478 Identity poems

Bibiana: At night I dreamt that I belonged to a basement-flock of girls just as terrified and feverish as me. We could communicate with each other by knocking on the walls.

Hardly any of me is solid any more, I mean I buy things every day. And there comes a time when I am feeling as windblowed as the apples in the Shenandoah. And there goes I who then again began tho what does this Mrs. Begin? (she says I am) And cast down me wretched sinner unto thee I am slightly different from a corpse at a funeral in that I am less made up but made up worse. Who I thereby did appoint myself but forgot which was mirror. I stand stabbed with wrench piss rabid at the counter matter of things in the room with which I identify. Somewheres crossed up in hot antartic mountains they live backwards together. Whose feet then were backwards whose feet were needing shoes so badly in 1964 that millions virtual millions of shoes were sent to “Appalachia Virginia” for they were too poor—“backward.” America glared haughtily at local shoe burnings that Christmas. But I’m not antarctical nor hypo thetic. My mind gleams like the fangs of a viper in white heat dying to sink my teeth into the throat of something wrong.

When did I learn the word “I”? What a mistake. For some, it may be a placeholder, for me it’s a contagion. For some, it’s a thin line, a bare wisp, just enough to be somewhere among the gorgeous troublesome you’s. For me, it’s a thorn, a spike, its slimness a deceit, camouflaged like a stick insect: touch it and it becomes what it is: ravenous slit, vertical cut, little boy standing upright in his white communion suit and black secret.

I am a daughter and a sister. I wonder when I will die. I hear the warm weather coming. I see stars in the day. I want to learn my whole ballet dance. I am a daughter and a sister. I pretend to be a teacher at home. I feel like I am a teacher. I touch hands that are growing. I worry that I will never change. I cry when something or someone dies. I am a daughter and a sister. I understand that teachers work hard for students. I say that I don’t like bullies. I dream about me not moving while trying really hard to run. I try to become a good friend. I hope that there is no more dying or killing. I am a daughter and a sister.

After Rilke I carried a bowl of menudo into the forest / I carried my bisabuela’s tripas not daring ask whose intestines I carried / con cilantro y radish y cebolla chopped fine / I carried the sewing machine they’d chained her to in the garment district downtown I carried the forest crackling against asphalt where her chanclas burnt & melted so I carried her too / I wore no red / I bore no basket / there was no forest but an avocado tree in the backyard of the house they made her sell to get her Medicare for her diabetes shots / I carried her sugarwater / a hummingbird great-granddaughter I carried her flickering / her black- 
& white-screened / I carried her face / the scars her warped esposo left her granddaughter / carried those wounds through the womb / not wolf but blue-eyed man / I stirred the menudo / my belly the pot / & scalding into the forest I carried / & that tree I chopped down chopped into a boat & carried my mother & my bisabuela across the chile-red sopa the blood-water broth / named her daughter / what forest have we made for her I cannot see / I carried darkness into the forest & sliced it out.

I am merely posing for a photograph. Remember, when the Nomenclature stops you, tell them that—“Sirs, he was posing for my camera, that is all.” . . . yes, that may just work. My eyes: clear, hazel like my father’s, gaze across the sea, my hands at my side, my legs spread apart in the wet sands, my pants crumpled, torn, withered, my shirt in rags, see-through in places, no buttons, what a luxury, buttons, I laugh a little, my tongue slips and licks itself, almost, I laugh, licks itself from side to side, the corners of my mouth, if only I could talk like I used to, giggle under moonlight, to myself, my arms destitute, shrunken, I hadn’t noticed, after so many years sifting through rubble stars, rubble toys, rubble crosses, after so many decades beseeching rubble breasts—pretend I came to swim, I am here by accident, like you. My face to one side. Listen to gray-white bells of rubble, the list goes on—the bones, hearts, puffed intestines, stoned genitalia, teeth, again I forget how to piece all this together, scraps, so many scraps, lines and holes. The white gray rubble light blinds me, wait, I just thought—what if this is not visible, what if all this is not visible. Listen here, closely: I am speaking of the amber thighs still spilling nectar on the dust fleece across Gaza, the mountains, the spliced wombs across Israel, Syria. The amber serums cut across all boundaries, they smell incense, bread, honey—the color of my mother’s hands, her flesh, the shrapnel is the same color the propellers churn.

I am not I. I am this one walking beside me whom I do not see, whom at times I manage to visit, and whom at other times I forget; who remains calm and silent while I talk, and forgives, gently, when I hate, who walks where I am not, who will remain standing when I die.

I Google myself I want you to love me When I feel down I want you to Google me I search myself I want you to find me I Google myself I want you to remind me

It’s no wonder          I’m always tired          with all these tract houses— It’s night & cold on my belly in                                                  the undeveloped field now I have to bury her clothing inside                                                a black garbage bag in plot D police cars roll         past but continue        down the treeless parkway even after shining their lights on                                                  me in my freshman sundress I can only assume they don’t see                                                  the significance of my presence but I must say          1994 is a simpler         time—not everyone is suspect I crawl up next to my old house                                                   & look through a lit window my mother reads a book in bed            I want to knock           on the glass, there’s something I need to tell her

The eye’s desire for relief. I’m the tiger lily bobbing in the heat. And also the neighbor, shaved bald and lifting weights on the balcony. Each petal is the receipt of a shameful dream— a thought we hadn’t wanted to incorporate lolling from my parted mouth. But you know it’s mistakes that make life happen. A cardboard suitcase of beer for the traveler. And if we get too close to the words on this page they soften and warp into an animal lace, some net whose logic won’t reveal itself. I pull our eyes back because I love you. But then you draw them back further still because that sounds like an excuse. The whiny version of Love Hurts loops and curls like ribbon through a scissor, being pulled across the blade. The money in this poem’s easy, if you don’t mind having no thoughts and sitting in one place, while your body changes shape.