brooklyn-queens expressway

I.
wailing sirens outside my window, no seriously, those seductive creatures of ancient mythology with their fish scales and seagull cries, apocalyptic footsteps and screeching floorboards above (what are they doing up there? bowling?), steaming, dreaming under blankets of darkness, roaches dance disoriented, I drip Bklyn into my green fish scale tea, stir Bklyn into matcha tea, that’s like saying tea-tea cha-cha like a laminated nightclub dance floor, strobing light over hands of clapping and beneath one hop this time, thanks to you I sizzle eggs on kitchen sidewalk, diced tomatoes, eucalyptus stench, slamming doors pause corn syrup personalities cough-twice-smile, shrubs of black not-suburbs not-skyscrapers almost vertical, I take an eyelid photograph between sunrise and dog memory, between horizons and shrub sirens congealed like lazy bubblegum on flat surfaces.

II.

safer than where you live in bklyn, my dad says, like you can gauge the safety of a neighborhood by the density of Chinese grocery stores in a square mile divided by the number of black people walking down the street plus the volume of a medium bubble tea minus that deli robbery a week ago down Grand Ave, down Grand Ave you can summon tofu fa from sketchy back alleys through clandestine wormholes – if it gives me cancer at least I’ll die a martyr, I’ll part the red sea like yellow diet Moses to eat that heavenly soy, Cantonese can be the Scripture, but of course I am a heathen and only speak Mandarin, strike that, only understand Mandarin – orange is the color of the bricks in my part of Elmhurst, I live on Elks Road but there are no elms or elks in sight, maybe we sacrificed them in an Aztec blood ritual, ground their pulpy promise into elephant tusks eviscerated by Trump’s molars (nothing they say can justify their ashy betrayal coughed out into murky incense, o multitudinous seas incarnadine, I have caught them red-handed, how lucky a color!)

III.

we are here although we have no business being here – like we could do economics – we are shit at math but hey, we are good students, goddamnit! sorry God for using your name in vain, I say, an agnostic, to the Christmas lights mid-October that illuminate the many pages of our books and our books of many pages, like a moth-infested lamp like a lightbulb symphony like an ambient nightclub in Williamsburg UFO vision through fluid poetry flesh disassembled with Frankenstein fervency then galvanized green and red, i don’t recognize actual insides turned out of intestines of lungs of microvilli of mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell – these prompts are a prison cell but I quite like these shackles, Plato said that in his cave or maybe a businessman in Stockholm did, French fish cuffs with Excel scale links, but I am here in bklyn, a ten-minute walk from my apt, craving halal cart company over crumbly chocolate crackers and soaring sleepy sheep.

IV.

chirping birds like Twitter warriors, whining rust like pebbles on a steel overpass, light streaming through a fog like late night television through fake news, I stayed up till late thinking about the earth, the slope dips too far into the core of the apple and rain pools in brilliant petroleum beneath the tree in the backyard of the war vet of the guitar of the warbled singing, spiders hanging off his arms, sparrows hopping in wait but I can’t erase the penetrating chill, white socks and winter smudge like isolation starvation exaggeration (rolled eyes, stop being so dramatic you’ll get breakfast soon), I pour Queens, drizzle Queens into my complaints like chicken feet and dinosaur claws, egg shells and moondust in the fridge like museum relics of a time when they cooked over firewood, the driveway with feathers tarred and garlic roasted to the children laughing, their knees skinned on lofty dreams and asphalt hills.

-Monica