s love that makes you weak

  Does it all have to be codependency or isolation? Dr. John says

  Couldn’t there be a green valley in between

  these polar vortexes

  hexes

  exes

  The echo

  Another illusion that yr not alone

  Track 10: “I’m Not In Love” by 10cc, which, the 10cc entries in karaoke are . . . polarizing. So in this song: He loves you, but he’ll never tell you in fact he’ll flat out deny it. It’s just a silly phase he’s going through. He cares so much he’ll never let you know. That picture of you he likes? Just hiding a stain. A Nasty stain. He doth protest let me tell

  you

  I’m in loathe w/him & Dr. John asks me, why do u ass-

  u-

  me

  Teebs is the false self?

  Why do u ass-

  u-

  me

  The shy thing The polite thing The hide behind a parent’s leg thing

  The inside voice thing The scooped shoulders thing

  The oh stop I’m worthless I’m sorry for breathing thing

  is your lol truth? What if letting out the Teebs is reconnecting to the monkey bar swing singer before shame shame knew your name?

  Do you want to start a honey

  flavored THC candy

  business with me called

  All I Wanna Do Is Get High by the Bee Get High by the Bee Get High?

  Do you want to start a line

  of makeup

  specifically

  for the pubic region called

  Beat Around the Bush?

  Do you want to star

  in a PBS documentary

  short with me called

  Hells Angels in America?

  It’s mostly about the mid-90s Jim Carrey movie Liar Liar.

  Dear reader,

  Once again I don’t know where

  the feeling is or what to do with it

  and spent most of the day in bed with my eyes squeezed shut—everything all over the news feed and the names the names The list of the newest mass shooting on record the names the list of shooting victims of fragile masculinity and misogyny and a rigged system in favor of assault rifles over human life Where bathrooms are a battleground Pundits and politicians warn that MEN IN DRESSES WILL ASSAULT WOMEN Remarkably silent on a convicted rapist being sentenced to only three months One of the 3% of men who actually see jail time for sexual assault bc his father says his life shouldn’t be forfeit for “20 minutes of action” and then gets let out early on “good” “behavior” Meanwhile every stranger who starts trending is black and shot by the cops and PRESIDENTIAL TAX FRAUD and TRADE WAR and Is Colonizing Mars the Most Pressing Concern of “Our” “Time”? VICTIMS OF GANG VIOLENCE IN EL SALVADOR HAVE THEIR CHILDREN TORN AWAY AT THE BORDER

  Shake off the fuck bois—masturbate, don’t equivocate

  [in three voices, like a braid: 10th Avenue Square]

  trifoliate maples, Acer triflorum; ASS-er tri-FLOOR-um

  Purple milkweed, Asclepias purpurascens; ass-CLEE-pee-us per-per-ASS-ens

  big bluestrem, Andropogon gerardii; an-droh-POH-gon jer-AR-dee-eye

  I’m back

  in town

  for a spell

  & He asks me, what’s something

  you learned embarrassingly

  late

  in life?

  That it’s called “spur of the moment” not “sperm

  of the moment”

  (but high key shouldn’t

  it be sperm of the moment? Cos it’s like, spurt spurt spurt.)

  It’s deeply

  life

  to hold, gem-like,

  a furtive crush on a tall

  hottie boom body for five years of heady

  static

  before you finally start

  guap-guap talking

  and gazing across a taco shop

  and vigorously fiddling

  diddles

  only to learn in three weeks

  he’s skipping

  the country for six months

  to do like charco
al blind contour drawings or something in an airless basement in Copenhagen

  and two weeks before he gets

  back you’re huff huffin

  to the other

  side

  of the country for a year or maybe forever you haven’t figured it out yet bc not figuring it out yet is kind of your thing

  like mango margaritas, tex mex on the beach

  and stigmata

  and THEN and THEN and THEN

  he’s going off to hunt for orchids

  in Madagascar for three years

  and it’s like

  UUGGGGGHHHHHH

  How does everyone know the word “tetralogy” but me

  of COURSE not him nor him nor

  him nor him

  yr old shelves dissolving old shore shetticoats to sharadise

  Track 11: “Ready for the Floor” by Hot Chip. I’ll have to ask Dr. John if this counts as a Freudian slip, but I always thought the song was like, “open up, we’re tall!” And I was like f yeah! Don’t be a wallflower, come smooch me or whatever cos we’re both tall! But apparently it’s “open up with talk” which okay fine dialogue or whatever. Also I love myself a micro changing chorus. “Ready for the Floor” as in of course dance floor or whatever, in the context of the chorus ready to talk ready for dialogue, but when it switches to “ready for a fall” I kind of turn into a Pisces. I . . . fall . . . to Pisces? Sorry, Patsy Cline’s zombie is like rolling around in its grave rn I’ll see myself out.

  Dear reader,

  Yr easy to love but hard to get close to

  The tarot blares The palm reader traces a line

  of stormy wrinkles, face

  a tea-stained gathering cloud

  of COURSE

  yr gonna wind

  up

  alone

  forever rubbing yr toes together

  and eating peach gummies in a rocking

  chair

  existentially

  I finally OKAY BULLIES I finally read Paterson and The Argonauts and Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You and Don’t Let Me Be Lonely and Hard Country and Vanishing-Line and Collected Works of Billy the Kid and Coeur de Lion and À la recherche du temps perdu all these tomes forever recommended that I called dubious but I call due diligence My Lineage

  Fixated on what I’ve inherited and what I share

  It’s like this whole

  thing about being

  “with” somebody is a game of wack-a-mole

  and it’s deeply wack

  and Mole

  dribbles

  down

  my chin thing on the date

  where we say everything’s

  okay it’s not like we’re dying

  we’re just in between a cock and a hard

  place.

  And yeah rejection, chronically, can be a tool of character building and totes unavoidable and a temporary butcher knife strike to the chest, but

  god

  damn

  talk about a feeling that makes you want to rip

  off your own skin and flush

  it down the toilet

  Maybe I really am Teebs Box of Wine?

  Anybody got a pack of matches?

  Cos I feel like burning a bridge

  Track 12: “Shout” by Tears for Fears. First of all, best band name in America. Second, how cathartic am I right? Really, just let it all out. What else can you do in an intractable situation but shout? Focus on that full throaty wail where Roland Orzabal reveals that he’s just waiting for the lover to open up for the destruction his love will no doubt wreak.

  Dear reader

  Insulin is a polypeptide hormone produced by the beta cells of the islets of Langerhans of the pancreas, tiny islands that regulate the metabolism of sugar in the blood. Insulin resistance begins when too many sugars are introduced too often into the body—the beta cells shoot their load so often the body is like, damn insulin! Why are you so obsessed with me?

  Undigested sugar molecules rage around the blood, doing all sorts of crimes

  Insulin, from the Latin insula: isle

  Island—sugar—

  Insula: a smattering of convulsions situated at the base of the lateral fissure of the brain

  Dad’s hair started to fall out. His long black trickster locks Tufts of it in the trash on the brush

  Auntie’s sister goes in to get her foot cut off

  Auntie goes in for dialysis. They told her stick a needle in the orange for practice. It’s porous, like skin. Auntie, you’ve been injecting the orange this whole time? What the heck?

  I am the recipe I protect.

  How much can you rely on being alive tomorrow

  I don’t really like this full pastoral

  bull

  but I actually do really miss holding hands with Leo

  on the way to

  on the way to

  on the way to the waterfront to stuff our faces with tapas which I said were my favorite genre of food because I like to spread myself

  thin

  and I have commitment issues His arm around my shoulders in my red satin Artful Dodger baseball jacket with the sun pitting into the mountains of tenements and the galleries and the museums and the garages and the condos and the empty prison of the Meatpacking District visible from the walk and all these teens who weirdly just witness our love without jeering Taking care of our city moment

  Track 13: “You’re Makin’ Me High” by Toni Braxton. Have you ever listened to a song casually for fifteen years and then one day at karaoke at that laser booth in Koreatown where they give you a tambourine and shrimp chips you read the lyrics flashing across the screen and go oh . . . my . . . god. This is naaasty! lol Get lifted in the presence.

  Of course all those beers later when Leo sprang fully formed from the Chelsea Thicket w/his pastel grin and me tickled hippo pink The whole ribbon of time just

  unraveled

  and all I wanted to do was rebozo wrap him around me Wear his dusky musk Whip kisses on his biceps and flick the dick of his nose. Dick nose We’re at a funeral

  My mother’s red satin-ish Wild Bunch baseball jacket Every rez in the county had a team And it’s raining It’s a closed casket and I’m 4 I fleshy count out my fingers to my relatives when they ask They make the big eyes like they never seen a kid demanding attention before like they still believe in the promise of our ancestors and I do it on a garish loop bc it makes them laugh. I’m one, two, three, four! I affect their affected surprise back to them, like an echo of a banana splat. I’m like a rodeo clown but for funerals trying to distract my relatives from their landing pad in sad Somehow I understand that fleshy love led them to this place of devastation I don’t exactly swear to never do it but it becomes something I clock Cutting

  is decisive and precise. In what other context do you get to grip a knife like you do when preparing ceviche. Prep is so violent, right?

  Scrape out the tomato

  Smash the lemons and the limes

  Rip off the shrimp tails

  Slice open the cucumber, the onions, the chilies into smaller and smaller minces

  Simple ingredients orchid the kitchen-thing: an hour among the citrus and the onions and the cucumber and the chilies, shrimps bud from sickly grey to scrumptious punky pink

  Dear reader,

  It’s about family. Everything’s about family if you have enough string. Sitting in yr little chair while aunties flutter about the stove, the butcher block, the cutting board. We’re a country club in Durango. We’re a wedding cake in Mexico City. We’re a hole in the wall in Tijuana.

  Btw why’s it called a pie-hole? Why not a stew-hole? Or a hoagie-hole? Or a roe-hole? Apparently imagination is the wages of dessert culture.

  Me n Becky nibble De La Rosa cookies and blast La India, art denaturing our circuit of grey matter.

  [in three voices, like a braid: Chelsea Grasslands]

  Indian grass, Sorghastrum nutans; sor-GAS-trum newtons

&nbs
p; switchgrass, Panicum virgatum; panic-UM ver-GATE-um

  autumn moor grass, Sesleria autumnalis; sess-LEER-ee-uh autumn-NAY-lus

  It’s my third date with Wolf 1061c and I’m scrubbed head-to-butt because while there’s been backyard-bar heavy-petting and a make out sesh, we’ve yet to “do the deed” as the kids say and my real estate needs it and I have this thought while getting ready While exfoliating and pomading and cramming my hooves into the tight brown boots that python the shit out of my feet but turn every sidewalk into the runway of the century: this whole dating thing is actually great for me like, ritualizing “getting ready” the way I heart-eye-emoji’d my mom at the vanity fascinated at the magic of becoming the stepping-out version of yrself but then Wolf 1061c shows up rough, confessing that he was still hung over, weary-eyed, flecks of dried white spittle in the corners of his mouth It was really hard to get off the couch and come out here he says while we wait for the popcorn I have another thought: this whole dating thing is going to run my self-confidence out of town on a rail and to make matters worse he keeps talking about his perfect ex and his perfect ex’s perfect beard kind of looking into the buzzing subway light, far far away You see it turns out while Wolf 1061c is technically in the habitable zone around its star, it lies in the inner edge and is therefore tidally locked, one side permanently facing the star and one side permanently dark, which means the only place liquid water might exist is along the thin terminator line that is the suture of the dark side and the light and you know what? I’m just not about that stryfe. Next planet.

  What if we are the only outpost of life?

  Just June Jordan yr way

  through small bright affairs

  Buck the notion of ugh

  “true love.”

  But what if I do wanna find the heat with somebody?

  It’s CORNY

  When yr jib job is to zigzag around the glib globe

  it’s impossible

  to build a temple

  with anyone. All you get

  are the brief blips in Texas

  I mean taxes

  I mean texts, bending

  like plants toward the neon bar Starlight

  MASS GRAVES OF IMMIGRANTS FOUND IN TEXAS

  for taco Tuesdays. Maybe the argument is her audience closes

  the circuit Vigors the loop An inflation that normal life siphons away

  Track 14: “XO” by Beyoncé. When everything else goes dark, she looks into the faces of the crowd—it’s all she can see. Focus on the micro change in the chorus: You give me everything. The dark is, in fact, teeming with life. The reciprocity.