Haitian mango

Here you are vivid and we bite into Haitian mangoes
that cost four dollars each at Whole Foods, and you didn’t know
that was fucking expensive, for a mango. But they are
so sweet and we have to support Haiti somehow.
You tell me that nobody has ever cared about you as much,
not even your mom
and it is not my imagination.
And I will wish that one of the many people, drunk
who interrupted us, would have taken notes for me

I don’t know what any moment
is supposed to mean,
if there are clues, or no clues, or maybe
if I went over the notes
eighty-nine more times I’d find it,
But nobody asked,
and I think it went like this:

If we need more

It is a trip home
for migrants in two or more halves.
My thin straw has siphoned out
this coconut’s life-giving juice: afterbirthy
and sweet.
The bellied man with the machete split it,
his hands fat with dead skin. His face is a handbag,
UVA-seasoned–thanks to the hole in the clouds,
he’s seared to a brown that goes with everything.
I was nine. But the bellied men
gathered the soft rubber above their shorts
to sit with a soapy beer and protest
machete-based working conditions. Too many a good finger
lost, you know–
I have these coconut halves
and I want this to be pleasing, for you.
Like scraping meat from this surgical patient,
tilting white flesh into the valley of your tongue.
A valley
so that this stuff–textured somewhere
between an egg and whatever it is, I don’t know,
around a wet chia seed–
would get there.
Sometimes the stuff is known to slide
past your teeth and slip into the hole
between your gums that is fleshier,
and more remote.

Things to Save in a Fire

1

The place you need to reach is rarely arms-length.

Sometimes a fire will help.

The smell of a burning kitchen can make you hungry.

Your list of Things To Save In A Fire may or may not help if the list is the thing you save.

The list must not include living persons or pets: those you must remember without lists.

Sometimes, under the bed is the worst place for the cat to be.

Never allow yourself to rank the items on your list in order of importance.

Making new lists is essential.

2

If The Husband tries to kill you and then himself, he is guaranteed at least one out of the two.

This can happen only once.

There is not as much relief in this knowledge as you thought.

Sometimes a detached garage is good during a house fire.

The garage is a filmic trope that serves any and all functions because you may fill it with cars, spillover, and/or memories.

Sometimes the memories support the integrity of the structure.

Police officers are required to leave the rope where they found it, hanging in the garage.

3

If you are conflicted about the process of mourning, remain silent.

If you hold competing emotions, choose the one most suited to a black dress.

Sometimes you will miss passionate conversations over glasses of water in a dark kitchen.

When the children of The Husband from a previous marriage attempt to rob the garage, let them.

If you are robbed by the angry adult children of your husband after he has hanged himself, you are allowed to laugh and cry at the same time.

A bowl of cereal is comforting until the remaining milk is too sweet, and you remember you are not a child.

Every poem is about love

I will argue in favor of college students,
which not many people do, especially college students.
Love seems to rack up, I’m telling you,
The romantics are back and they’re in a classroom.
I have an example: I saw you in Physics
and wondered how to wrap myself around you.
I’m waiting for you to stop licking windows
and pills just for the tongue tattoos,
so that we can be non-exclusive temporarily.
Because you love posterity and I eat it,
and I’m looking for the 90s and letters.
I walk into Survey of Western Political Thought, or a frat house,
knowing I will find someone to share a mutually
respectful, spotlight-in-a-smoky-room-you-are-
everything-hour, or lifetime.
Or something less respectful.
We young romancers, we choose hours.
In this country, our companies make
a matchbox of the Amazon–they could be murders, at least
they’re not those. But if you could make stationery from people
there are forests of us.
I’m telling you, people here have thoughtful hair,
and research Athenian architecture,
these people have physiques.
So you commit an hour to me–
“A hookup is all you’ll ever get,”
Is what they’re saying/we’re hearing.
We eat it like the last Cheeto, because
an hour is just fine and not enough.