After Preparing the Altar, the Ghosts Feast Feverishly

How hard it is to sleep in the middle of a life. — Audre Lorde We wake in the middle of a life,                    hungry. We smear durian            along our mouths, sing soft death a lullaby. Carcass breath, eros of  licked fingers and the finest perfume. What is love if  not         rot? We wear the fruit’s hull as a spiked crown, grinning in green armor.   Death to the grub, fat in his milky shuffle! Death to the lawlessness       of dirt! Death to mud and its false chocolate!   To the bloated sun we want to slice open and yolk                      all over the village. We want a sun-drenched           slug feast, an omelet loosening its folds like hot Jell-O. We want the marbled fat of steak and all        its swirling pink galaxies. We want the drool, the gnash, the pluck of each corn kernel, raw and summer                   swell. Tears welling up                     oil. Order up! Pickled cucumbers piled like logs for a fire, like fat limbs we pepper and succulent                in. Order up: shrimp chips curling in a porcelain bowl like subway seats. Grapes peeled from bitter bark — almost translucent, like eyes we would rather see. Little girl, what do you leave, leaven              in your sight? Death to the open eyes of  the dying. Here,           there are so many open eyes we can’t close each one.          No, we did not say the steamed eye of a fish. No eyelids fluttering like no butterfly wings. No purple yam lips. We said eyes. Still and resolute as a heartbreaker.         Does this break your heart?                                      Look, we don’t want to be rude, but seconds, please. Want: globes of oranges swallowed whole like a basketball or Mars or whatever planet is the most delicious.                   Slather Saturn! Ferment Mercury! Lap up its film of dust, yuk sung! Seconds, thirds, fourths! Meat wool! A bouquet of chicken feet! A garden of                   melons, monstrous in their bulge!               Prune back nothing. We purr in this garden. We comb through berries and come out so blue. Little girl,                            lasso tofu, the rope slicing its belly clean. Deep fry a cloud so it tastes like bitter gourd or your father leaving — the exhaust of his car, charred. Serenade a snake and slither its tongue into yours and                           bite. Love! What is love if  not knotted in garlic? Child, we move through graves like eels, delicious         with our heads first, our mouths agape. Our teeth:         little needles to stitch a factory of everything made in China.      You ask: Are you hungry? Hunger eats through the air like ozone. You ask: What does it mean to be rootless? Roots are good to use as toothpicks. You: How can you wake in the middle of a life? We shut and open our eyes like the sun shining on tossed pennies in a forgotten well. Bald copper, blood. Yu choy bolts                  into roses down here. While you were sleeping, we woke to the old leaves of  your backyard shed and ate that and one of your lost flip-flops too. In a future life, we saw rats overtake a supermarket with so much milk, we turned opaque. We wake to something boiling. We wake to wash dirt from lettuce, to blossom into your face. Aphids along the lashes. Little girl, don’t forget              to take care of  the chickens, squawking in their mess and stench. Did our mouths buckle                                at the sight of  you devouring slice                after slice of  pizza and the greasy box too? Does this frontier swoon for you? It’s time to wake up. Wake the tapeworm who loves his home. Wake the ants,                  let them do-si-do a spoonful of  peanut butter. Tell us, little girl, are you hungry, awake,                               astonished enough?