A tiny droplet fell on a lotus pad
She pranced and rolled like a precious pearl
I am perfect I am unique
God made me and tossed the mold
Then a blast of gale pushed her over
The edge of the waxy frond
She plunged down the murky depths
Into the dirty duck-shit of oblivion
I love my beautiful vulva
Vulva vulva vulva
It shines like a brilliant peach
And tremors with dazzling dew
I fear my poem is too vulgar
So I change my “vulva” to “nova”
Now I love my beautiful nova
It explodes into the great unknown
I am an ass the Master said
I am the ass’s buttocks
I am the ass’s feces one rejoined
I am the maggot on the feces
And what were you doing there
O lowliest of the low?
I was enjoying summer vacation
Tear the fly from the flypaper, let him die
Take the roach out of the motel, let him fly
The dead dingle on the fence makes amends
Free the cock from sacrifice, free the hen
Let the orphans feed, set the widows free
Teach a killer how to cry
We must love one another or die
Love one another or die
One persimmon, two persimmon the third has ripened
So juicy and sweet, we must not waste love
Two persimmon, three persimmon, the fourth has ripened
We must eat it soon, our last chance for enlightenment
Three persimmon, four persimmon, the fifth is rotten
Too bad, you waited too long
Ditty’s become a dirge
Mocking our impermanence
Baby, you’re a cheap thrill
A dinner buys surrender
A Long Island iced tea makes you tipsy
Nothing so bittersweet
As a boy so tender
I’ll keep you warm in my sheath
My mojo is my love shield
The Huns are stirring the pot
Chanting boystew boystew boystew
We met south of the painted wall
He unzipped his soiled chiton
I kept my black thong on
He kissed me hard against the column
And bruised my arm
Let’s die, let’s die now
The Mongols are close on the path
And there’s no tomorrow
All the world is filthy
I alone am clean
I alone am sober
All my homegirls are stoned
All the world is dancing
I alone am still
Lotuses assemble abstractly
Choking the crystal clear pond
The scabbard is chafing your thigh
The yoke is digging into your nape
The cangue is rubbing you raw
Baby, cut off your queue
Your coolie days are over
This late capitalist immigrant bitch
Will ransom your pretty ass home
She is headless and armless
He is missing a topknot
She still poised for victory
He, valor and faithfulness
A wing broken, a nose detached
She marble, he terracotta
They shall stand lonely on that pedestal
Long after the aftermath
Crow squats in the road
Pecking on a recent kill
Canary is high on a branch
Singing for her supper
Crow says: My, you are a pretty bird
Pretty bird, pretty bird
Who will hand-feed you now
Yellow gold is meaningless
Learning is better than pearls
A woman without brilliance
Leaves nothing but dim children
You can hawk your gold if you’re hungry
Sell your mule when you’re desperate
What can you do with so many poems
Sprouting dead hairs in an empty coffin
Lotus: pink dewlapped pretty
Lotus: upturned palm of my dead mother
Lotus: a foot a broken arch
Lotus: plop and a silent ripple
I hum and stroll
And contemplate a poem
While young boys are dying
In West Darfur
I hum and stroll
And contemplate a poem
While young boys are dying
In West Darfur
Gwen came down from heaven
Baked me a sweet potato pie
June’s stirring rice pudding
Gives me the stink eye
Sylvia says
Girl poet you ain’t worth the bacon
Just wipe the blood from the oven
Go home! Go home!
Dog if you bite bite gently
Cat if you scratch find my funny bone
Fly kiss my eyes twice then summon
Your brethren
Wolf drag my bones slowly
Keep me whole
For another summer
Vulture
I am not afraid of your leavings
Eng says to Chang: Oh let’s love with a single heart
Let’s die in eternal embrace and never part
Ritta says to Christina: we have two heads and one pussy
We are doomed to eternal misery
Vinnie says to Emily
Do we have two souls or just one?
Or are you just a shadow sister and love no one?
I am a lonely Chinese poet
Sitting on the nether ridge
You are a Ute Mountain warrior
The sun has begun to set
What is the Buddha?
Two pounds of ground turkey
What is the Buddha?
Oh she broke a fingernail
What is the Buddha?
A Haitian girl and a Laotian girl
What is the Buddha?
She’s b-boying at the bus stop
I am a gold lock
You are a gold key
I am a brass lock
You are a brass key
I am a skeleton lock
You are a skeleton key
I am a monk lock
You are a monkey
Ha ha ha ha!
(for Denise Levertov)
So, you’re going to Black Mountain
Black Mountain so far
Black Mountain so unreachable
So you will meet Snyder and Rauschenberg
And Cage and his zenny music
At Black Mountain
And so shall you love a Goodman
There
Flowers blossom on her back
Tendrils wrap his withered thigh
Melilotus dangling on her brow ridge
Clover covers his fingernails
Because the truth is so very very sad
Oh anonymous corpse in the churchyard
I must dream of you
festooned with flowers
for Ai
I take off my antique Navajo turquoise
Pull off my red cashmere sweater
Wiggle out of my black leather jeans, Lord, they’ve been tight!
I wipe off my kohl eye shadow and plum lip gloss
I free my hair from my mother-of-pearl comb
I put on my original face
I walk away from my small rented prairie house
I climb into my last yellow taxi
Oh trusted pony, take me home!
During the tenth month of the first year of the reign of Emperor Jing, a little girl from the southernmost province of Guangdong grew horns. The horns were hideously sharp with little tufts of greenish hair sprouting in the ridges. When the new emperor heard about this monster, he ordered his five most valiant soldiers to execute her. But, when the soldiers arrived, the girl’s grandmother had already sent her into the hills. The old woman, then, with proper demeanor, served the men last year’s inferior crop of high mountain tea and quoted “The Book of Changes.” When an evil minister of state usurps power, the indigenes will grow horns. The head soldier replied with a quick couplet from “The Treatise of the Five Monarchs.” Little girls, no matter how mistreated or angry, must not grow horns. Feudal citizens, no matter how unhappy, must not revolt against the lord. Whereupon, he took out his sword and slayed the grandmother and mounted her head on a pole, as a warning to other renegade villagers.
Centuries of chaos and pogroms followed. Finally, rebellions were quashed, marauders were executed and there were no more incidents of little girls growing horns. By now, most of the world’s citizens have smooth, unfurrowed hairlines. Albeit there was a sighting of a pair of razor-sharp growths erupting on the forehead of a little brown girl. She was last seen in the autumn of 2010, smooching with her surfer-dude boyfriend and strolling on a sun-flooded promenade in San Diego.
for Don (1958–2011)
My skiff is made of spicewood my oars are Cassia bract
Music flows from bow to starboard
Early Mozart cool side of Coltrane and miles and miles of Miles
Cheap Californian Merlot and my new boyfriend
My beautiful boyfriend please shave your head
At the Miramar barbershop take the tonsure
Bow toward the earth prostrate and praise
Breathe in the Goddess’s potent citron
Bullet don’t shoot him he’s my draft-horse
Night scope don’t pierce him he’s my love-stalk
Sniper who are you high on the roof
Stop for a slow cigarette let him escape
If I could master the nine doors of my body
And close my heart to the cries of suffering
Perhaps I could love you like no other
Float my mind toward the other side of hate
The shantytowns of Tijuana sing for you
The slums of Little Sudan hold evening prayer
One dead brown boy is a tragedy
Ten thousand is a statistic
So let’s fuck my love until the dogs pass
All beautiful boyfriends are transitory
They have no souls they’re shiny brown flesh
Tomorrow they’ll turn into purple festering corpses
Fissured gored by myriad flies
My boyfriend drives up in his late Humvee
Says: We’re going to hunt bin Laden
We’ll sleep in caves and roast wild hare
And rise to praise the bright red sun
I was once a beloved spotted ox
Now I’ve become a war-horse of hate
I pulled the lorries of ten thousand corpses
Before I myself was finally flayed
Down the Irrawaddy River you lay yourself to sleep
No sun no moon no coming no going
No causality no personality
No hunger no thirst
Skyward beyond Angkor Wat
Beyond Jokhang Lhasa
You were floating on a giant stupa
Waiting for Our Lord
Malarial deltas typhoidal cays
Tsunamis don’t judge calamity grieves no one
The poor will be submerged the rich won’t be saved
Purge the innocent sink the depraved
You push down my hand with your bony hand
The fox-hair brush lifts and bends
There’s no revision in this life you sigh
One bad stroke and all is gone
What do I smell but the perfume of transience
Crushed calyxes rotting phloems
Let’s write pretty poems pretty poems pretty poems
Mask stale pogroms with a sweet whiff of oblivion
Three shots into the wind according to the rites
Heaven’s stealth caissons confess nothing
Lotus cannot cry Buddha feels no pain
Surrender you must to one love one nation
I asked him where he was heading this ungodly hour.
He said Don’t nag me Mei Ling I am tired
I am very very tired
I am going to rest in those southern hills
Don’t bother calling I’ve disconnected my cell
I’ll tweet from the other side when I’m ready
I waved at the road until his bumper vanished
The traffic flowed toward eternity as my eyes teared up
Better stop crying he’ll call me a sissy
Quiet the Dog, Tether the Pony
Gaze gaze beyond the vermilion door
Leaf leaf tremble fall
Stare blankly at the road’s interminable end
Reduplications cold cold mountains
Long long valleys broad broad waters
Tears are exhausted now shed blood
Deep deep the baleful courtyards who knows how deep
Folds on folds of curtains
Gates trap infinite twilight
Walk walk through waning meadows
Steep steep toward ten thousand Buddhas
Knuckles blue on the balustrade
In the land of missing pronouns
Sun is a continuous performance
And we my love are nothing