The Color Green
eomma shapes my ink stained
bangs with the same orange
utility scissors she uses to
cut off scratchy tags with hands
that used to be pale & translucent
like cooked onion, potato starch,
wheat flour. her wrists are a recipe:
sunspots, angry olive oil burns, ½
cup oyster sauce for a little flavor.
the scissors slip so I go to school
with a jagged fringe but at least
my shirt doesn’t itch.
eomma feeds me a perilla leaf
wrap by the window. the leaves
we pick from the backyard,
feed with hose water &
forehead sweat & drops of
sun. eomma tells me to hurry
up & swallow, to stomach the
chlorophyll, taste the color green
& it goes down like cooked onion,
like potato starch, like wheat
flour & olive oil.
helium star
cousin carried your picture
at the funeral on a tuesday
night before a big math exam.
you looked different in a frame.
you told me you liked the sky
better than the sea last time we
spoke. you bought me a balloon &
I lost it to the clouds. can you see
it now? in retrospect I wish I’d
asked more questions. there’s too
much I don’t know about you so tell
me your favorite color and I’ll
dye the sky for you. tell me what
songs you like and I’ll teach thunder
to sing & lightning to dance. tell me
when you have time. we were
twin stars blinking back
tears, ageless relative to the earth,
moving so fast that were one
& I wish I’d held you closer
so that death himself would have
had trouble prying your form
from my hands but I’ve always
had a habit of letting go of balloons.
Roots
my great-grandparents were pot makers
who sculpted legacies with flesh, clay & bone.
they coaxed flowers out of cactuses
& raised saplings in sand. I don’t know
their names and they never knew mine.
when dad tells me to never forget
my roots I never know what to think. but
I know my great-grandparents never died
because the Earth would have died with them.
they never died because everything I know about them
comes from the living & maybe I have great-grandpa’s
eyes, his hands, his conviction & maybe I have
great-grandma’s ears, her tongue, her spirit and soul
& maybe I was raised in sand. when we meet again
somewhere where the sky never ends—
there, I will tell them my name.
How To Cook Maine Lobster
I saw her before he did. lady in white dress, blushing
red. mom told her to find a good man so she did
what she could and fell headfirst. he was
older, wiser, & she was lucky she had a
choice. at the wedding mom shook the groom’s
hand but at home she shook her head and sighed.
lady in a pink dress carries baby in blue.
they shop for knives, pots & seafood. pass
by the fish gallery & baby squeals.
lady reads instructions for dinner (because
the good man & his good child need a good
dinner, not like Wednesday night when she
forgot the roast in the oven, didn’t notice the
smoke or the alarms going off. that night
lady wiped mashed potatoes from the walls,
baby food from the floor & lady was still lucky
she had a choice): there is one humane
way to kill a lobster. place it head first into
seasoned water, turn up the heat slowly
& it won’t notice the death filling its lungs.
lobsters have no vocal chords so don’t worry.
the hissing is just from the water.
lady in blue dress, blushing red lobster in 150°
water being boiled alive. her third-degree burns are
third-world problems. mom asks if she’s happy.
lady in blue hesitates, antennae twitching
but static follows. she wipes baby’s face
& says yes. if the neighbors ask
the screaming was from the water.