like a snake eating itself in the shadow of a witch’s hat.

No one could tell I was having nervous breakdowns

from pizza to pizza.

It never affected the tipping,

which was universally shitty.

The cardboard boxes trapped heat and protected cheese and pepperoni

alike

from my tears.

Seriously.

I did not believe there would ever be a reason to love life.

I couldn’t see, years later, that I’d be typing poems

on this thing called Facebook during my lunch break,

missing my hilarious daughter

not too far from that pizza franchise

where the supervisor asked me during my job interview

why I wanted to work there and I drew a blank—

to deliver pizza?

Are all questions doomed to be so existential?

Some dude tried to rob me on Cedar Avenue.

I told him,

go ahead,

shoot,

fuck you.

His eyes were glazed, as confused as I was

about why we were both

on that street,

at that time,

being who we needed to be.

Theresa, I Think

In grade school there was a sweet, quiet girl who loved Prince. She cried every time she heard “Purple Rain,” and she would listen to it a lot. Maybe you can’t trust the memory of a poet who can’t remember if it was fourth or fifth or sixth grade, but I recall that we asked her once why and she couldn’t explain. If I had known then what I know now, I would have offered that a guitar solo can be made of guts and can gut you, all at once. That unlike our throats, when our hearts howl they never grow hoarse. That a raindrop can weep inside of itself so hard it drowns and, looking at it, you would never know.

Incomplete / Abridged

I.

Another city. Her city. Her black hair

has gotten long, to her shoulders.

You’re yoked to her eyebrows.

She’s going to change the world for the better.

But not with you.

On this night

for whatever reason

she slips her arm through yours.

We look good together, she says.

She tilts her head to rest on your head,

and it becomes everything—

it doesn’t matter that it will go

nowhere.

Right then we are everything.

II.

They play a game at work.

Between orders for no cilantro,

black beans or pinto.

On the other side of the gentrifying line

between kitchen and the front of the house

marked by swinging doors,

the cute waitstaff decides to play a game: who at work is the sexiest?

One of the white men thought it up,

because he wants the friendly, gorgeous blonde to say his name.

Instead she says mine.

No one expects it.

I’m in the kitchen—

far away from the game,

the one no one’s slept with.

She never touches me.

I never expect her to.

She becomes this chink’s saint.

III.

No long distance. No vegans. No Asians.

No addicts. No Christians.

Who do you break your own laws for?

IV.

Tattoos & tongue kisses & piercings & ecstasy