*note: this is a contrapuntal poem, which means it can be read as 1) two separate poems, 2) down the left section, then the right, or 3) straight across the page.* 

Lately, this is only my least violent death. Mind revolving 
                                                                                                                       like a pistol, everything I touch lessening 
to lead. I imagine knuckles as pennies rolling across pavement, 
                                                                                                                       moonlit streets like slackening arms. Swallowed by 
this maw of a city, its electric teeth threading gold through 
                                                                                                                       a funeral veil of hair. In that story I am 
an honorable burial. In this poem, we’ve descended 
                                                                                                                       so far below the city we’re not even worthy of death 
. Blackened sewage gurgling through this ancient skeleton 
                                                                                                                       of pipes that won’t take blood as rust but 
spit out your convulsing body of filth. & I ask you 
                                                                                                                       what is demonic? Your favorite rain jacket rippling 
like metal in the absence of rain. Come sit with me 
                                                                                                                       on the hotel roof, thinning wind so raw it shivers 
. You, who learned jīn as danger, as the quivering tip of 
                                                                                                                       a knife. Here is a secret: for all of my blades, 
I am scared of death, of what might leak out. Here, 
                                                                                                                       I shall give you another: underneath my trembling, 
this machine of flesh & bone & bruise has gone cold. Fiona, 
                                                                                                                       I—you—take these hands that are dusty fireworks & see 
I won’t throw you over the railing because I can’t & never could. 
                                                                                                                       How in our veins, the streetlights are free-falling. 
Bite these words like ice cubes, won’t you—tell me this 
                                                                                                                       Like a fighting chance: say someday I’ll love Fiona Jin.

Eons after we have remade the United States 
a Poet-ocracy, I open my phone with Mother-
Tongue ID & my wifi symbol 
is a Dear. Safari app metaphored & machine-
gunned to just

one Dear. Our savior, this Deth of Innusence 
easy & instant as ramen: in the Poet-ocracy, 
all Asian Supermarkets 
are now class-A worship sites; Daughters, 
class B. Today at church we kneeled

on Mouths hard as knees, spoke in bruised 
Confeshunul Pomes. The Thisawrus is the holy 
text & today, I mishear worship as workshop, 
you accusing me of attempting Godhood & tackling
me at the stomach. Abecedarians

spinning, halving in my periphery. The pastor 
continues on, says in other news, K-Ming Chang 
has been elected President & YoungArts prizes 
will be paid in Bodies this year & aren’t we all guilty
of Plagiarizing God. My God, the Ded Dear

in my stomach is swirling, is so Ded that 
you Kill it again: my Thesaurus regurgitating 
to make Word Salad with the Cut Fruit of 
your eyes: the curve of your stainless steel. 
Its reflection of quivering Venison.

In the Poet-ocracy you have Won every Body known to poet-kind.
In the Poet-ocracy you have exploited anything you could not kill.