TO MY FATHER: A LIST OF PEOPLE I SLEPT WITH AND DIDN'T CALL BACK

Andy Pérez

1. 1. 05

Too much lipstick; smelled like booze. Tits too big.

2 out of 10

* * *

i was five when i first learned the body had its uses
for things other than storing our flesh.
you: crashing through corn, guttering
and drunk, five minutes after taking your fists
to the kitchen wall and then my purpling ribs— 
the skin over your knuckles split, overripe fruit.
harvest season over. my mother, upon stumbling
on the scene of our crime, couldn't stop shaking
me. she was saying: "stop that. now, you stop that.
hijo de mi corazón, you are too sensitive."
i swallowed my salt
because she told me to, slipped back
into my skin and then a t-shirt reading
¡la vida loca!
five-year-olds know nothing of bruises
their mother cannot kiss better,
nothing of mouths and how men misuse them.
my mother—never knowing how to unstain cloth
or her husband—burns my favorite shirt
in the yard at 5 AM.
what to do with her son
who had never been hit?
never been fucked? 

* * * 

2. 25. 05

Screamed a lot; my neighbors don't like me anymore. Sweaty for a girl.

1 out of 10

* * *

i had a dream last night
that we were sitting in front of a boxed-in TV,
boxed-in room, your boxed-in wife— 
all the lights were off. we were both
cold but only one of us was shaking
and only one of us was alive, simulation
light shuttered and blue bouncing off
your glassy eyes. there was a bowl in your lap
filled to the brim with all
my waxed selves, curled and stiffened
with blood, you reaching for entire handfuls
of me, crushing these small and unimportant
bodies between your teeth
like peanuts.
upon hearing your voice,
all of my limbs still strain and snap
towards your tongue.

* * * 

3. 4. 05 

Beautiful eyes. He started crying halfway through. Maybe my ass is just that good.

7 out of 10

* * *

so this is how it feels
to be wanted. wax, once hardened,
must be plunged once more
to the inferno before it can be remolded.
my bones have never felt so brittle. you are not
the kind of fever that can be broken
by sweat, you are not my sickness,
my tumor, my heartache,
my father.

* * *

5. 16. 05

Can't walk right today.

9 out of 10

* * *

your hand, red-wet with all my other selves
blurring between thighs. so this
is why we pray on our knees, god,
are you pleased yet?
father, i have found your fists
in the holiest of places.
at the altar, behind the church,
down another boy's
throat. 

* * * 

6. 2. 05 

Wish it were scarf season. Needs to learn to keep her teeth away.

4 out of 10

* * * 

i crawl into my lovers' bodies
as i would to a grave, satiated
and sweetened/sickened by your hands,
hands, hands—you are everywhere
in me. how hypocritical,
your head sagged in prayer
or something very close to it.
father, i am still waiting
for the flames you promised me. 

* * * 

6. 11. 05 

Pulled on my hair and my throat hurts.

8 out of 10

* * * 

i have lost count of all the times
i've tried to leave you. always,
i come crawling back to the body
of my monster. always, i return
to the scene of my crime,
my chalk outline, just to prove
it cannot change me. i am your son
because of blood. i am your son,
am i not? you can't cut me
from your stomach, can't un-
swallow me. from my mother,
i learned loving anything
is a nauseating affair
and can't be helped. from you,
i was taught to make my hand a fist,
how to leave bodies crippled
in my wake. 

* * *

11. 10. 05 

Fucked good; made weird sounds when he put it in. Didn't take off his wedding ring.

5 out of 10

* * * 

tell me, what did you find
inside me? what made you go back again
and again, as if searching
for your own hands in a cloth
you cut but did not stitch.
you have made me the kind of man
who has been touched
in all the wrong ways. you raised me
the way wax is made molten, got your fingers all up
in the melt of me, left my body the exit wound
of your want. 

* * * 

12. 25. 05 

He called me beautiful like he meant it. I couldn't stop hitting him.

? out of 10

* * * 

oh father, the things we do
with our fists.