Writing
A Collection of Poems that Mean Something and a Bunch of Things but Also maybe not a lot
April 2023 - June 2023
... is a collection of poems for my final portfolio in a creative writing class, Spring 2023. Accompanying my poems are visuals (photography, design) for an additional dimension of the work.
I Stopped Making Sense & All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt
April 2024 - June 2024
... is a collection of poems for my final portfolio in an intermediate poetry class, Spring 2024.
This Poem is like the Sky
A friendly fire, seven friends pour lighter fluid
onto a pile of sticks and hope their wishes come true
A swarm of fireflies fly by, in a single-file line
and the fireflies turn into birds that turn into satellites
Orion’s belt fit him comfortably that night,
some might even say he looked stylish
as he watched over the seven friends like
their own personal God
and so the seven friends climbed atop a rock
to try to reach Orion
At dusk, he was nowhere to be found
instead they found a big power plant obstructing the view
Orion, where is the clear orange sky?
But the seven friends are met with silence
so they rolled down the rock,
like dauntless children with grass allergies
At the bottom of the rock sits the friendly fire
waving back at the seven friends,
begging them to add more fuel to its flame
but they watch as it dies out, and instead beg Orion to do so
And like dauntless children,
the seven friends gather around the friendly fire
to cook what they called ‘carcinogen dogs’
They said the lighter fluid tasted like relish
From afar, they could see the rock grabbing Orion’s shoe,
taking his socks off and throwing them into the friendly fire
that kept the seven friends warm,
And Orion asked to join them, so they answered with a little friendly fire
Grandma’s Paintings
i. Three Cats
Three cats sit in a basket
toppled over on its side
And a piece of straw in the background,
if looked at a certain way
may look like the face of a Witch
The Witch who chased me with a strainer
right before I woke up to see the painting
And the certain way I looked at those three cats
lying on my side,
indeed made them look like her
One night so long ago that I don’t remember
if it was a dream or not,
The Witch’s strainer turned me into soup
and all that was left
were the three cats in my room
ii. The Woman and The Lion
A topless woman lying
on her side
on top of a lion, a flat one
Like a tablecloth with a head,
She stared right at me as if to say
Look at what you’re missing
but I would never skin a lion
A grin on the woman’s face
begs the question of if the lion was
her companion or her defeat
Either way, as she lies resting,
so does the lion
iii. Paint on Rocks
A rose garden the size of my palm
painted on a rock,
sits on my palm
Something we’d do together before
we skipped them on the pond of rosewater
I breathe in the smell of rosewater
and breathe out words of my mother tongue,
not my Mother’s Tongue
I write my name in cursive
so I won’t be able to read it later
And link elbows with the rocks
as we skip together
6:27 AM
someone was blasting nu metal from their car outside my window at five in the morning
and I now sit on my balcony at 6:27 AM reading a poem– eyeing a poem
the lampposts are self-aware of their useless job
remaining on well into dawn, but they gladly exclaim,
We make room for the dim sunlight that rises from the east
They’re smart that way. They know their place.
behind me, I can’t see a thing but the birds
dancing, laughing at me, chirping in uneven intervals–
gossiping about my disdain of a good thing
I dreamt of sitting on my couch on a Thursday night– on a Thursday morning
and realized I’ve never been concerned about a bad hair day in my dreams
Sleeping soundly was ROY G, waiting for BIV to pick up the morning shift
Unfortunately BIV slept through his alarm, it seeped its way into his
dreams, where the birds’ chirping was his default ringtone
A sunrise is just as quiet as the night that preceded it,
The morning hen must be an urban legend, so instead of her, we wake up to the
lawn mower, that sounds like the motorcycle I wish to ride off into the sunset with
but it’s riding off into the sunrise without me
The motorcyclist just wants to go to sleep, too.
but what he dreams is my Waking life
so one of us is caught in a never ending dream
and one of us is wrong about which one of us is
The Game of Life
The car with a table on it was driving in the carpool lane
Someone’s abandoned magic trick, and now the freeway
is a big game of whack-a-mole with kitchen knives and
broken glass– might that be the illusion after all
Sharon told Kimmy this was the last time she would break even
Sharon was always an odd ball, and now Kimmy is trapped
in a big game of telephone with coils as curly as her mom’s hair and
she got her dad’s frosted tips– might that be the dominant trait
The TV was spurting nonsense again, something about
awareness of the twenty-four hour news cycle, and now the woefully attractive newsanchors
play a big game of chess, both with America and themselves and
They all ended up losing– might that be the illusion after all
Kimmy’s mom’s kitchen table was now missing
the one with the engravings of her grandmother’s dying wish:
A big game of guess who, with the list of traits all
belonging to herself– might that be the illusion after all
Sharon helped Kimmy and her mom look for the heirloom table
and instead found an heirloom tomato that they ate because they lost track of time
while playing a big game of scrabble, with the letters rearranging
themselves to Kimmy’s mom’s grandmother’s table– might that be the illusion after all
Little did they know, it was Kimmy’s mom’s grandmother who was driving the car,
she needed to get rid of the table
in a big game of hide and go seek, where Sharon counted to a hundred
And when she opened her eyes she noticed herself– might that be the illusion after all
(After-poem: the dying wish’s of Kimmy’s mom’s grandmother)
After the days stopped counting themselves,
and Sharon stopped counting her days,
My big game of life bit into itself like an heirloom tomato
turning into a carriage that turns into a pumpkin at midnight
granted, one of the great things about us is our ability to
do our laundry and hold a note correctly in pitch (sometimes),
or realize a big game is a big game is a big game. After all,
might that be the illusion
Elegy for a Tooth
mouth mourns the tooth who mourns the
pillow when exchanged for a Dollar.
yellow mourns blue when they
mix, realizing an entanglement,
an outcome of Green,
was a sacrifice of both.
moth mourns warmth when I turn the lamp off,
I mourn the light when I turn the lamp off.
light mourns Dark, realizing that,
in order to be around,
Dark has to die.
Dark, why must You die?
I sleep like the princess. And the Pea,
He is there with me, a drop of pain amidst comfort
a dollar, a milestone, a little less,
You are not permanent– You were not a “Big Kid” tooth
crookedly, I smile in the mirror that reflects Him back on me
my mother warns me that like Him, I mourn what I may not have lost yet,
He always looked more like my uncle, though– I am not bald.
much like an orange, my orange journal longs to be peeled, crumpled, used
Unlike an orange, my orange journal cannot be turned into orange preserves.
He suggested I write everyday
yet my orange journal mourns the pages plagued with ink, who mourn
Empty pages that remain untouched, with no thoughts to call Home
So He mourns the orange journal that hasn’t been written in, who mourns
me
This Town, Big Enough for the Both of Us
over There is where I would have told you some story
about a misunderstanding about who hit whose car and
the other person thought it was about who bit Who’s arm
Either way the pothole was so deep I could see the ocean
filled with sailboats and children swimming with those fins
on their feet to look like mermaids– or dolphins, if they were boys
But what I didn’t tell you is it was a bunch of flies roaming
around, bored out of their minds and scared
that they only had thirty minutes until they die
They must truly live everyday like it’s their last–
it is.
and over There is where I laid in the grass and watched the planes
above me, and argued about whether it was ethical to fly to space
if given the chance
That couple is doing the same thing right now–
the one with matching shoes and pep-in-their-step
So-and-so told me about how over by That Road there’s a shed
and in that shed a man with a watchful eye who tells fortunes
he looks at the passersby and thinks to himself,
They are driving on this road to get to a destination–
a fortune so unfortunately correct.
dancing around that shed are the same flies who
have thirty minutes left to live
Isn’t it funny that flies dance to have fun, just like we do?
I think often about bugs and more importantly, think often about
the purpose; Sally said it was because she was already too busy
selling seashells by the seashore, and that was her thing,
So I took the next best one
over There is the Grand Canyon for ants,
we can just jump right over that with the wingspan of our legs,
I bet that’s what the Giant thinks about us when he sees the Grand Canyon
his canyon is truly Grand, and we should go someday,
but for now I’m stuck in this pothole with the flies,
Could you help me out of it?
Come to think of it,
We are already in the Giant’s Grand Canyon
We are the flies in the pothole so deep he can
see the ocean, see us swimming
I have fins to be a mermaid, you a dolphin
And the planes flying above us were the Giant’s mother
feeding him a bite of food– she uses the planes metaphor instead of
trains, because she’s afraid of the ground
in the same way we are afraid of heights
in the same way ants are afraid of a size five shoe
She tells the Giant to take the redeye flight out of the pothole
that is so deep, she can see what she thinks is a teardrop
but what is actually the ocean
Ant Sandwich
Sandwiched between: sand and sky
A faulty ant who cannot discern the two
believes the sand too salty and hard to walk through
believes the sky too boring, smart, nigh
How? Sky, pave the road for the Gadfly
Spare the decision of those who
blunder. Use the north star to
walk east, further wrong, further gone… and by the bye:
The faulty ant caught on my shoe
recklessly toils with growing blocks
Bricks, he’ll call them, might they stay in place
but I exist in a growing block, the present may have moved on
The faulty ant and I, both, gleaming through the soil,
are spared the blink of an eye
when the Gadfly takes flight and we are both still
sandwiched between sand and sky
A given day in June
Any given day in June, my hair sticks up
as if to warn me
Like a scared cat in the presence of a
Dog
something is sure to shock me
But like a scared cat, I have nine lives
so I climb on the fake scaffolding
and slip through the crevices made to hold me in
Death precedes me
I may need gloves, not the kind to keep me warm
or the kind that smells of blue–
the kind of fake blue that makes us blue
But I am a cat, wearing cotton shorts and a tank top
eating a melted orange Otter Pop
and the bees love me, so much they kiss me
on the lips
Honey doesn’t taste good when it hasn’t been made yet
And I don’t slide down, I scoot and stumble,
My legs, shockingly a vessel for PECO
Black hair absorbs the sunlight, but not enough to let my eyes
Rest
I will never rest, I think,
so long as the cats and the bees and the dogs.
