Drafts

I decided that from now on to save readers' time I will add new poems at the top of this post instead of the bottom. Also see "Published" tab for collections, etc. I took all the photos here.

Boy
Sneakers and jeans loose enough to hide my phone
A glance around the room raises guesses of sexuality
The silence when my uncles tease me: do you like any girls at your school?
Gay Asians unheard of,
More STEM, please
Childhood clouded with secret Barbie dolls, the sleeker, pinker army men
Parties push me into corner third-wheeling for multiple couples
1 a.m. driving of drunk friends
Have no idea of who to ask to dances because
My pool of possibility sinks to the gayfriendzone for girls,
The unknown for guys.

College
How much are you going to pay me to go there?
Seventh grade, after geometry class, one skinny kid to another:
"What college do you want to go to?"
Twelfth grade, in the car with a friend's family:
"Congratulations on ____insert college that I actually haven't even applied to yet_____,"
As if the process would be automatic
Mick takes off his shoes during the ACT
Dr. Sachs please don't leave me, like Mellick, Apple
Won't look until after finals

"Thanksgiving"

Night invading the afternoon

Grace notes beeping in the garage door alarm

Lonely empty foreign holidays

TV substituting family

Food meeting up with the wait

Spiciness lasting as long as bubblegum

No tradition here

No turkey

No prayer

Just another meal

Mornings
If my dad and I were the only people
Living on the east side of St. Paul
We wouldn't worry about any
Lethargic weekday highways
Unfortunately, each morning involves
Quick instincts and brief calculations
Of distance, traffic, time
Driving perhaps over the speed limit plus ten
On small local roads
Eyes straining to spot which path on the grid
Would provide the best long shortcut
Around the stretched lines held by red lights
Our car fueled by a stubborn refusal
To join the dragging chain of metal bugs
On concrete.

Senior year
Everyone wants to be a kid again
To strain the cords of the spotlight overhead
To find novelty in every blink
To care most about problems as trivial as the frilled edge of notebook paper
But I don't want to be a kid again
Because rewinding time
Also means I'd have to eventually relive
The teenage years, too,
After those childhood spans of bliss
When I'm so close to escaping it now
In the other direction.

Overheard this morning
I got so many likes on that profile picture
Do we have orchestra during 7th period today
Knock, knock, who's there?
We record and time it perfectly
I need you to sign my planned absence form
Who got the solo?
Diane!
Does anyone have a pen?
Could we please drop by three
At least you don't look like that
Praise my back how it hurts
Can you unplug this

FINE I'LL WRITE A GIRL POEM
We just had to be friends that semester,
Forcing an island of long hair and flowery blouses
In that front row together
She finished her psets with quiet grace
While my chair swiveled to the masses of guys
Who scrambled to "collaborate" on homework
Because I found their jokes, their idiosyncrasies
More fascinating than hers.
Sorry.

(note: pset's definition on Urban Dictionary is slightly incorrect: the stress, agony, nightmares, etc of psets is not exclusive to MIT, so just run away from colleges in general and you'll be fine)

La Joconde 

The Mona Lisa stretched by eigenvectors

Mais ce n'est pas un homme, c'est un champignon.

Straight edges and liens end with the pop of

Pecker, speckle, hackle, tackle

Unlike Cocoabella chocolates, dimethoxyhydroquinone, quinoa, onions, ions.

Such a lonely looney blocking a delta of spelt—

Her minions flock like tweens at a Twilight book signing;

I’d rather watch tuna melt into liver or iron smelt and shiver,

Though much of this can be said the same for

The Mona Lucy.

(note: second line is from Le Petit Prince)

Today
When Charles Dickens wrote the first lines to
A Tale of Two Cities 
He was probably inspired by
High school.

What we've lost

How can we feel content when what once reflected through our eyes always flashes by on a train conducted by time?

Moments vibrate. Every slice of an instant presents a slice of movement, and these motions collect into ripples. But ripples fade, and we lose them. We can’t rewind our senses. We consistently lose everything: colors, shapes, lives, ideas, reactions.

We sit in our cars, too distracted to pay attention to our everythings slipping by, yet so concerned with equilibrium and no net change.

The trees that mimic Lichtenberg figures don’t persuade us to mind when we lose them in our memory. So why should we care?

Every place, every home, every inch of space carries a story. Though we cannot lose stories that we never knew, why does it still feel tragic?

Mathematicians love equations because they can reassure themselves that nothing really disappears from one side to the other. Physicists suffer this same guilt. Everyone, really.

Imagine the writer cutting away words that she loves but cannot afford because they refuse to squeeze into that moment in that story.

Our universe injects its own desperate need for conservation of so much: of energy, of momentum, of mass, into us. I love string theory because it turns our universe into an orchestra of multidimensional vibrations. I hate it because it hasn't secured itself as fact.

How unfair of us to create our path of reactions, pushing aside all other could-have-beens.  How lucky that the butterfly effect chose us. How worrisome to exist as one chaos out of many. How rude when we increase the entropy in space.

We dream about the immortal, or at the very least, exceptionality. We exaggerate. We tell myths. We grasp what we can before time pushes us out on a wheeled stretcher.

Or we sit and do nothing, losing not nothing but instead all the possibilities combined. For if we never know, we can never rule out anything.

If we never know, then we can never crush our own dreams.

We want others to care about us. Ignorance or disapproval drags us one step closer to oblivion. Perhaps oblivion looks much like the center of a Mandelbrot set. Nobody bothers with what happens there.

I’ve lost the pair of shoes that I wore in second grade. I’ve lost the social acceptance to twirl in a frilly dress and giggle for others’ smiles. I’ve lost the need to add to my collection of stuffed animals for bragging rights.

I’m sure I knew that this would happen. I still know that everything will end up lost. I hope to see further than I can live, but even then, I will lose what I see. The past and present pinches the now too much.

How can I convince myself that I can become the exception? 

Black
It's false to believe that black is nothing because something could easily hide in the darkness, unnoticed by even those who live nocturnally and have adapted to knowing the unknown and we don't give enough credit for the goodness of black, or at least its potential for greatness because as long as we don't know what's inside we can still grasp onto the hope that we could find treasure within the so-called nothing. 

White
White | head scarves
White | flowers that will never touch childrens' hands
White | scarves patterned on cobblestone
White | shirt laughing among pigeons
White | feathers spanning the underside of wings
White | block letters
White | banners hanging across a wall of women
White | clouds
White | photos of pale faces
White | where their children once lived
White | without confirmation of nothing
White | for mourning peace
White | gallery lights on
White | walls
White | space
White | stirring with endless
White |

Ducks
By chance I saw some birds by a pond
Whose water wore ripples like dragon scales.
Streams of tiny stars trailed from the shadows,
As teardrops of ducks skimmed over the setting sun.

They wavered over scattered trees
Wrinkling blue into compressed ellipses.
Each one like the next, easy to forget.
Like flying ships on a fallen sky,
They tuck their heads under their wings,
Listening to murmured secrets of the waves.

It felt too cold out here for leaves to burn
As grey and blue smoke ruffled in the water's surface.
Each busy vibration behind the reeds
And nasally quack from across the plane
And concentrated care within the ducks' minds
Failed to truly change too much.

For the pond still shoved itself along
With and without its birds,
A surface so flexible much like the world above
So accustomed to change
That one ripple merely travels among many.

Victims of the performing arts center

The still curtains

Line windows on which

An unknowable number

Of children's noses

Had pressed against.

I am beyond perfect (this was the bragging poem this actually isn't real)
I don't see what is wrong
When I am beyond perfect
The golden ratio ain't got nothing on me
It's an honor to wake up in the morning
And see me in the glass.
Not a saint out in the world,
'Cause who can face me
Without falling into deadly sin?

A Muffin

butter flour sugar egg water

blueberry strawberry corn toffee rhubarb

 chocolate chips vanilla white chocolate s'mores

cream cheese pecan peanuts cashews coffee rhubarb

pumpkin cinnamon streusel lemon raisin lime banana ginger 
sourdough pear raspberry blackberry cherry 

honey oatmeal pineapple poppy red velvet 
pistachio almond walnut bran glaze carrot 

cranberry apple orange chocolate nutella 

frosting for finest mellow cupcake

NYC
wrinkled clothes wavering across white stripes
ignore the yellow taxi pods humming stuck to the pavement
drawing a grid disorganized on the molecular level
trying to follow rectangular prisms dusted with pigeons
yearning for green carpet locked by sidewalks

the common app
a collegiate deep red
bleeds across the screen
luring with simple questions first:
Name, Address, Demographics, Family
before gray and white frames
an existential crisis under the
Future Plans bar.

individuals squeeze into 250 to 650 words
drained down to identical slices of entire worlds
defined by drop down menus
president of this
captain of that
volunteer here
working there
a string of blank paper dolls

Poem
I had an idea for a poem
But it swelled into such 
Complexity
That it popped
And slipped my mind.

Violin
Wait I don't even play this.

Flute
Who am I kidding
I can't write a poem about
This instrument.

Piano V
More in the audience
Than I would have liked,
But too late now
For running away.
Who could've known
That so many people
In Minnesota felt the need
To attend a music convention?
Such weirdos!

Piano IV
The director of the state
Contest tosses around small talk
With teachers,
Completely unfazed
By the thick tension,
The nervousness that
Hovers over the ten finalists and
Stuffs the air so densely
That I can barely breathe.

Piano III
Beethoven folds over me
I sit on on a cushioned black bench
At a shiny Yahama
In the maze of for-sale pianos at Schmitt Music. My hands
Grip my knees as I attempt to drown out the music
Strangling me
From the judging room.

Is her piece harder than mine?
Didn't I see her at that other contest a few weeks ago?
Is she playing the same songs?
How many judges are there?
Is that lady the same judge from last year?

My heartbeat fails to steady,
Shaking up anxiety.
Perhaps my internal tempo has broken.
Perhaps my fingers will slip
The moment they land on the keys.
The first notes of Debussy
Loops through my head.
E-E-G-E-E-E-G-E.
Over and over.

Don't forget to adjust the piano bench.
Don't forget to breathe.
Don't forget the first notes.
E-E-G-E-E-E-G-E.

Before I could calculate
The size of the judging room
The brand of the piano
The temperature of my hands
And how I should adjust to all of those factors,
The music halts.
The door shuffles open.
My turn.
E-E-G-E-E-E-G-E.

Piano II
Tone deafness
Derails any hopes of sightreading
New songs or fixing mistakes
In old ones.
Surmounted challenges
Only lead to playing by instinct
No heart, no thought.

Photoshop
Vibrant grass sharpens under the dial
A search for the glow in her cheeks
Reveals shades hidden by poor lighting
Sepia ages apples into pale sentimentality
The gradient scatters into checkered gray
Trees scrape away into postcard palms
Lies layering on a picture
Layers within layers
Until everyone and everything
Inhabits another world.

Balance
I like to believe that the balance
Leans towards more good than bad

But then why does fear
Edge its way through every inch of happiness

Telling me,
Everything evens out
And this will subside

One extreme met by another
Until ying and yang has stretched into a line
Tipping up and down
Failing to stay still.

How
How are curly fries made?

Tumblr
#food #dessert #love #amazing #swag #high school #fashion #cupcakes #chocolate

Dim sum
Little silver landmines of food 
Asian breakfast buffet

Wensman
If he grew his hair longer, would he look like Einstein?
The class began pretty okay:
Poem portraits, cars, lists,
But just wait for when we learn
The reason behind the "pernicious" in
"Pernicious Security."
Then
It'll be less dancing with daffodils
And more lilacs out of the dead land.

The bulk of what we know
Behind every face
Walking a dog down the sidewalk
Looking for a street sign in the crowd
Sitting at the table next to yours at the restaurant
Is a life as nuanced and unique as yours.
Add up all these lives and memories
And wishes and hopes
And truths and lies and facts
And trivia and cares and fears
And the result is bigger than
Infinite.

The mathematician
Dark Indian skin
Wraps skinny arms that would
Struggle to lift weights,
Hit a baseball,
Throw a football.
His eyes reach past his glasses
At the numbers balancing between the blue lines
Of the notebook page.
Chin in hand,
He polishes a last-minute pset
Relief so close,
Straining to make the numbers match.

St. Kate's

How lonely is Our Lady,

Isolated in tall, smooth bronze,

Rain drops slashing her robes 

And narrow thumbs?

She greets with wrinkled saints behind

Her, guarded by

Giant dandelion grains,

Green paint brushes, fanning and drooping.

How broken is Our Lady,

Her symmetry cut by a tower, by the crooked geometry of bricks,

Trapezoid, rectangle, red dash, trapezoid?

Or is she the placid lakes

Of arcs and circles on the tan facade?

The many faces of Gordon Ramsay
Chop. Season. Salt. Stir. Layer. Butter. Sugar. Blow torch.
It's RAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!

An average call when I forget my phone
I can't quite remember which one of these
Numbers scattering in my head
Is the one I want.
A month away from eighteen, yet
No car,
No driver's license,
No permit.
I borrow Katherine's phone,
And try a number,
Thumb skimming over the keys on instinct,
Praying I reach my mother's cell.
"Hello?"
"Who is this?"
"Who are you?"
"Oh, hi dad. Oops. Sorry. Bye."
Attempt #1 failed.
I try another number.

Procrastination
Facebook. Tumblr. Youtube. Wikipedia. iMessage.
Those just-one-mores and just-a-little-bit-longers
Take up more time than expected.
The day piles faster than the work completed,
Until a glance back at the weekend
Raises one question,
"Is that all I did?"

Ancient World
Ancient foragers aimed to bend nature
First by reining fire
And then,
Not knowing DNA's helix
or the secret behind the Galapagos,
Yet
Owning dogs and growing grain.
The rise of agriculture
Necessitating civilization to organize
A survival of the fittest.

Fruit Nonsense
Apples are orange,
Oranges are red,
Red isn't apple.

First Freeze

Lazy

Roses drained in

Frosty red, warm

In the late sun, bending shadows,

Dying.

Is this life? I would like to talk to the manager, please.

Who tips the dominos

On which we stand?

Who draws the line

Between late and too late?

Who fixes the camel’s back

After the last straw breaks it?

Who built the clock

That travels one side with golden mornings to purple nights

And another with purple nights to golden mornings?

Who is there to reassure us

That there’s a plan to all this?

Hello?

Where is this who?

Who is this who?

The Fated Legend

A sonata of sunfire tempo

Storms with bravado across the tundra.

A prelude of quantum echoes

Sprints on an intrepid safari.

It’s a vision of stealth shadowed by mirages,

On an odyssey to become a legend.

September 14
Subtle cold
Loyal rain
Foreshadowing autumn