Sarah Gambito

The art of war teaches us to rely not on the chance of the enemy not attacking but rather on the fact that we have made our position unassailable. —Sun Tzu My father called me a chink so I’d know how to receive it. So I wouldn’t be surprised. Therefore the good soldier will be terrible in his onset and prompt in his decision. In the wall, I bricked up my secret. So it would gush forth. I did this for effect. So you would know me. On the day of battle your soldiers might weep bedewing their garments. But it grew like a bullet loving its flowerstain. It happened nonetheless. But let them at once be brought to bay. Because you are simply my medic watching me. I’m a poem someone else wrote for me. All of the characters “beautiful and flawed.” When we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far. My sister said, you can forget our way of life? I said yes and was annoyed. She ran away and I was desperate for her. I was screaming into the mindspeaker. When far away, we must make him believe we are near. I said, Christine, christine, christine.

The best thing of all is to take the enemy’s country whole and intact. My mother took my heart out. She banked it on top of her stove. It glowed white. She put it back in my chest. Tita knew that overseas workers often had affairs. He licked me and I pretended it pinged through my body like a swift idea That I wrote about and considered like a bell of good craftsmanship. He also knew that their kids ate better He said your belly is like a cat’s. He said with his bowl up to his chin More please. At night the fireflies come out. They flock to my window. I put my hands up against the screen. I think how fragile it is to be inside a house. They say I want permission I paint my face. I say—just take it. Easy. If equally matched, we can offer battle. If unequal in any way, we can flee from him. Deprived of their father while sustained by his wages. I thought a lot about walking around at night. By myself. Just to think. But I never did. I thought I could just flick a switch. When I was born, my mother and father gave me a gardenia like personal star. Don’t you hate it when someone apologizes all the time? It’s like they are not even sorry.

She brightens at the evidence. Like a strong appliance. You can make it hot. Grown ass people having tantrums. I’m unbought, unheated. Like a perfectly square morsel of lasagna. A wrathful rubics cube. To realize, I wish to ridicule people interested in martial arts. That I’m not getting better. My uncle would prank call my father, “Immigration!” He’d crow. And my father would fall to silence. No matter the heavy accent. No matter the voice he’d known unto boredom. One wing swigging out to its brother on the other bird. I measured this silence when I was a girl. The quality of the joke and how it rested on the bad stomach of a tensile citizenry. The joke was that, in an instant, We Lost Everything. It is important to remember who would laugh first— the perpetrator/uncle/jokester or the assailed/father/feather. Or maybe, it isn’t. Maybe what you should know is that they told this joke over and over and ever. My uncle crowed. My father disbelieved. We lost everything. And then, the svelte, sweet brier laughter.

I’m a pipe cleaner. A drop of moisture on the big nose. A pushing landscape, indecipherable. You speak of a very good sort of Englishness. That world could stand as a mallet. A one-body god with penis or not. I want only to admire the grass. The great locks of trees. That the idea is enough. My bringing herbs to myself thyself. My life hits my ears. A shredded pinky stream of bass and corrugated paper. Who is it that actually sees herself? The heart center of the fragrance billowing toward its end. My mother crammed in her room next to her mother. She was obedient. She was the method and voted for the wrong person. Our sore throats were our throats. We said to ourselves in our clay structures we are the motherboards. We’ll pull the blue ox back into our barn where the three kings still kneel. We cleaned the stable. We pushed the brush over the beautiful animals.

I was so afraid. I couldn’t escape it. It was bigger than me and 3 horned. It dashed for me and missed and missed again. It leapt for me in my skirt. I was younger than it. It opened its parent mouth and I could die trying. It would never never miss me. It would stand on its two legs and I was its message. Running hands over this country’s pantalones. I’m still surprised by our hulking silhouette. Our hopeful investments and slightly whiny children. Pompous jars of mustard in the fridge. We as blunt as gum under tables in restaurants.

I am afraid of your transcendental death. When people say think of a man. I think of a brown man. Sometimes the earth grows khella because she can feel our suffering. Yooooooing beneath Costco tikis. When people say think of a man. I think of a white man. I am meant to hold you in your oblique pain, your map-driven pain. Yooooooing beneath Costco tikis. I was drunk holding my teeth in like students. I am meant to hold you in your oblique pain, your map-driven pain. You die like an actor. I was drunk holding my teeth in like students. My body was a brown dog I shoved back into the water. You die like an actor. I beseeched but couldn’t stay out of the first person. My body was a brown dog I shoved back into the water. Hold me, hold me, hold me, holdmeholdmeholdme. I beseeched but couldn’t stay out of the first person. Where does it hurt, we say. Hold me, hold me, hold me, holdmeholdmeholdme. I am afraid of your transcendental death.