Poems

On desire & becoming friends with my father

You must say what you want. — Robert Bly “Such Different Wants"

I remember sitting on the concrete steps behind the Fremont Library

with my father.

We sipped coffee and ate chocolate cake. The light faded.

He told me he was learning to think in terms of want.

“What do I want?”

A question he never asked, —before.

(in the twenty years pastoring the church he founded, the question was always

“What does God want for me”?)

I had left our home church too and gone to college, where we often spoke of wants

Of bodies we want (our bodies and other bodies), of our futures, of wants we repress, of what we want to be when we grow up.

A friend said, to deny your present desire is to deny yourself.

Another friend said, I’m not convinced.

My father says,

I want for your mom to fulfill her wants.

I say to my father,

“What do you want for yourself?”

But my father and I agree,

There are not wants for yourself, alone —

I want to become a turkey vulture who swims in the air,

who eats the garbage we dump by the road,

I want to be there when the breeze shudders the leaves and the circles of light flicker

on the concrete, I want to be the breeze, the circles, the leaves, the concrete,

I want my students to enjoy a comma, I want my students to open their fists and relax

their fingers and learn how to say I love you without starting a fight,

I want to not say yes out of obligation,

I want a hand to gently scratch my back and a voice to scold me for the scabs I made

when I drew blood because I couldn’t resist the wants of an itch(the voice I use when I scratch my father’s back),

I want to feel time stretch as I unthread a coat I found on the road,I want to be buried

without a box in McLaren Park, where we buried the hummingbird that got lost in our classroom and couldn’t find its way out,

I want the worms and the turkey vultures to turn my body into soil I want for you to

plant wildflowers there —

I want for you,

I want you to be,

I want for you and for me to be here

— together.

April 8th, 2025

Revised March 21st, 2026

HOWL

I could tell you people and I could tell you places—old man on the sidewalk in Daly City, classmate in a parking garage San Mateo, grandma in the bathroom, fruit fly in my fingertips, auntie in the birth wing of the hospital, coyote on the 101 highway outside pacifica, four childhood friends at two playgrounds, cormorant by the canal, farm workers at the farm, dancers at the dance hall; I could tell you the names of the people my age killed in my neighborhood since 2020: Leo, Kieran Carlson, A.T. Yhuky, Sean Monterrosa, Goose 52, Brandon Cheese, moneytwindre, Cesar Corza and those are just the names I know; I could read to you Mission Local’s record of every person killed by SFPD since 2000, and those are just the names they know; I could tell you relationships—my three grandmothers, childhood friends, classmates, friends of friends, neighbors, siblings, kin; I could tell you categories:“gang violence” “police killing” “roadkill” “car accident” “hate incident” “senseless violence” “sixth mass extinction” “endangered species”; I could break those words with other words—animal species nonhuman people groups extinct in North America Turtle Island since 1492, Excelsior Mob gang member poet artist friend brother, dead killed, roadkill roadkilling; I could tell you weapons (guns, knives, hands, motorcycle, car, tazer); I could send you links to news stories, to pages on IMBD, to vigil invitations, to the song my dead friend made about his dead friend before he died, to all those Instagram posts with all those shitty little sentences we put out there to try to say something anything: ‘fly high KSmigz,’ ‘It’s a war zone in Frisco right now, prayers up,’ ‘Its crazy how it’s all these people we grew up with passin away,’ ‘rest in peace,’ ‘in loving memory,’ ‘fly high’—all the ways we tried to keep their memory “alive” so they’d“live forever”, I could ask you to donate to their gofundmes, I could copypaste the gofundme eulogies - the traces and shadows of presence on the world wide web - I could tell you about kids I knew who killed and were killed, I could tell you about the first week of April 2022 when four died in one week and all of them shot at playgrounds; I could tell you things I don’t know, like who’s in jail and who isn’t, and things I do know, like who’s dead dead dead - I could tell you about clicking links with a pounding heart tryna find out is that the kid I knew? Is that our Kieran? Our Brandon? Our A. T.? about not being able to read all the thinkpieces about anti-Asian hate crimes because the kid who killed Vicha Ratanapakdee is my elementary school friend and I just kept thinking about his smile and I sat there and watched as everyone disowned condemned him on Instagram – I could tell you about running barefoot through Seattle the night I found out because I wasn’t even fucking home to be with them – asking do I even have claim on these deaths? these deaths sure as hell have a claim on me – I could tell you about that phone call from my mom - grandma dead in that house with no right angles (it was an architecture trend in the 80s) listen listen - Listen! I could tell you, I could tell you names on names on names on names of kin of kin of kin of kin dead on dead on dead on dead on dying dying dying and about wanting to die with them (release me) about wanting to kill the one who killed them (relieve me) – if K died for goose, who dies for K? and so they/we/I kill kill kill die – wanting to die wanting to claim these deaths – ‘claim on my life’ (baptism litany) – who has a claim on us on me? I claim you, claim on each other my brother my mother my kin… I could tell about how it took me a year to listen to the song he wrote about his friend who died and its like hearing ghosts and I sat there and I transcribed every word for this fucking project (do you hear him calling?) and I sat there and I listened to every song of extinct birds that I could find Hawaiian crow crying (Listen!) for a mate who will never come, never come, claim us claim me my my dead my dying dying dead kin of kin kin of kin of of kin of ki---ki-nkin-------------

March 2023,

excerpt from grief web [pages]

When I was twelve

The first time I took the bus alone,

I ended up downtown on a narrow hill lined with men.

Framed by the slick backsides of corporate buildings,

they lounged on cardboard chaises and grocery cart

palanquins, dogs at their feet and duvets on their shoulders.

I was paraded down the concrete to cheers,

simpers, whistles, and candy wrapper confetti,

and they hailed me Princess, Tits, Sweetheart, Bitch.

I would have princess-waved my middle finger

but my green long-sleeve made me a top-heavy

pear—at school the boys called me she-hulk—

so I stuttered down the street with my knock-off

sunglasses and rhinestone ballet flats,

trying to swivel my skimpy hips just right.

And I thought how strange,

being called “baby girl”,

when for the first time

I feel like a woman.

Winter 2021

Song for the Woman on the 14R

Make your bed on night owl buses,

snuggle your hello kitty backpack

and press it to your breast, call it darling.

Pluck daffodils from their private gardens,

and weave a crown for your half-shaved head.

press the leaves to the sores on your skull,

fill your holes with petals.

Kiss your reflection in their car windows,

bathe yourself with rainwater,

piss on the side of their skyscrapers,

standing tall as if you were a man.

Cherish the tents that pimple their city,

dream of throbbing under their skin,

dream of bursting, bloody and free.

Winter 2021