Trashbag kid is a system closer
to God, closer than any Nazareth
or seraphs pleading to die happy;
I would do anything to forget
the time I made my father cry.
Always a heroin & coke addict; still,
I’d choose to hug or love him.
Consider a Facebook Live hanging:
I want to laugh in heaven’s
playground. No motel sheets & shag carpets,
shared bathrooms & Gabby Angel’s
legs in the air, a disembodied doll.
I don’t even know
her real name. Just Gabby Angel turning my palms
so I don’t pick the hives on my chest.
Gabby Angel scolding me
for skipping seventh grade, but she’d walk
me back.
Makes me believe
I could hang from my own
ceiling.
But I care.
I’m in Hayward or Tucson,
the smoke shops where my father left me
for his addictions. Moving left to right through the aisles,
to speak with the managers. Their forceful Hakka,
a language I’d mimic. My father asking me to wait.
These towns where I’m the worthless piece of trash swiped from 16 homes, or 12 years of paradise: I’m Y2K, I’m 9/11, I’m still a truant running from the Upper Legislative Angels—my case managers, my parents’ attorneys, my parents. Ask me how I saw bin Laden’s face when I gutted my stomach so clean, I believed I was disinfected—my parents would want me again.
Or I’ll choose
the Motel 6 shooting on Industrial Parkway:
That I’ve never held a Glock
pistol between my forefinger & thumb—
thanks, Dad, for showing me how to wipe the mouth
after firing at the tin cans
along our chain-link fence.
They’re tilted—made to fall.
Like Evan Isaiah’s torso
with the rod splicing him clean.
Just my best friend taking the sucker punch for me,
as if I’m worthy of saving.
His hands wrapping the trashbag
around my clothes, a tradition in our fosterhood.
I still care.
& I’ll bite my lips until I can say curiosity,
coalition, courage, forgiveness, & volition—this is my life.
They want to graft me,
take the trashbag suicides out of my body.
Call me white—a seraph in an eleven year-old shirtdress.
& when I’ve no more ideation,
when I’ve bound too tight to my twist
ties, crinoline, half-sentences, & lies,
I’ll go back; I’ll write the body bag
thrown at me.
Let me be unfostered & gather my knees in the dawn. Let me say the people I love to touch & hug are nobody, & that does not make me stranger than a girl with parents who want her. Every daughter has the right to have a family. To have parents who love & care for her. My daughter, how do I raise you right?
I am fostered,
born in a system where I am destined to age,
the same cadence in Evan Isaiah’s
& Gabby Angel’s passings. The rope splices
remind me I’m the one domesticated—
to witness my beloveds leave this earth. That I can’t
sleep or don’t want to sleep or whisper to sleep
their words until the spook threatens me. That I look
for the puppet strings of the women
above me because every trashbag kid
carries compassionate feet; they just need a gentle trigger.
The panic & paranoia of my early pregnancy.
A totality of music which tells my father I’ll forgive
him. Our bodies
borne into another thrill, a stroke
of standing up
or kneeling—
gun punch or seraph
gaveling my limbs
until I find my mind.
& I’m on this earth:
Still a hanging. A benediction. A counter-
blood. I know they will guide
me from their forever homes,
from their addictions, ascensions, abuses,
& loves. My daughter,
I’ll wring with them. I’ll do any-
thing to remember I untie my knots, chuck my knives,
throw my father’s pistol away.
- Sylvia Chan