Guanyin (II)

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Every time a factory is named after me

I lick my fist.

I dream about a girl floating in my arms, about

plucking

a dead bird from her eyes & slipping it into

my mouth

like prayer. I dream about american cars & a

man with a tattoo

of the character for lice. He says it means army

& I say

I want a tattoo of every hand that has ever

touched me.

I want to be always in the way of something:

my father licks

every door he sees, orders a rubber knife for each

thing he eats

that was once alive. He spurts a fish from his lips

& names

her my mother, releases her to the bottom of a sink

where she glows

like teeth in a toilet. Every day

breaks

like China, dust behind the factory glitters

my mouth

into a fish that leaps from the sky & stabs the sea,

faces

spilling like salt into each new wound appearing

& reappearing.