#sliceoflife2015

[hyacinthswithbiscuits]

A & P

sensory today I bit into your soft skin velvet like tarnished Cezanne still life, and you tasted like a mango, juice and all, sticking into my plastic hair, burning the insides of my paper cuts. (I think you are a swollen apple in disguise.)

cardiology they say that they  are drummed out on fingertips, each pulse with perfect syntax, synchronized life flashing in time like Rockette dancers in lines of seven. I say that pulses are spilled out like pus, popping out of sockets and seeping into bedsheets. witness my heart’s cartography laid out in swiping splatters.

respiratory the first time I stopped was when thirteen. I long to feel that sweet rush of coolness in my lungs again.

[hyacinthswithbiscuits]

Limbs

I ask you to come and hold my bitten hands sandpapered knuckles peeling white, seafoam of keratin accruing against nail beds. Rake your rusting nails in my paper hair  — I am a paper doll with cold fingers and the stale smell of death written in by throat. Please tell me, is this my Dream House or a morgue?

[hyacinthswithbiscuits]

Taxonomy On Ruled Paper

bio seventy-five minutes of holding my breath, swimming in scribbled post-its that fan my binders like yawning yellow cat tails.

linnaeus how unfair it is, I think, pencil thudding against my hollow desk, that some cannot survive without others.

helicase unwind me and hear the sweet pops of hydrogen bonds, please splice my broken bases back together.

mitosis I am nothing but a cell series of cells, to be exact, piling myriads upon myriads, dividing into twos and forty-nines, purple splotches of noodles pulling and coalescing, asexual rendezvous on microscopic terrain.

anatomy your spine is a cytoskeleton that runs through phospholipid membranes, reeking of carbon and stringency.

ionic it’s never too safe to ask me to give up something in exchange for a connection (covalence is key).

cytokinesis I watch you crumble split off at one point at your dilated center, dividing into twos, forty-nines, on to seven hundreds.

[hyacinthswithbiscuits]

Confluence

Tang dynasty poems are twenty lines each, breaks between cadences each character a curve, an iron hook, slicing black scissor slashes against textbook paper. I am no Li Bai, for instead of wine I drink the Law of Conservation of Mass, and I pass time under the home screen of a Nokia rather than moonlight, the foot of my bed nothing more than a scuffing of crushed cockroaches. That night I recite stanzas in my sleep their four beat jumping voices buzzing like dragonflies in my ears. They speak of rivers looping around islands, yellow brown mud sloshing behind rocks the shape of warriors who jumped across gorges in pursuit of wild tigers. I do not need blankets when I have the cadaver arms of Su Song the lisping voice of Wang Bo to sing me to sleep. I press knees against littered plastic bags and feel them crunch like cockroaches under bare feet, and for a minute, I pretend I am standing at the edge of the river, one toe in the flowing mud, my arm resting against the sandbanks, grains of dirt in my nails.

[hyacinthswithbiscuits]

I would like to tell you that your bathroom mirror has stains shaped like Venice dips of toothpaste caked against the strata of fresh glass, piling like stalactites in mineral mines over the coal-black outline of rough washcloths. Your shampoo is basil and Aspirin minced into herbal spiciness so hot it burns scalps and sears patches of skin under my knees; your splinter brown floorboards warm chili peppers, yellow like Cuban mangoes dipped in hummus; your sofa pillows faded pink with the suns of failed garage sales saturated with the hot breath of secrets passed under midnight comforters; your house is the supply closet for an Italian restaurant, family-run.

[hyacinthswithbiscuits]

Monotony

I’m the Jordan Baker of lifestyles small towns too quiet four dry-cleaners, two bookstores broken fountain with a chipped Apollo dancing beneath the fins of fishes, half their scales missing, a semicircle of mundanity. I prefer large towns, metropolis of infrastructure weaving its arachnid legs across boroughs tainted sky-gray with crime and capital punishment. Flushing, Pudong, come and spin your web of translucent horror around a fragile human neck, and I will gladly tie a noose of silk around my collarbone, wrapped tightly three times, taking in the thick scent of proteins and incessant nightlife one ear pressed against my pillow fingers drumming out the heartbeat of rumbling trucks and the clicks of women’s stilettos.

[hyacinthswithbiscuits]

Morning Routine, circa 2013

1. Sneakers in darkness smell like warm perspiration heated coal on top of rotting laundry (5:45 am is not the best time for ocular sensitivity) sounds of backs snapping eyes rubbing flecks of dry skin dropping onto dorm room floors because what kind of self-respecting girl doesn’t love herself a whistle in the ear shrill chirp of the ugly morning lark ringing against small hairs.

2. The bathroom sink is oil ghastly orange from a cracked chili jar, fried contents, miniscules rafts of red crimson vermillion floating into the Bermuda Triangle of the sink basin.

3. Terri (four bunks to the right, the one with the glowing paper stars) jabs my waist as I’m brushing my teeth. “Don’t make him come and yell at you again.”

4. “I don’t want to go running.”

5. I see the girls in the international program yell at the teachers in loud Korean pursing lips violently in adamant refusal, and I feel Othello’s green-eyed beast of jealousy churn in my stomach.

6. Beijing in the winter is ice upon cement so clear and brown I can’t tell which is which under the hood of my school uniform.

7. I’m twenty paces and four long strides behind, “Hurry up, Mei Guo.”

8. I don’t want to go running.

9. The track is covered with black iced asphalt that bleeds my fingers and scuffs my shoes until they’re light aryan blue drumbeats of pounding boots and swishing sweatpants panting around.

10. I can’t use the “time of the month” excuse this time, because I did that only a week ago and my lao shi is running out of patience.

11. I like to think of it as a pedaling a bicycle up a hill albeit one that only slopes upwards sisyphean, isn’t it?

12. I would also like to think that at least I get to see the sunrise so early but the smog is thick and the trees tall and the sky doesn’t change.

13. Sometimes I don’t feel like running at all.

[hyacinthswithbiscuits]

Bang

I have never seen it, only heard its big silver yawn, fat

microwave belly waving at sweating joggers, single horn head penetrating suburban terraces. Is that you, gray dog, with static fur

as tall as corn mazes, stroked for decades by blue-gloved Germans, hair splattered with incogruous patterns of titanium white  —

Pollock’s forgotten masterpiece? Is it your steel smile teeth rotting of wires and binary grinning from behind high school bleachers? You see me when I can’t see you, I know, silent fingers of radiating bliss lurking under the windows of McMansions and middle-aged mothers who walk brown-haired cocker spaniels, elephant-grey pompadour hiding across the blinking harbor. Perhaps we are not so different, you and I, your mocking waves, your eternal fizz of laughter, for we dream the same dream of violet oblivion, nebulae melting in latte cups, beginnings as big  as the end.