[WOMAN.]

I. ah – I don't know when I told you that I loved you if I was doing it for the benjamins stacked

atop the gochugaru box                      or if I was doing it because I saw our ghost                 of a

daughter bouncing on my lap, because before you even pushed my thighs apart for the first

time I had already named her                           laurentia after that famous violinist you saw on 

channel five that could do the doublestop harmonics  the one you were impressed by

and that's why I had tears in my eyes that first time when you asked why are you crying 

while those salty pearls dribbled down your collarbone into the daggered light between the

blinds pearled bones into entropy  disbelief   like you hadn't cried before when your father

beat you half to death and left you in the park overnight          like you hadn't sobbed when

jonas got a bouquet of 9mm in his back as he was going to ESL                 like          like you didn't

leak tears of relef  when I agreed to go out with you to that                       boba shop with shattered

doors dear  my legs are charred  half-back-slashed but only cooked partway  blue-rare  tartare 

please put them back in the pickle-jar or the oven.  whatever you prefer. whatever you'd like to

do with my name whatever just take my hand  hon  and paint it  take my hand  hon  we'll

dance by                the window

[MAN.]

II. look,  there  is a three-headed dragonfly in the family restaurant hacking away at the bok choy

making spears of their fingers and knives of their palms  while the aunts are kissing the floor for

what remains from above, and the customers are simmering on the black-and-checkered tiles

waiting for their styrofoam-and-plastic-and-carbohydrate care packages  haunting the marble

aisle of the foyer bejeweling the rickety-shitty-1950s-fan above in a halo of relentless steam and

there isn’t anybody to take care of the little ones, sword-fighting with their polystyrene

Walmart baby-bottles to the sound of Baby Keem blaring from the Toshiba LCD mounted in

the top left corner  wires an oil-dripped mangrove  teenagers born in the year of the dog

making out without tongue and poking at their swamps of soups and salads in the booths 

their ricocheting tails in syncopation  in thirds  in unison  and give them an hour or so and

they’ll think they have the same parents         the same clothesline to hang bloody t-shirts on

and the same cabbage-bowl to scour with sour                               the same sugar-buzz from raiding

the milk candy drawer                       the same dirt to suture their elbows to and call it a prayer,

                and then finally, with your hair tucked in a fan like a halo in the tub, i shear the

dead skin off your back with your father’s fingers    an exit wound jutted into the moonlit bay

of your body  put your Nyquil sunflowers and numb fingers to my hips  hear the jingle of the

copper bell  put on an etude for the dead, and then dance  baby  we’ll dance and i’ll play a few

hands of yahtzee with the devil  if i roll a six  i’ll still be here in the morning