take a bath

but don’t use bubbles. Don’t think about the people who may have been in your tub before you. The water should be clear. Put your head underwater to hear the echo of moving furniture in the apartment below. Forget the time he washed your hair, or used your deodorant. Make it hot enough to turn your skin red, at least in blotches, at least on your chest. Don’t think about using anyone else’s toothbrush. Scrape off the dead skin with your fingernails. Concentrate on the neck and shoulders. Forget about certain body parts, like lips and thighs. Wipe any buildup on the side of the tub. Plan on cleaning it later. Get to the next layer. Don’t think about the dents in your pillow. Pick dead skin off your feet. Using a fingernail, remove any dirt from under your toe nails. Especially the big toe. Let the water drain slowly. Rinse, repeat.

there is glitter in your pavement

you used my toothbrush
but not my toothpaste
it is too conventional i know.
later i wanted to tell you bout
the men who used it before you
my friend thinks this is how you get hep A
but i'm sure you are fine
despite being the type to die tragic
young and beautiful
just finished your masterpiece before
you could live the fame.
but it has always been there anyway
you have been wearing disguises since puberty
more like costumes
cos U know who U are
all stripes and gold and
exposed stitching.
but soon enough
that glitter in your pavement gets blown
remnants the next morning like
the aftermath of a car accident
more like a busted tail light.

Jobs (in Oakland)

First it was minimum wage at a café where I learned how to make latte art and that you could be rude to customers. Then I worked for free at a newspaper, wrote some articles that I wasn’t compensated for and felt bitter about afterward. Then I answered survey questions, took quizzes that tested my short-term memory and had some x-rays taken of my brain while I solved math problems inside an MRI machine for $20 an hour. Then I helped write content for a “green” Web site for two months, was paid $1,000, and two years later it is still under construction. Then I typed what people said in slow-motion during television interviews and was paid $30 per DVD completed. I learned how nervous people can look before they are edited. Then I wrote a newsletter for kids to give them ideas about creative recycling projects they could complete at home, using the everyday objects that surrounded them. Then I went to a juvenile detention center and took notes while my superior asked the kids questions, I typed what they said and three months later was paid $500. Then I dug through trash, emptied the ketchup out of little plastic containers so that they could go in the recycling pile, unwrapped the foil from meat skewers so that it could be composted. For this I was paid $15 dollars an hour. Then I wrote letters to people telling them how animals are skinned alive, have their tails and testicles cut-off without anesthetic, and that they should all become vegan. For this I am paid, again, $15 an hour.

when you find yourself on the ground

It was one of those things where you just find yourself on the ground and you don’t know how you got there. You look over and see your bike a few feet away from you and remember riding over the curb, how that girl walked right in front of your path causing you to descend at an awkward angle right above the drainage grating where your tire sunk in and got stuck and you feel slightly angry at this girl, who continued walking even though you know it was your fault for riding your bike on the sidewalk and now you are sitting on the pavement, surrounded by students walking to and from their morning classes, but one of them stops, a tall boy, maybe a senior, with floppy brown hair and an attractive concerned look on his face when he asks you if you are okay and this is the point that you realize that you are, and he pulls your bike up off the ground as you stand up on rubbery knees, your hands shaking as you push a smile and a thank you before getting back on and riding away, wishing you could have stayed a little longer to find out who this boy was, thinking maybe if you had chatted a bit you would have realized you had something unique in common, like perhaps you went to the same summer camp as kids, at which point you would have fallen in love and looked back on that moment and reminisced at your chance encounter, that fateful day when you fell of your bike and he helped you up.

Alejandro (an excerpt)

As soon as she begins shopping with Alejandro she secretly congratulates herself. Alejandro is able to bargain with the shop owners, an art she has failed to master. “Not for less?” he says, and the shop owner lowers the price. “Not for less?” and the price is lowered again. So this is the magic phrase. She stands behind him, silent, not wanting her foreignness to compromise his bargaining power. He remains unsatisfied and they head to another liquor store, repeating the same pattern. Even if Alejandro turns out to be a creep, as least she will save some money, she rationalizes. She will spend a little more time with him and then tell him she has to leave, has to get back for dinner at the hostel.

At the next shop they bargain the price down and realize it will not get any lower. “I will buy it.” He nods as if to say, wise decision.

Alejandro says something about wanting wine, for his birthday, Julia nods and he walks behind her over to a refrigerated glass case. She puts the bottle on the counter, gets out her money and is about to hand it to the man behind the counter when Alejandro is again at her side, putting his wine on the counter next to the Pisco. She realizes he wants her to pay for it, too, and she hesitates, looking at the wine, then at the shop owner, then back at the wine.

“I don’t have any money. I'm broke. You will buy it for me, no?” The shop owner is looking at them, deadpan, waiting to be paid. It is a pint of cheap red wine in an aseptic box, less than a couple of dollars American. “Okay,” she says and hands the cashier the money. Perhaps what she thought was an announcement to buy the wine was actually a request that she pay for it, and her nod signaled consent. She can’t remember his wording, Spanish mumbles, now there is no way to know.

“Come, drink it with me. I know a place.”

“Is it close by? I want to get back soon. For dinner.”

“Yes, yes, it is right here.” She figures since she paid for it she might as well get to drink some. Maybe it will help her relax, give her the confidence she needs to ask the right questions of this Alejandro character, maybe call him on his bullshit if it becomes necessary. She notes again the smallness of his frame, the three inches of height she has on him.

She imagines they will share it in a park, possibly by a bridge or next to a river, lights strung above them, surrounded by couples on blankets. Instead they walk into a little café bar painted a seasick green with one sole customer watching soccer on a television mounted to the wall. Alejandro buys a coke, gets two plastic cups and leads her upstairs to a dingy area with a few tables and no other customers. He pours the red wine under the table, filling the glasses the rest of the way with the coke.

“Are you religious?” he asks.

“No. Are you?”

“No. But I am spiritual. The Incas, they worshiped the sun. Nature. Pachamama. The god of fertility, she is the one that causes earthquakes. We shall toast to her.”

They touch cups. He winks.

He tells her the Quechua word for sun: Inti. Then he tells her the Quechua word for mind, and touches her head. He tells her the quechua word for shoulder, and touches her shoulder. Then, leaning over, he tells her the quechua word for heart, and touches her chest, right above her breast.

She lingers for a moment and then leans back in her chair.

“I don’t like that you touch me.”

“Why?”

“I think sometimes men here are too aggressive. I think sometimes they hit on me because I am American,” she says, shifting the blame off him towards all South American men.

“I am just trying to be your friend. Don’t you touch your friends? Here.” He holds out his hand, palm up, for her to touch. Without knowing why, she lays her hand on top, but quickly takes it away.

“No. it makes me uncomfortable.” She finishes her cup, drinking quickly to calm her nerves, but feeling more confident that she is able to say these things, assert herself, even in this small way. He pours her another.

“My friends and I, we always touch each other. It is not anything sexual.”

“What are you going to do for your birthday? Don’t you have any plans?”

“Yes, I am going to see my family later.”

She is searching his face for clues, and is suspicious of why he would not be spending time with the aforementioned friends, had it truly been his birthday. Of course it is a lie. As she finishes her second glass she begins to feel the dizziness she felt earlier, by the lemon tree, and wonders if what she is feeling are actually tiny earthquakes from el Misti, little tremors that go unnoticed to the general public but that are sneakily messing with her equilibrium.

“I think I want to go back now. To the hostel.”

“I will accompany you.” She accepts as it is now dark outside, and even though she wants to separate herself, it is probably better that she doesn’t walk alone.

who blinks first

We’re going to have a conversation okay and I will mention my feelings and you will say how busy you are and I will tell you even world leaders have time for relationships with their spouses, anyone has time if they really want it, which is to say, you don’t really like me all that much do you, but I can’t say this aloud because this is the worst thing you can say to someone you want to like you because in most cases it becomes true the moment the words pass the lips and so I will nod like I am cool and discerning and we will act like we have come to some mutual understanding where we can smoke on the steps contemplatively and get under the covers afterward where will we cuddle and I will never hear from you again.


When you come in you ask me where you should sit.

“You could sit there. Or there. Or there.”

Three cherry bark chairs surround the kitchen table, a circle approximately 4 feet in diameter.

You shuffle around, take my backpack off one seat, ruffle the cushion on another, and finally sit directly across from me, after arranging the cushion so it sits in the exact center.

You look into my eyes and we wait until the other blinks first.

At age seven she would sometimes get the feeling like someone was watching her, like when she was on the toilet in her babysitter's house and she would look up into the corners of the room to check if there were any hidden cameras camouflaged in the floral wallpaper, and as she grabbed one of the seashell shaped soaps to wash her hands she would look in the mirror on the medicine cabinet and think there were others who could see this very same expression she was making and so she held her mouth a little differently which involved lowering her chin and making a one inch space between her top and bottom teeth but keeping her lips closed, held them more deliberately and opened her eyes a little wider and she felt guilty picking her nose even when she knew she was all alone and maybe if she was Catholic it would have been god she thought was watching her, or maybe her parents, or maybe the boy she had a crush on in her class, but it wasn’t any of these, and perhaps it was a hypothetical future lover, the one who may or may not exist but is probably the person she wants to impress the most.

At age 19 she would sometimes get the sensation of a memory before the actual visual or narrative memory like say for example when she was sitting in a cubicle in a grey office where she worked typing out a transcription of an interview about gang-related crime and all of a sudden she would get the feeling she had when she was twelve after soccer practice the fresh spring air and the smell of outdoor sweat and that feeling she had coming home from soccer practice and then it hit her, there in the office for no apparent reason, she could not find the trigger. And then she would remember there exist a number of past selves that she had lost contact with and it is only in these memories as well as photographs those feelings that wash over her out of nowhere like when she is sitting at her desk typing now 7 years into the future and she would feel it, she felt her former self and it is like hearing a song you used to used to love and forgot and somehow remember the words hearing it again years later.

At age 30 she would sometimes get the very strong feeling like she was going to die. Not like someday, but soon like her death was imminent, just looming over her, and then she would think that by thinking her death is imminent she is likely willing it to be so. And the more she thinks about how she will die soon, like maybe within weeks or months she thinks how it will be tragic because it is always tragic when the young die because they had so much potential and life to live, and it is so sad for parents to outlive their children. And sometimes this feeling would be combined with the feeling like maybe she is already dead and none of this is real, like maybe she was hit by a car last night on her bike ride home, but she just hasn’t realized it yet and her mind is going through what she imagines she might have done that day had she still been alive, like get up, go to work and then to a restaurant with her friend where they sit outside in the sun with his dog talking about what you want to do with your life and how choices become more difficult the more you have. And all the while there is a strange feeling inside of her that she can’t explain and it seems just as plausible as anything else that she feels strange because she is actually dead and this whole experience is just an alternate universe and in the real universe in which she used to exist her family and friends are mourning her and talking about the tragedy of her death, on her bicycle hit by a car, at such a young age, when she had so much potential.