If one designer inspired me to dream, it was you, Alexander McQueen

I was seated at the coffee table
It was a clean, February morning
Cold yet inviting. The sky
flat and blue.
I peeled my first orange of the day
The smell sang citrus

My phone quivered on the table
I received the new, and learned
That
They discovered you in a London apartment
Your London apartment.
I was just

about to finish peeling my orange.
There are still bits of it stuck to the smooth
Insides of my fingernails.
I can smell you, now, wherever I
Go. You smell like oranges. I know this now,
I didn’t know it before.

#2

___2

Always, I am muddied by memories:
My father unfolding on top his bed
My mother--sweet-sour lemon-candy--
Rising from morning without her smile.

There are caramel-crackling images:
My two sisters twirling, amid a whirl
Of gushing-glitter noise. There are cloud dusts
On their heads, dripping deep into their eyes.
I am the only one who now can see

past the swelling, tangerine sunrise
And the scatter of chubby stars, to where
my father slumps, easing sleep from his eyes
With knuckles, rough and pink, while my mother
Hums a warm, liquid tune of a long-lost life.

Being young will never get old
So forget all those lies that you’ve been
told
Suck in the sun
Then exchange numbers with the
Tulips

Are you able, girl?

That girl wears the clam between her legs
Sticky
She boasts no-underwear
Stretching her liquid limbs to the sky
Of chirping fluorescence
Overhead, she is like a shaky China doll
Of cucumber fingers
So pale and so cold
That you mistook them for ice-cube-kisses beneath
The table
Are you able, girl?
To imagine yourself without a boy
Sucking on your hips with his finger-
tips
He holds on tight, for the ride
It feels so good to be inside
Are you able, girl?

I have gone so far for you
That my spine croaks a sunset tune
Cloud-wisps color my hair white, then blue
And rainstorms stud my lashes with dew

I have gone so far but I still must go
Swallowing tulips, lightning, and fields of snow
Along with hearts of trees and the essence of leaves
Before they murmur to the floor

I have gone so far for you
That my knees and my feet are through
They spit and they screech at you
Their words boil and brown a bloody stew

The cypress trees are tall and blue like you
Their limbs stretch towards the tangerine sun
Together they whisper words I know well
That many moons will give birth before I am done

Sticky summers provide
the usual souvenirs:
Tan, crisp faces
pockets scratchy with sand
and countless heart-biting, igniting images
of boys in bookstores and in buses
stooped over novels with jagged names
lips sparkling with pricks of blood.

These darling invite lavender-pink dreams
to feed the fat vacancies between our thoughts and
tirelessly, we imagine when our paths might crash
arousing love-sparks to gallop free
so we, too, might
leap.

Soon we will experience
the slap-sting of beautiful boys
who feign interest just to prove they can
seduce us into a face-slam
with a pole,
or an ouch-slip into a ditch.
While rubbing our bruises
and brushing off wormy dirt clods,
We will glance at him, suddenly strong, a phoenix born from the ashes of heart-burn

And think:
Did the lumps in our throats betray our careless expressions?

You drive me nuts--
almonds, cashews, pecans
prickly with salt
the Planters Premium kind
that look better than they taste
and lie about the ZERO trans fat
(in the shower, I can no longer count my
toes)
You forced the pecans onto my palms.
I thought they looked like dead
Cockroaches.