[in the last days of YOUR health insurance, YOU 
                                                          gets to a doctor’s office. the narrated action 
                                                          occurs silent-movie style, very  dramatic.] 

                                     NARRATOR 
& the Black woman at the front desk asks You Your name,
d.o.b., & how many licks it’ll take You to get to the center  
of this sucker, because inside You’ll find your bill. she asks  
if You’ve ever considered, witnessed, or recently become 
allergic to pregnancy. how long You’ve been Yourself & if 
You is Single, capital S, & if You could be a kind of dessert  
which kind would You be. & why. when You passes these entry 
riddles, You enter the audience & hear humming, akin to the 
beat of Your ticking clock. now Your heart. no one else is 
waiting for their name, only Yours. they’ve come to witness 
You being weighed & measured, recorded, probed. a doctor  
appears—You?—the room silences, all heads turn. when You  
rises, they follow. the doctor asks if You has ever considered,  
witnessed, or recently become allergic to pregnancy. if You has  
been counting Your cheek hairs. if Your mother & father ever  
fought. well…yes, You says. the audience boos in rounds.  
are you happy? her eyeline descends your antipodal knees.  
me, or my vagina? the audience sighs. she winks at them,  
turns her speculum into a microphone, singing to You. 
are you on drugs? if not, why. & which drugs do you  
waaaaant. she spins in her chair as pills shoot from her  
fingers into the audience. the exam table pirouettes with Your  
feet in the stirrups, Your entryway visible & unadorned. she 
examines You in motion, her speculum an injustice. her  
speculum an ex boyfriend. her speculum a speculum.  
there is not enough blood for Your audience, they hide  
Your clothes as you come away leaking. she sings again that  
everything is normal, but Your period must be giving You  
trouble. sure, You agrees, my period is probably giving me  
trouble. have You considered pregnancy? do Your mother  
& father know of Your sex life? what’s in it for them? a chorus  
now. the audience has joined—what’s in it for them! they are  
throwing sucker wrappers & ticking again. someone sticks  
Yours in Your mouth. it’s a sweetness You has been ashamed  
to crave; so childish, that type of want. Your tongue ensnares  
the best part, the middle around the filling, which You must  
bite, only to pull a debt from between your teeth & find  
Your mouth full of tiny shards of glass. 




Appears in Grownfolk Blues: A Musical in Poems (Host Publications 2026)

i am nowhere—
where are you?

hidden in an asylum
with pills & posies?

let’s distract ourselves
from worldly horrors

& collapse into the bed—
       quaint enclosure,

chrysalis me in the fitted sheet—
is there a butterfly

after the metamorphosis,
or just a dead bleating thing?




Appears in house as a cemetery (Rebel Satori Press, 2026)

another blue-tint
season I push
backdoor eager
for unwash
dreams tame in your queer-
flame pot          your assistant
				                     gnarled man
			              who once love you
			              on one-way river	      open 
				                   salt packet
				                   infuse by dirt    you harass
	      sweet oil
almonds into rabid
white water boil	       turn
bruise shoulder
toward your trade
							                                    in next history
	      I grab
your strong arm
		           despite mess of cranky men eyes
		           your caught hair
tremble and sorry 		      my hand upon
						                                drought





Appears in Shiny City (Arlie Press, 2025)

She passed. 
Passed on. Passed over. 
She’s past. She is in 
the past now. 
In other words  
she is not 
here. 
But these lilacs shivering 
in a spring  
profusion: 
Her and her and her. 
I bury my  
face in them.




Appears in asterisk (Bull City Press, 2023)

   	 June combs my feathers

for which fling I 

         my wings wide.

         I splay, lorn, and 

lament the living world. 
	
         She impresses upon me:    
	
          you are alive to face 

what would wrench you.
	
          I breathe
	
          through her insistence.

Skin alight under 
	
          her haint touch. 

	  My nerves 

surge concentric; now 

	in this time of abysmal 
	
        fates; world witless and aflame. 

Yet I bird,

        oh, hover beneath her alive.

Never mind there is no place that is not this place. Begin 

with a landscape: fog hovers over the long bend of marsh.

I know.

Kayaks, a few—bright & docked—but there’s one rope 

vacant, its knotted end drifting in place in the slow current.

So someone (or two) must be out on the water at this strange hour 

of overflow, morning sheen, & muck. Come closer to me.

It’s my favorite thing, imagining the comings and goings.

& why. & why not. A destination intimates want. 

Put your hand on the back of my neck. The

mooring of your hand is what I want. 





Appears in Python with a Dog Inside It (Black Lawrence Press, 2025)

I would’ve held your grandfather’s hand              when he died  

       I would’ve held my brother’s hand                    when he died 

Ma, why did we come                                                        to the U.S.  

         A better life                                                  more opportunity  

       Would we have had a better life                          in the Philippines 

I think I would’ve been happy                             surrounded by family  

             I would’ve missed                                   your dad in the States  

                         but                                                   I would only miss  

                one person                                                    Right now  

                 I miss                                                              an entire hive
 
                 I think                                                    you and your sisters  

     would’ve gone to college                                       in Manila  

   Your dad and I                                                      would’ve worked hard 

to make sure                                                                you didn’t have to  

work abroad                    Do you wish you could               turn back time  

      I wish                                                                           time would  

   obliterate                      I wish time didn’t                         force us to work  

   I wish time                                                                    didn’t tell me 

you and your sister                                               were just going through a phase  

     That I would                        have time                       to see your grandfather  

     That time was not                 eating away                     at your uncle’s lungs  

  That with some time                                               your father would get a  

  work promotion                               I                                      wish 

leaving was not marked                                                     by time 
 
     Be grateful                                             You and your husband and your children

must be grateful 


I am grateful                                                              you are 

      still alive  
                            
                                                                               This country  

will not force                                                                 me to hold  

   your hand                                                              as you die

The last time some man called me a faggot, mountains sang: 
 
a bird called America blushed, devoured roses. The thorns 
 
stuck in her teeth, like tough bits of meat. He got in my face. 
 
I did not blink. I sang back to my country, a quilt of torn flags;
 
his hiss hung around my lips. His breath stank. Dogwoods
 
bloomed pink above us. My father’s father’s mother plucked 
 
a folk ballad on catfish bones. The Ozarks wept and bled mud
 
waterfalls, wagons broke. He said, know what that makes you? 
 
Goddamn unamerican. His snout nearly brushing mine. Dirt
 
behind his eyes. My country, whose violences I cannot shake— 
 
whose purple pumps through my veins—  whose song sticks 
 
in my lungs—  whose nasty history of who owns whom is no more 
 
his than mine—  then this country, too, is a faggot. He should be 
 
so lucky as to have a name. To have a changing flag and a history 
 
of plague and dancing. A whole prairie shivered. He stood still. 

The last time some man called me a faggot, I became a nation.





Originally published in Fourteen Poems Issue 12

1. Am I Asking for Too Much?

Mind reader wanted.
You’ll predict my needs before I speak them.
You’ll be trauma-free, debt-free, and full of surprises.

Me: high-functioning control freak
with Louis Vuitton emotional baggage and a weak spot for
programmable robots.

Applicants must be blank slates
eager to be rewritten.
If you’ve ever rebooted your soul, we might be compatible.
Upgrades encouraged. No messy backstories.


2. Party Time

Hi. I’m charming. Addictive. A total nightmare.

Looking for someone with soft eyes, a soft job, and a soft spine.
If you earn enough, you won’t notice when I blow it on booze.

When I’m angry, I won’t punch—
I’ll hold you down just enough to remind you
I could.

Bonus points if the smell of weed and gym socks turns you on.
If I threaten to jump off a roof,
you’ll just know I need a hug.


3. Commitment

ISO partner to cheat on, regularly.

You’ll find texts. I’ll lie.
You’ll cry. I’ll say, “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
And you’ll forgive me.
We’ll hold each other tighter
like people who know this is doomed.

I’m fair—
you can cheat too. Just don’t be obvious.
Let’s destroy each other sweetly,
while sipping turmeric lattes and planning our wedding.

Monogamish. But mostly not.


4. Confident & Mature

Me: 42, emotionally asthmatic.
You: 60s, stylish, unattached, perfect on paper, terrified of real closeness.

Let’s meet. Pretend we’re versions of ourselves we admire.
Let’s charm each other into thinking this might work.

Later, when you flirt with the bartender,
I’ll smile like it doesn’t gut me.
I’ll excuse myself with grace,
touch both your elbows gently,
and say, “I’ll leave you two to talk.”

Your line is:
“No. Don’t go.”
Say it. Please. Say it like you mean it.

So I can walk away anyway
and replay the scene
for the rest of my life.





Originally published by Assaracus

I shut my eyes under the scalding stream
		scrubbing off last night’s dream
when suddenly I hear your voice again
	as though it caught in the clogged drain
	
and was sent bubbling back up from the other
		world where you’re not my mother.
This time it’s really you. I’m really here.
	I blink. We do not disappear.

Dad left, you say, to shower at the shop
		so I don’t need to stop
just yet—and yet I do, unable to
	resume old customs, unlike you.

In a one-bath four-person household, we
		learned what we mustn’t see,
become, in time, so coolly intimate
	with one another’s silhouette

behind the opaque frosted shower screen
		that once more stands between
us two. While at the mirror you apply
	foundation and concealer, I

wash out my hair with rosewater shampoo,
		which means I’ll smell like you	
all day. Mama, I shout, I’m coming out,	
	and as you look away I knot

around me tight your lavender robe de chambre,
		cinching my waist, and clamber
out of the tub, taking care not to step
	outside the cotton mat and drip

on the cracked floor you’ve polished with such zeal
		we’re mirrored in each tile.
Yet, you’d forgive the spillage, or forget.
	What else will you love me despite?




Originally appears in The Palace of Forty Pillars (Tinhouse, 2024)

they celebrate sobriety 
birthdays with a single, 
large fake cake.
A little grubby but still 
trusty, tasty-looking.

Only in LA, I mutter 
to the eye candy 
sitting next to me. 
My knee’s almost 
touching his muscled 
lower thigh (yes,
 
short shorts in winter).
At least a dozen
standing in line 
to make Oscar-length 
speeches. None pretend
to eat the cake.

Once it’s over, I walk
Santa Monica Boulevard,
that street of sin, 
expecting hordes of drinkers, 
but no—the sidewalks 
are plague-quiet, 
cars heading elsewhere. 

I enter Fatburger. 
Jerky teens 
huddle around tables,
plushies clinging
to their backpacks.
I send a photo 

of my Oreo milkshake
and chocolate chip cookie
to my husband 
back at the Universal
Sheraton, so he knows
what’s keeping me,
so he doesn’t
fear the worst.

i knew right then that this would change me
would make me tender again
my ribcage, a mountain side opening
wind pushing through earth

would make me tender again
you arrived a burning morning sky
wind pushing through earth
opened my heart with your fist

you arrived, a burning morning sky
we met in late summer
opened my heart with your fist
the season, coveting us in her heat

we met in late summer
my ribcage, a mountain side opening
the season coveting us in her heat
i knew right then that this would change me

A cocky man always has something to say,
sends a selfie with his shirt pulled up to his head.
Tell it to my abs, he texts. Ego on display.

A man like that leaves a sane person in dismay.
He believes his words relieve women of all dread
as he struts about with all his important things to say.

At a reception, a friend tells me about the day 
a male poet thought he’d get her in his bed. 
Tell it to my abs, baby, he texts. Hubris on display.

Tight body, bad attitude — solid F, not an A,
I confess while we wait in line for the cheese spread.
His abs are more interesting than his poetry, I say.

An eavesdropper asks, He really treats women that way?
A smug man’s words land with the weight of lead. 
Tell it to my abs, baby doll. Arrogance on display.

A pompous man’s drivel turns women away.
Incapable of reason, all his logic is long dead. 
A cocky man is never short of something to say. 
Tell it to my abs, he texts, a prick on full display.

When the only light 
left is flame, I burn 
to the end of me.
I think about Mulan,
somewhere between the flower 
and the blade. It’s too easy 
to say I am the moment
she sits and slashes 
her hair with her father’s 
sword. Each strand falling
like black rain against stone. 

It’s too easy to say I am 
the way she practices her man-
voice. Widens her walk like 
gravity is still deciding how much 
of her / not her to keep. 
It’s too easy to say that I am 
just the viewer.
Her / not her / him carrying 
through the scene like a question.  
This exit wound of identity blooming 
like an uncurling fist. 

That as a child, I didn’t notice her 
chest binding, didn’t feel that flutter 
in my belly when she pulled up her hair,
became Ping. I am sorry I am capable 
of being what others least expect. 
I mean there is something more

beneath my girl hands than boy hands. 
Like how beneath Li-Shang’s disappointment 
was desire, which walked the length 
of Mulan until their clothes begged us all 
to be good boys / not boys again.




Originally published in The Pinch

Today, adjusting my jacket
in strong wind, I look down
to the hem, remember the neat
way she’d pull up the bottom 
zipper—quick, decisive—to open 
a gap for her hips. Who are we,

those many years ago,
to our current selves? Twice
a decade, we meet for tea, polite 
about the others we’ve gone on 
to love. Her small hands. How 

they seemed capable of almost 
anything: thumb nudging a throttle
just enough to come alongside 
a dock;  what we did below
decks and in the gear locker,

the smell of burned nylon 
from the line cutter, a thin, 
heated blade that separated
strands and cauterized them
so they wouldn’t fray, all
around us, everything I wanted 
to be, awakening.





Originally appears in SOFAR: Poems (Persea, 2025)

You’ll never not want to kill yourself, he said,
matter-of-factly, he’d probably sat across from
hundreds or thousands of us—a new track
of an old song—So the best you can do, here
he held my hand, is find something to live for

every single day. He gave me back my shoelaces,
wallet, keys, a list of local shrinks I’d never afford
or visit anyway, and, as if it just came to him,
he said, I’ve never seen a guy get as many visitors
as you, honest to god—

The same observation of Hobo Ryan, who told me
to call him that, nineteen, checked himself in
for a few nights off of Ocean Avenue, handsome, 
straight but didn’t mind a guy’s mouth for a price,
laughed when he found out I was “the suicide”

Man, I’d do anything to be you, be gay even, haha—
I don’t mind admitting I loved him then—But really,
It’s been almost a month and you’ve had visitors
every goddamn day! Had it been that long? I lost
hours and days, half my mind, and yet

He was found out in the middle of the night, 
no mental or emotional illness, no insurance,
no way to say goodbye or tell me his last name
which even the doctor couldn’t give me, just
a lanky blonde kid saying, I know this is weird, 

the night before, But do you think I can sleep 
here with you—nothing gay, man, just, I don’t
know, do you mind? How could I? Not at all. Just
two guys who’d never see each other again
trying to find something to live for.




Originally appears in Kissing the Wound (Moon Tide Press, 2023)

Rest in the cradle of unspoken beds, no finger or hand of a stranger inside you, 
no hide of sacred cow for your sling, no salt of golden showers, no pig roast 

or chains of Marley, thrust shaken. Live this one day in containment, complete, 
body and mind released from the flesh you are not. Reclaim eyes from your father,

set your toe in the crack of the bathhouse floor, always a gap in that shrine. Transcend
the pierced tongue, pierced nipple, pierced frenulum. Break the club’s red exit 

light. Moisten lips, speak to spirit, close your mouth, tighten anus, brighten this 
dungeon with god glow. Gather funk, collect sweat, fashion angels 

stinking of sea. Transform into selkie, swim toward dawn. Float, without hunger 
or yearning for others. Release the infinite ocean of thirst you have swallowed.




Originally published by Under a Warm Green Linden

tasteful naked woman twisted overhead		hangs forcing me to look        	
 the word Shapely in the 	italic         one arm inert across breasts          no
										                                         pubes whatsoever	   
           hand flung on the back of her head proves she’s never heard
 of armpit hair                                    	
                                you’ve won TWO free slimming sessions at LONDON WEIGHT   
         MANAGEMENT!				                                the first time she touches me
         the shape of suggestion: you might be OLD           but you don’t need to be FAT         	
                        indignities half-off                       	postural suggestions: 

                        a leaping gazelle with            	        head tilt like frostbite

        			     the slimming manager 
holds me in front of the mirror. gently
 then so firmly I lose balance.  	she shows me
         	how bloated. curving wrong. being held here
 reminds me of being spread open       	forced to look
 so my hole cunt is apparent to me       	of neck holds
 voice in my ear making me slick             except slimming managers have never heard of
					                                lesbians,

BDSM, erotic degradation, asphyxiation for fun & pleasure          highly specific
 								                                                        about serving only      
                            FEMALE 
                            customers              	        it’s 
                            ok if I get wet
                            if they never smell it

wear nothing but paper bra and paperer bloomers. gel
 smears on my stomach slope an insistent sucking whine. vacuum hungering
 scifiesque for underskin         	 wobble

                              would be sensual without her repeatedly asking
                 which other of my parts dissatisfied me. my gizzard,

I tell her patiently. bordering
 on incredulous she asks, where else? I refrain from
 elaborating I am incandescence            	walking the earth
 unused to inventing imperfection        	receiver of worship as my due

slimming manager resorts to waving my wedding at me
says if I do not submit myself she	         cannot make me sexy sexy like that
		             lists other women’s insecurities:
 particularly when fat
                                             	          spills over
                     	the back clasp of their bra
                                 	(foreign experience to me, non-bra wearer)

offers obscene price reductions for
                                             	          using my data in a case study
I say, keep it,
 it’s on the house,
         	feeling like skinnyfat jesus in the circling 40-day heat

the prettiest of slimfit temptresses points out my
 grotesque shoulders rounded and ogrelike
 she asks but why do you think you don’t need this. 	

                            flummoxed I can only say idiotically

because
 there is                     	no need.

the tasteful Shapely woman she’s nothing but framing,
arresting, sentenced to real conviction,
displayed in the effulgent cavern of shamelessness

slimming manager keeps asking me why but she speaks only mandarin
 so it sounds like, what is your way of thinking?
what is your thought? what were you thinking?

and I,
must stop thinking
right now

              
               Toward dusk the light was
lapis, veined with cirrus, bird, and contrail, 
poplars alchemizing green to gold,
a light we might call glassy with the sun
behind it, low and cutting, like the final
word of an ongoing argument.

We’d fucked so hard the bed had bounced us off.
We’d laughed, in shame or shock, then climbed back in.
Night had not come on yet, as it would—
the bikes were paper cut-outs in the distance,
their riders one-dimensional, unhurried, 
		pulling the dark behind them.



Originally published by Plume, appears in The Unbecoming (Norton, 2026) 

is what Tristan called me 
at the 8th grade lunch table 

when the burning desire 
to see me in a box 

made him boyishly claim 
a name, a language, a body 

i hadn’t finished growing into. 
i never said i was a lesbian. 

cuz you’ll never wear lipstick 
he slipped in through howls 

of laughter. and i chuckle 
in acceptance. known 

to swallow whatever 
the boys are pouring. 

they’re who the girls go 
giddy over and i needed an in 

to the crowd. the girls. the box. 
the show he had no business watching 

that talked about girls kissing girls 
and made it somewhat okay. 

i needed to feel seen, even as a joke. 
better that than invisible. 

plus, everyone loved blistex. call this 
a lesson in naming and lubrication.