The bulb glows amber
on the roof like an orange
I have always
wanted to eat but felt I didn’t
deserve to—this roof
where I had my first
kiss, not knowing
with such a touch, my lips
would slip into a realm of thirst
I was told by my parents
to never wander into.
From this moment on, it didn’t take
much to be excited. The disappearance
of lemon cake crumbs in the folds
of the sofa salivated my tongue.
Vegetables drying under the sun,
waiting their turn to be pickled
unblocked my troubled nose. And who
in our times wasn’t comforted
by the sight of a man carrying a package in his arms
looking for your signature!
I return home after months
and my mother is sick.
She is unable to walk
from the pain in her joints.
Under the night sky I stub a cigarette
on my palm—my call
of faith to the stars I know I will never get
to visit. Imitating a high-stakes candle,
I try slow dancing
on the edge of the terrace,
the wind surging across my shirt
like a child running
after a falling kite.
I utter a prayer I barely remember
as the heart-shaped
peepal leaves sway
to embroider in calligraphic black
the healing surface
of the moon.

On the cover, another girl turns from us, hair furled
so we might appraise her neck’s arc, shoulder-blades
like scythes beneath her skin: so young, so thin.

We know from the first she’s damaged:
her pulse doesn’t quicken at the flight of a wren
from a palo verde dropping yellow blossoms

beside the pool. She can’t rouse herself for the few steps
to the tree’s protection, instead burning and burning
beneath noon’s incandescence.

Of course, the sun is her father. Or husband. No,
no, the mother who just wanted
to guard her from these men,

who hurt her to teach her
about suspicion and hardness,
told her she’s pretty but

should cover her clavicles and calves,
that she’s capable of wild love but should never give it.
Or maybe Mom said nothing, withdrew

her hands, so the daughter’s skin
quivers at the proximity of fingertips.
The girl never speaks, except in narrative confession

as she wanders a house where dust sparkles when
she twitches aside curtains  
or lies in a bath till the water turns tepid.

After painting her nails blood-red, she allows herself to be
fucked without meaning it, thinks of driving to Los Angeles
but naps,

wakes to shave her head, cut a thigh, act
at last, with listless violence,
overdosing on opiates,

tainting her man’s tea with poison,
lying languid as he chokes off her breath.
Anyone can tell you: it’s just

how
women
end.

SOMETIMES, WHEN I TRY TO TYPE WORLD

I type wolf. 
As in: The sun is setting over my part of the wolf right now. 
As in: Anywhere in the wolf but here. 

What I know is the old home
is always playing her best hits:
again I’m in that pink room
listening to Beit Hanina’s eastern hills,
her wild dogs’ hymns.
First, the base notes —
rumble tones — desire.
Then, that high-flung crescendo. That moon peal. 

As in: The wolf is at your fingertips.
As in: That was a different life, a different wolf. 

Here, we visit the Mexican gray wolf brothers, 
Garcia, Prince, and Bowie,
at the San Francisco Zoo;
watch them trot ragged circles in the dirt
for children with their tongues out. 
A sign outside their enclosure reads: 
“Please refrain from howling.”
In a red circle, a silhouette of a howling
wolf is x’ed out. My son asks,
“Shouldn’t it be a howling man?” 

As in: He’s carrying the wolf on his shoulders.  
As in: It’s not the end of the wolf. 

In what may be the earliest version 
of Red Riding Hood, a mother goat sets off
for the woods to find food
for her family, leaving her young behind.
This is where the wolf finds them—
hiding in their own home. 
But in Europe, it is the child who is sent out
from the home (which is already full of food,
by the way) into the woods:
red and scented.

As in: I feel alone in this wolf.
As in: She’s not long for this wolf. 

When my son bores of fairy tales, 
I make up a real thriller 
about a mama, with a long, dark braid, 
just like mine. Every night at 9, 
her faint, bleached mustache would grow
foul and bushy; her neat piano 
fingernails turn sickly sharp. 
Then she’d tear out of that beige 
duplex on Bowley—  
“That’s enough stories,” he’d say. 

He’d say: “I’m asleep.”
As in: I’m dead to the wolf.