A scene at the dinner table, imaginary rice bowls
clanking clanking clanking till all the chopsticks break to
pierce every fixated white eye
A chance to maim any claim to malleability, out
now, get out now
A splinter cracks wide open
the fat ceramic, red blood on white, bleeding sensation of
fate in your gut
A mountain is only yours when it’s permeable,
fingernails soil-cracked yellow
up to your elbows in salt
Another genuine white friend stopped at
the threshold of your house, confused, so
confused
A white baby in savage bloom, in waiting to
brandish your guts with
every stain you buried in haste
All your poetry situated in the united states, a landscape
whose innocence throbs with the
heat of piss, shiny so shiny
How do you tell anyone who would listen
See that it’s not too late to
begin again: side-eye the pliant white of this page,
Gentle, like a multiplication table
All the answers pulsating in the fist you hide behind your back
Alyss 