Junk Read online

  Little Mermaid made me a packrat The whittling process A

  training program in settling back into yr miracle What remains

  criminally un-let-go-of Don’t worry abt Junk It literally doesn’t

  worry abt you It can’t Excuse me? I was here on the first date I

  am the pin slid thru the boutonniere I am the b&w strip of photo

  booth first kiss I am the small stuffed leopard you held all the

  way thru the Natural History museum Your time wd mean

  nothing without me Nostalgia is the original second life It might

  as well be a construct Living on an imagined construct over

  the course of these pages I can understand how someone could

  sustain faith in something (divinity) that literally doesn’t exist

  And how less real is this I am the polaroid of just before you

  pulled his pants down to the b&w tiled bathroom floor at the

  album release party I am the pack of matches from the third

  date first fuck when u thought Trophy Bar, remember this I am

  the pumpkin tote bag you won together at Halloween trivia

  night, after the tie-breaking walk-off to “Nasty” by Janet Jackson

  I am I am I am Let’s blow this popsicle stand So the popsicle

  stand leaned its head back and sighed like a house settling and

  undid its pants The fight made a possibility of us ending

  descend Summer shifting uncovered a fault line September 11

  made us afraid But I’m from an NDN reservation, raised that

  way The rest was aftershocks You pulling slowly away Pay

  (attention [to me]) The pleasure of lifting yr shoulders Sit

  down and push yr soles into the ground I’m the plane ticket

  bookmark Jet Blue Portland 2014 trip I’m the business card from

  the New York Times reporter on yr flight to Bogotá I’m the flyer

  for the zine benefit show when you worked the merch table and

  gave him a handy behind the bar Running into the poem like

  cold waves in our fat Far Rockaways n thrash til homeostatic

  Waves create a craving for Dr Pepper Somethin sweet to cut

  the salty somersaults and deft kelp evasion and hrs n hrs

  coaxing friends farther in, but they never want to go as far out

  as us do they? Past the point of wave-beaten Past the point of

  even being subject to waves Where the huddled ocean cups

  you and blows, like soup Smooth pie crust like a desert island

  Shots of expensive silver tequila reminiscent of beach sand

  The proven psychological tide of butter Spectral dynamics n

  guitar riffs Ambulance sirens Pretty much any guy over 6'2

  who all eventually say move on Especially with tattoo pain and

  nerve death before a root canal or calls from the rez A note to

  say someone else is in the hospital or passed on Sudden 98

  degree days Dash out to meet yr gentleman jetty n forget to

  signal on the freeway The SUV next to you crashes into the

  divider and rolls and you had summer school with him But to a

  lesser extent, how abt kneelin close to shore or sitting down in

  small sharp waves The breakers fill yr mouth like salty chocolates

  They said we wouldn’t last, we had to prove them wrong

  Suddenly we’re not 2gether 4ever It’s been almost 2 months

  since I looked across a table in Union Square Park w/ the city

  beginning, reluctantly, 2 shed its summer skin Low key pee

  smell The table an odd bright green You started as a character

  in a poem It felt sly, meeting you that first time, and only a little

  silly falling into a ditch I mean a word that rhymes with glove

  Almost two cranberry months since I said what you expected

  Lychee martini Popping a boner in the ocean Sunscreen smell

  on the morning sheets I wd be lying if I said I missed u Or that

  I made the wrong choice I’m not sure I ever gloved you It was

  wrong of me to say it To build a monolith of expectation They

  called the club in Orlando “Pulse” bc the walls, painted white,

  would pulse with whatever color the lights were that night

  Imagine the splattered white walls In the silence that followed,

  the only noise was cellphones Desperate family and friends

  wailing praying against their bottomless suspicion It’s all I cd

  think about that day You were a sanctuary for my grief The

  words felt easy bobbing down the river of my voice A human

  shaped mate of devastation A tether I may have believed my

  glove for you was real but only really for that day All night I

  watch headlights sweep across your ceiling The empire rises

  Conspiring The sky is moody The land is not much better The

  news is not looking good IT’s NOT lookiNg Good Brexit Le Pen

  Duterte Putin The reasons to be afraid accumulate I’m thinkin

  of a claw foot bathtub and cracked wallpaper in a scary movie

  trailer A paper doll dress in the black vacuum of space Casually

  google what wd happen to a body without a space suit Cold is

  the currency of the universe Warm is the outlier, folks Deep

  freeze in the ongoing bleak Beings of a pumping heart that, like

  everything, goes cold How cd I not be obsessed with hugging

  the core of this world and fisting engines of light Making fire

  and swaddling ourselves in skins I don’t always use the most

  vigorous verbs But I did go on a date tonight where at the end

  we got frisky and he said (fingers on the seam of my ass crack)

  that he actually has a boyfriend and they’re not open He just

  still likes going on dates Dates! Literally the worst part of a

  romantic enterprise Cold starship boldly blasting into new

  lands and new civilizations powered by a crystal of the imagination

  Abstract infused by an image and a refusal to explain

  a fuel source No wonder they were post money in TNG

  Wherever we go, needs feed and I find it harder and harder to

  believe benevolence is the thing Thousands of Yazidi girls

  missing and plastic fills the ocean’s mouth and the cursive of

  yr name still occupies the canopy of my throat Fuel, the underpinning

  What fires your gd engine Rigor, mortis Cold as

  unmoving or unmoved The opposite of music Warm in the

  cold universe Molten, forming A rock becoming magma

  becoming lava becoming land Land, the trauma of lava Lava

  the lamp of the ancestors and later a cheeky find in the Junk

  shop and rising in our living room Living groom Just bc nothin

  cares doesn’t mean it lacks meaning What is the point of

  curiosity but a train rolling past the spot where the Donner

  party feasted n then go on a four hour Wikipedia downward

  spiral I’m the closest thing to a mime parade I whisper, home

  late tiptoeing down the creaky hallway tryin not to wake my

  roommates Nice chicken parm, sluts, I say to my fingers at

  lunch Dissociation is evacuating from the inside I just know

  we’ll have a good time Junk: a relief map of yr traumas Dipping

  yr whole arm into the bin of sunflower seeds I’m in my Shonda

  Rhimes Year of Yes and so far it’s pretty freak Gave a beej to a

  logger in town for a football game at his hostel Almost wrote

  hostile The old-fashioned way, as in I met him at a bar after

  lingering eye contact No apps Told him I was writing this poem

  Flush wit
h success after only eating half the cheeseburger for

  dinner For the first time in my life it wasn’t no burger or four

  burgers Full on Rocky situation He said he was flattered every

  time his gf’s gay friends grabbed his beer can Bacon-wrapped-date

  flavored Doritos The artifice of order Predictability,

  measured time, present wrapping Order, Order, Pockets of

  Order Or, Durham I dumped a boy from Raleigh today The

  baton of Junk The dance whirls Whorls War Tortle So what if I

  doggy-paddled into the ocean to crap Whales shit in the ocean

  all the time Cut to mall dressing room thousand outfits montage

  Ignorance as a tool to revive the feeling of doing somethin

  new Junk has 2 b the poem of our time Pointless accumulation

  Clinging to a million denials Why do you need an assault rifle?

  What if radioactive bears Buying in bulk Afraid of forgetting

  that party in 2007 when Chantal shouted JAMIROQUAI IS

  HOLDING THIS PARTY TOGETHER!!!! Junk is the garbage ppl

  keep Didn’t they tell you I’m a meteorologist but for people

  What’s that called? Psychic? Psychic side chick In maths,

  “arbitrary” is a thing without specific value Quite the Junkery

  The world, all of its rock formations and space missions and

  presidents and religious phobias and fashions fossils All of it

  has always seemed so arbitrary to me, bc to survive this long

  into an occupation feels sometimes so arbitrary to be And

  then sometimes so divine Who else cd survive but my line It’s

  true, your Junk won’t save you from a tsunami, but I’m descended

  from a group whose culture history language gods

  cosmology calendar stories government gait was capital O

  Obliterated I’ll stop writing this when it stops happening So

  when I “get” anything it’s hard to let go Resisting death for

  generations, I want to make the opposite of death No excuse

  for a vanilla bean tapioca ball attitude Ever bought a McFlurry

  n shouted YR DEAD INSIDE but yew were pointing a finger at

  yrself and, horrified, yew screamed Ran home but halfway

  home yew forgot what yew were doing and bought a pair of

  sneaker boots at DSW or just me? That’s what I thought Could

  this be flip The whole body of it Could this mean nothing Have I

  led you out here just to leave you howling at the moon What

  I’m trying to say is this is a poem of vibrant inconsequence

  Picture it: Sicily, 1923 Whoops I mean Thanksgiving dinner w/

  family in town from the rez at a midtown resto, blackberries

  in the whipped cream while the Washington Redskins blaze on

  TV behind us Or last month when police clashed with water

  protectors Tore down encampments and elders and children

  On the same day milk-toned Oregonian militiamen r acquitted

  after armed occupation of land On the same day the Cleveland

  Indians r in the World Series during American Indian Heritage

  Month Before, in the past, this world discovered war Berlin

  Afghanistan Terracotta Slob War War War on the front of every

  newspaper In the back of every noggin Sludgy nympho gummy

  bear humps the Haribo package—Body monuments and light

  cigarettes Diet Cherry Dr Pepper and a bag of Hot Cheetos

  Cholera epidemic in Haiti where there is no immunity because

  Cholera was like the only thing that never befell Hispaniola

  Rasp is sassy but Junk is punk Static in its intention Static in

  its emotional release Static in the city Buzz of disbelief White-

  house domes every convo We are a part of the rhythm nation I

  get this teaching gig and being an authority figure, let me tell u,

  is such an emperor-has-no-clothes situation Like being onstage

  Very, “I’m more afraid of you than you are of me” Sharon Jones

  glides on about being an injured prison guard on Rikers Island

  Terry Gross asks, “How were you able to convince the prisoners

  that you were strong enough and focused enough to do the job

  and keep them in line?” Sharon says “It’s the look in my eyes . . .

  You could not show fear, and that’s one thing I didn’t show” Try

  it on Saying “pilfer is a fun word” enough times makes it true,

  like petticoat coffee cakes and the invention of blue raspberry

  Dummy, stay on message I never intended to be a professional

  NDN but this time of year every1 wants to know do I celebrate

  Thanksgiving? Janet is still with us, despite the retreat of

  common sense, the retreat of fall, the retreat of Sharon Jones

  and David Bowie and Prince and Vanity and Leonard Cohen

  Phife Dawg and George Michael Do you remember what it was

  like to feel warmth from the sun? It’s odd, right? For light to

  only be light and not also heat The sun conceals things too, in

  its glare There’s nothing but me and you in this book even tho

  sometimes I have B.O. and my credit card gets stolen and I

  need a new pair of gloves It makes sense that it took me the

  whole year before I could entertain talking to u again Back in

  our crystalline season I was right 2 suspect worth in yr grace

  You aren’t evil for not loving me Maybe it’s a retrograde sitch

  Look into the sky in yearning to be someplace else When you

  gobble gobble so fast it’s like dinner never happened & even

  now conjuring you feels like a diversion but yr the reason I

  started writing this in the first place Michelle Tea says when

  you write about someone, you have to be able to look them in

  the face Your faces are many Your shoulders are different

  colors Sometimes yr EXTREMELY tall and sometimes only very

  tall Sometimes yr face is golden smooth and cut like an English

  garden Sometimes yr face is lunar, bright chalk white n

  cratered Sometimes we were together for six weeks Sometimes

  eight months Sometimes I don’t know yet We sit still in our

  gurgle sacks waiting for each other to change Waiting for our

  stomachs 2 glow pink again in the gallery night But we dimmed

  Each time we dimmed differently but we dimmed we did The

  Metro Link light rail SEPTA MTBA Amtrak Bolt Bus Megabus

  the Peter Pan the MAX Metro North MARC Train Charm City

  Circulator The opposite of escape A firming in the firmament

  The couch An airbed Yoga mat and sometimes just the floor I

  just want to close a door I’m masturbating in the bathroom like

  a common teen Man punches woman at bar Man screams at

  woman in diner Man yells at woman in a hijab in Queens “Man,

  man, menace” is like a weird game of “duck, duck, goose” The

  hollow taste on the inside of yr mouth when you haven’t eaten

  all day Make out with boys named Patrick n Gerald n Martin n

  David and suck on his finger at the bar with the empty blue fish

  tank and rando lotto ball cage Drink Shiners in his backyard

  Threesomes are awkward af mostly bc everyone is wasted so

  it feels like heavy turbulence on the twin bed in this liver I

  mean sliver of apartment Double stuffed and hating it Last

  Resort Lagunitas Goose Island The shot special Two more

  packages of Reese’s Old-Fashioned Narragansett and Jameson

  on the rocks Whatever insulates you from the calving face of
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  this gd world When has sympathy for the oppressor ever

  worked for us? The poem and reading the poem become each

  other Echolocation The sound of a shape Fog is a dopey metaphor

  The news leaps through me like a talking dog—unreal,

  no? I don’t know where the feeling is or what to do with it n

  spent most of the day w/ my eyes squeezed shut but then I

  went for a run to force feed myself some endorphins Wrote a

  few couplets and texted all my friends and went to the rally

  and marched bc it felt restorative to blast night with my voice

  box and stomp the sidewalks and the streets with friends for

  twenty blocks in all directions Whole blocks of avenues in all

  directions swell w/ peeps shouting MUSLIM RIGHTS ARE

  HUMAN RIGHTS and MY BODY MY CHOICE and BLACK LIVES