“The Kids Are All Right” © Mark Blickley

 

Kennedy

Love puts out her smoke on a black and white mosquito
My bare foot on a grown man’s shoulder
rearrange Atman, twice reborn until I can kiss a woman
The chalkboard says childbirth, says there is no Eden
If samsara exists there dances a girl who hadn’t gone to
          Cambridge
and a daddy who hasn’t seen the mouths on her hips

His hand over my mouth, lovingly, and interwoven hips
I say the wrong name, Sisyphus cracks open mosquitos
like stones in my stomach, I stomach Xu on leaving Cambridge
At the end of the bridge my daughter is crying, no one’s shoulder
Clams spit pearls onto the door of Eden
Good men great sex not love unless God never made the first
          woman

Yahweh means I am. And for sex I will be but a woman
Hand folds hundred-dollar bills into Boston girls’ hips
In the name of Creation I go down on Eden
and that night I aim the showerhead at mosquitos
Six sets of teeth, middle-age rotted, bloom from my shoulder
wet-scrubber down the smell of sex in the air of Cambridge

His body is liquid Heaven, I weave love in Cambridge
Naked Chardonnay from the lips of an Italian woman
Fake crows at the door of Wellesley, I put two on his shoulder
Hike Greylock, humming graveyards at the mountain’s hips
Vasubandhu said not to kill mosquitos
shivering, daughter crawls back into me, and I into the bread
          of Eden

Pluck a rib for every male body outgrowing Eden
the forbidden eyes of Ecklberg looks over Alewife, Cambridge
Love shapes her body into the sheer wings of mosquitos
Half of him only recognize me naked, yet I picture the same woman
singing strawberries, New York dripping from her hips
Inside the Vancouver apartment, she hangs nails on my shoulder

Hangnails in the finger that is in me, daddy kisses my shoulder
lovingly, his wine-drunk Latin rethreads my Eden
it’s cellulite, I misarticulate, what do you mean parallel scars
          on my hips?
Tonight, God is unkind to Cambridge
and I rage, rage against the dying woman
Daddy tells me to swallow, so I untwist the mason jar of mosquitos.

 

YF Wang studies at Wellesley College. She likes to hang out with a calico named Freya.

Mark Blickley grew up within walking distance of New York’s Bronx Zoo. He is a proud member of the Dramatists Guild and PEN American Center. His latest book is the flash fiction collection Hunger Pains (Buttonhook Press). Blick believes that when you travel in a circle you can view life at every possible angle.