I can't write a poem

This is another piece from Unfold last year — get yourself in already!

after Dean Young

I can’t write a poem because I’m supposed to

I can’t write a poem because I am standing on my tongue

I’ve plucked my eyes out of their sockets and tossed them into the top drawer of the armoire

All of the words in my head are from two columns of a three year old newspaper, whatever I can glimpse when the light spills in

I can’t write a poem because the vine gently strangling the avocado tree needs to be unwound, needs to curl itself around my fingers, needs to reach its silver fur for the familiar bark that I am separating it from

It detaches itself from the palm tree we introduce it to and sprawls across the ground,

its leaves flopping, desperate and rubbery as it wilts and pines and I cannot

write a poem while this vine is dying

while the avocado tree is opening tiny new leaves like tiny new eyes

while the cat presses the velvet button of his nose to a flower and I scold him

too quickly and he waits for me to apologize before closing his mouth around

the bud

I can’t write a poem

I can only curl myself around the sick feeling

at the end of my throat

If I cut myself open here, instead of poems coiled in the slick purple

you’d find broken teeth and seawater and the sodden clump of the last dress

I saw my mother wear,

the gold bangles my grandfather made me, gone soft and oblong in the heat.