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my chiropractor is indian
with a formal english vocabulary under a heavy accent
so he can get away with saying these things
“you have such a lovely young body
that i do not imagine at your age you are single very often for very long
so make sure the next man that you see is spiritual”
i do not visit him often
because he does not keep his voice down

“every time you are angry, write a love poem.”
once i honked at a car
who cut off mine & scared me

the man got back into the other lane
rolled down his window, shouted, ‘i’m sorry’

i felt so terrible
most people are basically good
(but it’s such an easy thing to forget
these days)

my first and only violent love
was a schoolyard boy named david
whose father shot himself on a baseball field
he cried until he choked me
and then he said sorry
and held me tighter

remember the nights of poetry
books&books and hours&hours
quoting the good ones to each other, until we degenerated back into just-ourselves
with our-vocabulary,
fuck me like you’re alan watts
(the memory ends –
stoned sneaking out your second-floor window because your mother’s home from her chinese classes at community college, you were a necessary right-of-passage
)
that i should miss
but i don’t

either she fills the silence or i do

sometimes
we are quiet enough that my noise & hers does not intersect
(living in small spaces without headphones)

puts the red lipstick on too heavy, kisses off the excess into her inner wrist

lana del rey on the stereo & a boho beauty in front of me smoking her menthols
cross-legged on the wooden floorboards in the frontroom, no furniture,
she says ‘don’t tell me you love me until after’
sitting flipping half-naked through vintage victorian anatomical art, she says, ‘this will be my next tattoo’
points to a long-stemmed perennial in an old botanists’ catalouge
her jazz musician boyfriend comes in, she laughs, her bracelets chiming, metal-on-metal, pulls him down by the forearm & crawls onto his lap
i don’t love her at all
(nothing left to do but lay down & i do, spine & the floor, missing my own musician like he was dead, daydream he’s playing a gig instead)

the first time we are caught.
$90 trespassers’ fine
my father is a poor loser, takes it pouting & with a fit
but he was in bright yellow and i was in solid blue–
we were in an open prairie, it’s like a punchline, really–
because i am his daughter & his only one, he tells me,
‘do not think this means you should stop’
and on the way home he teaches me this
breaking into someplace else (an old train car sitting in the middle of the city)
–he got his doctorate for fun & he makes his 65k for the hell of it
& he never learned how to talk to young girls (not even his own)
& he thinks he raised me better than this:
i teach boys to hop the garden fences while i pay the entry fee
a failure by my father’s standards
(but i am not going to carry this last name on)

i surpassed my fathers’ talent in photography
at the age of fourteen
when he consequently told me
the technology was bringing forth the obsolescence of its practitioners

but i am o.kay with a new guerrilla market
in which we all in the end agree
our own photos look the best on our own walls

and the starving artists are restored to their starving state
my father whose photos never won

patrick greene
born on st. patrick’s day
sits next to me at the blood bank
says, ladies first
and listens while the nurse & i speak automatic small talk
it takes so long
he is patient, drinks water, smiles, i could be the one waiting
he does not understand when i say thank you so many times
i don’t really either

mark the mountain climber
has strong arms like my boyfriend
and a deeper voice
he is really very fit
it makes me feel self conscious
we don’t talk anymore