Last night I died of old age,
Punctuated my own death sentence with a period.
But today the rain
Makes my skin sigh shipwrecks
So I swallow wet atoms in
And I become Adam again
Alone at the beginning.
So I take in two parts oxygen
And set smoke to serpent skin
And I cough out Eve on Christmas in Eden—
My best impression of New York December.
“This used to mean so much more,” I say,
“These starry sidewalks, these swollen streets.”
I hail a taxi and squeeze her hand to show I’m still alive.
“You look serene like Sunday,” she says, “are …

My parents moved five times in the first ten years of their marriage. My younger brother’s birth was sandwiched somewhere between moves number four and five, four being the one that sent us sailing up the coast from Los Angeles into the San Francisco Bay, and five being the one that shot us into the landlocked heart of Southeast Asia.
Some of my earliest memories are of my brother’s birth: my father on the phone, coils of telephone cord looped around his hand as he calls the family doctor. …