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Back I have to live Save as PDF
Contents (82)
  1. Contents
  2. One
  3. Something softens me
  4. And a withering pear I can’t eat.
  5. Considering
  6. I have to live. There’s stuff inside of things.
  7. What is bread?
  8. In the dream
  9. I sleep in a room.
  10. In my nipple is an eye.
  11. I am in love.
  12. Dec 31, 2014
  13. Aquamarine and topaz
  14. Everywhere there are men, there are men
  15. When I leave here I don’t know where I am.
  16. Two
  17. I like it when we give the world to itself
  18. I can’t believe I agreed to go to work today.
  19. I fold in half
  20. One headline said 5 minutes early is on time;
  21. I am an angel but I respire.
  22. “The Bay Area”
  23. Advanced Adulthood
  24. What’s the big fucking deal about
  25. Today I could aspire but I want to nap
  26. Your yes, yes.
  27. Adornment is exaltation enacted.
  28. It’s Saturday. I meet you, get soft.
  29. I spread butter on the darkest rye
  30. My duty is to tend
  31. He thinks I should be glad because they
  32. His thumbs were
  33. Because I was being flown to Kelowna for a reading and he lives in Nelson
  34. Regardless
  35. Three
  36. In August I visited my Gran.
  37. Strong basic love
  38. Happy Cup
  39. I defer to you.
  40. Blood
  41. Rat vs. Lamb
  42. A beach.
  43. I was born and I lived
  44. I wore a mint-green Donna Karan suit in the Lincoln LS commercial.
  45. The landlord said he lost his phone.
  46. I want to walk the park with you
  47. Hi.
  48. I take a medicine.
  49. I decided that I was a planet and I was a planet.
  50. The crease
  51. I said no
  52. So I have a brand new set of markers
  53. Five
  54. I was a born a baby.
  55. Eighteen degrees Celsius Zagora No events Mostly cloudy
  56. The goat
  57. I cut my horns
  58. My anger is hope for my own righteousness.
  59. The coo of the common emerald dove is the sound of Venus.
  60. I have to live lest I die-live.
  61. It’s why I was born.
  62. Six
  63. I told you.
  64. How much of your body is your head.
  65. The trick to being funny by Aisha Sasha John.
  66. I couldn’t win with my brother because I was born.
  67. Thanks.
  68. I’ve seen stuff always.
  69. For you and all your siblings and friends and husbands or boyfriends.
  70. Seven
  71. I removed the snake ring.
  72. Pussy pain.
  73. The reassuring thing about life
  74. Psychic = Self-believer
  75. The year of being selfish. The year of being relaxed.
  76. I find the book.
  77. I get my power from pleasure. And I get my pleasure from pleasure, too.
  78. I’m on the back of something.
  79. I’m not dead.
  80. I’m not gonna die of love.
  81. I have to live. I’m married to love.
  82. Acknowledgements

I am Aisha.

You I know you

Love the idea of Aisha.

I am not the idea of Aisha.

I am not the idea of Aisha.

I am Aisha.

His thumbs were

So big also his fingers.

He was holding Gran’s hand so as to take

What no one can give.

Relax yourself, she said.

She was dying. But he was sick.

Because I was being flown to Kelowna for a reading and he lives in Nelson

I thought I would visit him.

I didn’t tell him this.

Perhaps I should have told it to him.

I thought it would be generous

Of me to

Keep it as a surprise

Instead of

Offering

It

As a promise.

Anyway, he fell off a cliff. And she stopped breathing.

They both stopped breathing

For the purposes of death.

To speak of which to you is

Blasphemy. Like

Who

Are you even?

Do you

Love me?

Regardless

If I am judged

If I am punished

If I am dismissed

If I am misunderstood

If I am celebrated

If I am envied

If I am competed with

If I am slandered against

If I am seen

If I am soft

If I am stupid

If I get it

If I surpass

If I intimidate

If I confound

If I confuse

If I’m confused

If I impress

If I delight

If I contradict

If I embarrass

If I’m transparent

If I’m arrogant

If I reproach

If I lamb

If I snake ssss

If I coconut

If I’m crazy

If I’m coo-coo

If I’m weary

If I resist

If I’m easy

If I’m wrong

If I’m wrong – who gives a fuck?

I have to live.

Three

In August I visited my Gran.

I.

I walk past the psychiatric hospital.

It’s Sunday.

The beach was nice.

The sky is black.

I’m home.

At the nightclub they’d found five guns

And a lot of scissors.

When I read that to my mom she hears seizures.

Write a poem, she says.

Something

They can read at the funeral.

Today as I write this it is Thursday.

The funeral

Was last Saturday.

I did not send a poem.

Mama, I am a poem.

So yeah: the beach was nice; the sky is black.

I’m home.

There are headscarves on my aunties.

A man with hands like

Earth leads the service.

I look at his hands.

He ejects certain words as a way of singing.

Some get pushed

Out or are pulled.

They leap

Or are

Grabbed – I dunno.

On the television

A woman carves from a stack of rice krispie squares

Human breasts.

I feed cut watermelon to my grandmother.

I am low and found; I am high and found.

When I read that part to my mom over the phone she

Cries. It’s sad

She says.

I put my ticket there on her Visa.

The next day my cousin sends me a message.

I read the message.

Then what I do is call my mother.

Now you don’t have any more grandparents!