no need for time marks, no need for dates, these feelings go on and on, rolling clumsily like a chubby cat after a strong sip of cider. thank you for sharing them with me. all you gorgeous, beautiful, and dangerous, stand up! where we'll go from here no one knows.
*
i'm on a bart train - junichi is waiting for me in a burger king somewhere in san francisco. mitsuye yamada is still on the tip of my tongue, met ruth forman a week ago and will meet suji kwock kim in two. if i wasn't so shy i'd dance on the train - slow steps, some words need to be written slower than others.
*
jimmy knocks on my door and we watch beatboxing on his camcorder. he gives me a copy of his chapbook and i wonder skeptically if i'll ever finish mine. he calls his chapbook the i-pod of all chapbooks. it is - compact and available in different colors.
*
lili is mute, caroline is blind, and andinh is deaf.
*
stressed as if there's sulfur caught in my nose. my cell phone rings, a number i don't recognize, 415 area code - it must be ed, who has a pair of black curtains i urgently need. i tunnel into the phone, hissing like hornets.
a pause.
"this isn't, ed... it's denizen kane, how you feelin'?" comes the reply.
*
i catch s at the corner of my eye - she smiles something that stitches my lips shut, eyes left bigger than the sky.
*
kiwi rips our arms from our sockets and turns our feet into doodlebugs. odessa chen sings and we all feel like we're soaking in the wind. denizen kane leaves us drunk on our gasps.
*
i'm surrounded by friends and cheap chinese food yet i'm quiet - i can't share an ounce of words. phatrick is dissing cantonese people, melanie is waving at me from across the table, and christine is wondering where her vegetable chow mein is. i'm surrounded by people so beautiful uttering a single word might ruin the moment.
*
i've been holding it in for five days but it finally comes out, at 2:30 in the morning: i bawl in bed, mumbling the words "thank you" over and over again into a pillow.
*
i'm on my knees in front of my bathroom mirror, begging my grandfather to come out from under the fat muscle just below the lining of my eye. he's crouched in there, laughing like sparks cracking. i want to look like you, your blistered hands, your sun bleached hair. give me a song and i'll whisper it through my fingertips juking against the lining of someone else's skin.
*
i wipe the wrinkles out of lili's cheek, she writes the word "home" on my shoulder blade.
*
andinh tells me that it doesn't feel like it's over - no, it doesn't... but isn't that the beauty of it? how this journey begins and never ends.
*
jean tells me that i made her cry - take that fumihiko maki.
*
we're all walking up a surprisingly quiet durant avenue - diane, cyrus, s, and i. we have one of those streetcorner goodbyes that are happily unsuccessful, long stares, head nods, and murmurs of half-jokes and the possibilities of tomorrow.
*
i'm holding a fistfull of feathers that will teach me how to fly. unground me, the sky is a bed sheet and it's tangled in dreams. tattoo a nightcap onto my scalp, i'm shot full of holes and each bone, breath, and nerve in me are drifting out of my skin, lifting into the damp air, feet kicking, fists pounding, finally breaking free...
*