XI

some sticky nights i still want to call you up and ask you to a movie
knowing it will end with me wondering
if i caught your glance and if
you went home and jacked off

this wondering has been the only thing to keep me from growing
crazy in my isolation
how, makebelieve lover,
do you not get lost in yours?

X

no one sat me down and said:
“disabled girl child,
this is what you do
if someone does not want you.”

when you looked at my body and cried,
i did not know what to do but
hold you

i held you
cried over me

if one day a disabled girl child
asks me what to do,
i will tell her to kick you the hell 
out of her bed

IX

a disabled girl ghost child
her history written she slips
through white walls, white men, white hospital gowns
her small step
leaving before
anyone can see her

tell me,
who would ever
call this magic?

VIII.

a poem for every person straddling masculinity in my life

when do i write the one
just for me?

surely poetry is more than a tally
of the five thousand and one tools
you have invented to hurt, love
and fuck

me

VII.

fire boy with the gift of a tongue divinely set ablaze
i learned ways to calm you
when you found yourself
afraid of dark

if one day history asks memory who you are
i will remember you as the brave boy who never tired from carrying light
the one who knew how to do anything
but love me

VI.

“brother” is not a poetic symbol i use to speak of oscar grant and the multitudes of young boys policed

brother is the gruff-cheeked child
my halmoni loves to kiss,
the one my younger sister admired so much
my mother did not have the heart to tell her
he was arrested once x twice 

brother is the little boy who grew up taking care of us before we could know that was what he called it
the state champion who worked to wrestle his way out of anger
the neighborhood kid who won the favor of special forces men,  
machetes buried in the ground

i do not know his violence
i do not know his peace

most days i do not even know how to love him

i just do what i know best: worry,
writing in my journal -
fuck the police.

V.

leave yr revolver
on the nightstand yr tongue
in the back of
yr warrior mouth

here in this bed i will not die for the resistance
i will not give my life to anything
but love

& i know resistance is love & struggle
is never “just a kiss”. but there are no martyrs
who sleep in my arms

body stolen, body back —- i am already fighting
for this tenderness. embrace has been
my only liberation. 

let the rattle of these steady lungs 
be a revolutionary’s lullaby;
i promise the ventilator
will hum you something even sweeter
than silence.

(breath).

IV.

your curiosity caught in the swing
of hips – this body a pendulum
of motion pulling forward
something you could not name, except an affair
of freak body, a need to be my friend

no, i’ve never known a life other than freakery, of being marked.
disabled girl child sitting with your stares
your questions
your venom
your anger when i choose visibility

let misfit bodies
tell no lies

it is our time to come out of hiding
it is our time to bless the light

III.

we sat together, the only two kids on the bus
for disabled children

first 5 minutes spent waving to able-bodied kids
walking home, another 5 making small talk with the busdriver 
the next 20 watching him watching me,
my curiosity dangled with the intrigue of
his curled brown fingers
the upward lurch of his body when he howls at his own joke    
the spit swinging from his mouth unabashedly
asking me to be his girlfriend

he rung his desire like a bell - loud (unheard) 
sometimes i lusted after him
sometimes i did not
later i learned
it drove him crazy

sometimes i wonder if i am him / slowly losing it too  

II.

dear sister, what do i know of life?
the only language i’ve know are the words 
i mouthed to you
in the hospital  
you learned to speak my tongue because you loved me
when you left, it became unfamilar to you

i learned to be without you
without anyone, just me

that is not living
(& i want to live)