confetti and corned beef hash

everywhere.

Tabletops are rolling in curry.
Deep fried cream puffs.

Is being real
at the cost of coast to coast travel?

Can you trust me
to try?
Acidic strawberries are eroding at the corners of a ghost.

Too much
too soon.

the orange cats are the worst.
they do it even when you are looking.

remember the good old days when
you would throw a quarter in a mechanical
horse to take a magical journey? well,
here’s the deal—this chick at work
i’m seein, she’s fuckin crazy, wants me to
fuck her. slammin body, otherwise
looks like the joker.

today you looked in the mirror
and saw your father. penguins
rushed into the moment.
alpacas came from out of fucking
nowhere. and neither
did these cobwebs cling on
to anything significant.

today you looked in the mirror and saw your mother.
you got a delivery in your café. it was not a trap.
it was a super stove. it cooks food
with a single click, but once the clock strikes 12 all the white horses
turn to rats, the carriage turns into a pumpkin, and the chick
turns back into a dude.

me llamo Angel G. yo tengo 5 años.

today i have 4 stickers in my red sticker
book. it is my own book, teacher
helped me make it.

in my book there are 4 stickers, but everyone else
has 5.

today i was a bad boy and i didn’t pee straight into the
toilet. teacher said if i am good tomorrow and i don’t pee wrong
teacher said she will give me a sticker.
but even i know that means
tomorrow i when get 5, and Juan has 6.

today i was smart i ate a banana at lunch and it had a blue sticker
on it. today i ate a banana at lunch and i take the sticker from it
and put it in my
red sticker book.
today i have 5 stickers in my red sticker
book, it is my own book and tomorrow i get 6.

me llamo Angel G. yo tengo 5 stickers.

The real story of Angel G. and the Chiquita Etiquita

Angel G. was a new kid in kindergarten when I was a classroom teaching assistant to Miss Ruark.

One day I caught him looking at his sticker book when he was supposed to be studying his other books. I asked him sternly, “What are you supposed to be doing, Angel G?” He looked up at me, said nothing, and handed me a Chiquita banana sticker with a monkey on it. I was effectively swooned by this cute gesture, and I accepted the sticker and stuck it on my visitor’s badge. Smart little Angel G, you manipulated me out of chastising you.

Angel G. is called Angel G. because there’s another Angel in class. Since he is the second Angel, he needs the last name to define him. Angel G. understands more letters and more English than Juan, but he’s shy and has limited expression on his face so it’s hard to see if he really gets it.  His classmate Yoselin often has to translate questions and commands from Miss Ruark into Spanish just to make sure he got it. I think it’s funny that we call him “Angel Jee” when his mother probably calls him “Ahn-hel”.  I also think it’s funny when I teach Juan the letter “J” so he can spell his name I have to say, this is the letter called “Jay”, and makes the “juh-juh” sound in English, but in his name, it makes the “huh-huh” sound like “Huan”.

One time Juan told on him.
Juan told Miss Ruark that Angel G. was playing with the water.
“With the water in the sink, or in the toilet?”
“The toilet.”

And Angel G. not only missed both recesses but was sent to the office for some big-time disciplining. After a while, I saw him walking back from the office to sit in the time-out zone. He walked slow, with his head facing down at this untied, yellow boots, his hands in his pockets. I remember thinking, what a mature gesture for a 5-year-old.

Later he asked for his mommy. They said no.

Next week, during lunchtime, when I ate with the kids, they called me over, “Miss Lai! Miss Lai!” Pointing at Angel G, who had his hands in his pockets, hiding something valuable. Kids are not allowed to bring their own toys to school. It is to keep them focused, and also to keep other kids from getting jealous. I walked over, kneel next to Angel G, who at this point is looking entirely surrounded and defeated. I asked him several times, “What is it?” and then I just  put my hand out and I said, “Show me.”  Angel G slowly pulled his right hand from his pocket, and revealed a beat up tennis ball. And I think, damn. This kid is so busted.

I pull him aside, I say, “You know the rules, Angel G. No toys at school.”
He nods, and I know he sometimes just nods because he knows he should. I remember the bathroom water, and I remember Angel G’s dejected face, and I remember him asking to go home to his mom, and rejected harshly.

I tell him, “I won’t tell Miss Ruark. I am going to keep this until you can put it away. Ok? For now, I will keep it.” He nods. I place it in my jacket pocket.
“When we go back to class, you put it right away in your backpack. Ok?”
“I don’t have a backpack”
I’m like, damn. Not getting in trouble is hard.
“Put it in your jacket, and put it in the cubby.”
He nods. I need confirmation that this is understood or else I am going to be busted.
“In the cubby, do you understand?” He nods.

Of course, after recess he totally forgets. I give him back the ball and he sticks it in his jacket pocket, and he’s sitting on the carpet in class and I’m like SHIT. After the carpet sessions, the class gets up to do centers, and I’m whispering, “Angel G!”
“Angel G!”
“Angel G put your jacket away. Your jacket.”

His face lights up white and he runs to the cubby. I see him kneeling, rolling the jacket around the precious tennis ball, and placing it gently into the cubby like a mother does a baby into a crib.

Maybe this wasn’t a good idea, and I taught him something bad. Next time he’ll bring toys to school thinking that he won’t have to get caught. Or next time he’ll bring a toy to school and he’ll get caught. But I didn’t have the heart to take him down. And I know how sacred these found objects are to kids at that age. Maybe the cuteness got to me again, like the banana sticker time. But still, I think it would’ve been more harmful than helpful to have him go through more traumatizing punishment, and then after enough punishments, they’ll start to lose faith in themselves in general and believe that’s all that happens to them.

Here’s to you, Angel G, and I really hope you’re being a good boy. And don’t hit Yoselin back when she pinches you or anything, and don’t let anyone see you when you’re play fighting with Manuel because you know that’s not allowed. Especially not invisible guns with audible Pew-Pew Boosh-Boosh noises. So if you end up having to break some rules, make sure no one sees you, and make sure you’re doing it for the right reasons.

i am luring a map
from below my feet.
the sidewalk is an animal
and under every two steps a small fold of skin.

the street narrows into floss,
the man in gray breathes in and out in a nose filled with applesauce,
i sit between two girls, two breasts, two legs of ham, shiny black hair
flipping through the wind like a magazine.

across the street, the glass and concrete building is making love to a bear.
it’s giving me a headache but i am trying to stay as objective as possible.
in the windowed surface, the color blue is reflected 22 times, the color green, 15 times,
and the virtue of white, multiplied into infinity.

from far away, i see the bus i just missed. “you are still mine,” i say into the vanishing
point. “i will pluck you from the asphalt, suspend you
in my air, and admire your tiny, tiny steel bones. then,
i will store you in my backpack. in the biggest pocket. and you will never be found again.

Anyway.  Further accomplishments of the week include saving my roommate’s ass:

My roommate is in need of my photo manipulation for her 6-year-old nephew, Jake.

So my poor roommate forgot that her nephew had sent in a school project for her to do, which was to take this flat, paper “Flat-Jake” around and take pictures of it in interesting places in SoCal, just like “that movie” (Up in the Air), which was referencing “that other movie” (Amelie). Except just like “that movie” (Up in the Air), my roommate forgot to take these pictures, and Jake’s been asking mom if these photos got lost in the mail…

In an effort to produce and maintain an even awesomer and impossible fantasy where we had not only remembered to do this, but went to every theme park possible in California, both zoos in San Diego, SunGod, and Coachella, we photoshopped and created a story-album in one evening. Unethical? I don’t know, but either one 1st grader is going to have the most EPIC show-and-tell in the coming weekdays, or he’s smart enough to figure out the lighting on Flat-Jake isn’t quite congruent with the background.

Hell, my mother lied to me all the time and I turned out fine.

St. Michaels Restoration, Arizona

acrylic gesso & ink on found postcard

"...There's a Chinese family in our bathroom."

Besides it’s silly structure, which I thoroughly enjoyed, I have a lot of problems with this movie. One scene in particular took me out of the fantasy especially, reminded me that as an Asian person, I am not allowed to be in a movie unless I am something to laugh at and someone who brings my entire family to IKEA like it’s a theme park.

Damn you white kids. Get out of our bedroom.

1986 Southwest Airlines Boeing 737-300 aircraft traveling 500 miles per hour

acrylic gesso & ink on found postcard

Bryce and I are taking beginning Lindy Hop lessons. Following is definitely my kind of thing. I learn some basic steps, tense and shape my arms like a barbie and I get twirled around.

Sometimes I dream and in the dream I become other people that I am watching in the dream. I am never holding weapons, kicking ass, or throwing my dance partners around with awesome moves like I do in daydreams. In dreams I am almost always a woman, and I am always worried about the way I look, hyper-aware of my body space as if I am taking too much space like a giant Alice, or as if I am nude or my pants disappear, or somehow as if my hair is a thousand feet high, or in the worst cases of these, as if I am not even noticed at all.
In my dreams I find infants and children. But most of the time they disintegrate.

When I meet someone I begin to love in a dream, I am watching him watch me.