 The year of the snake. I was born into the night, blue bruised without breath, summer dusk in Santa Clara, pink and orange heat defrosting my blue. Steril hospital air slithered into soft lungs, and I coughed out a cry. They cut that snake of a cord that threatened to choke nine months of nourishment. A black and yellow scab remaining in the pit of my belly, like a rotten fruit dropping from a healthy tree. 19 years later, I will pierce a hole in the pit of my belly, a sparkling fixture of cubic zirconium and stainless steel. Admire how my skin could heal. Moments can turn sweet to sour, sour to sweet, blue to pink, and my birth in the year of the snake could have been my death. Between want and need. In the bathroom at the poetry reading, empty to cate cans on the shelf, a cup of paintbrushes, Meyers hand soap, and a mirror with the southeast edges divided into shards. I perch perpendicular, traveling the compass of reflection and find my face a cubist mess. My nose hangs to one side, and half an eye searches for the whole truth. The creases of my mouth are stained burgundy. If lips had lifelines like hands do, would you read this moment as an intersection between want and need? The way I parted my lips when he cast a gaze from across the room, the way parting the lips is a symptom of want, and I so quickly bite the line, like I like to be gutted and filleted and devoured by hungry strangers with cunning poems. Back in the room in the hum of post-performance poet chatter, back in my body, mouth closed, she kisses me. So I was recently published in The Spring Issue of Foreign Magazine. I got three poems published, which I was very excited about. So I'm going to read a couple of those. This one's called Uber Pool, which I actually wrote in the back of an Uber Pool. I'm fall fire, free-falling into crisp, lick my cheekbone, crisp, burnt air, traffic on the 101, curls undone, like the clasp a lacy bra you snapped before entering. The window is cracked and breeze weakens my knees. Black scarf collar choking me with soft cotton fluff, stuck in traffic as the two shots of bourbon settle like a kiss flush in my hips and heart and cheeks so rosy, flushed up against this plush car seat in sharp silence of an Uber Pool, minty menace in my mouth to cover the quickness of whiskey, and I'm on my way. So this next poem is a bit longer in sections. Something I've been thinking about a lot about misinformation and the order of misinformation that young girls get and how it shapes their image of their body and image of sex. So I'm going to read this one. This one's kind of a toddler compared to the other, so bear with me. Misinformation, one, on every silver screen, they lay missionary boy on top of girl, thrusting and moaning and magically, romantically, both reach orgasm at the exact same time. And the young girl thinks, this is sex, penetration. She is infatuated with the unreachable part of her body. Cosmo gives her tips on crazy positions to get to the big O. 90 ways to please him. And the young girl thinks, this is pleasure, co-dependence. Two, her body does not match his porn. He is disgusted to find so much hair. She shaves off her shame and he wants her again even if her lips are swollen and red with stubble and itch like his five o'clock shadow. Her friends do it too, and Victoria's secret models with their Brazilians ripping off nerve endings and lacy panties just covering the secret. And the young girl thinks, this is what it takes to be sexy. My natural body is repulsive. Three, her father chuckles walking in on his son, nose tucked into Esquire. Her mother winces walking in on her, explains it's not proper, shouldn't be talked about. And the films show the awkward teenage boy getting caught familiarizing himself with himself and everyone shrugs their shoulders and giggles. Boys will be boys and girls will be girls behind closed doors. Four, the MPAA rates films are if a man receives oral. The MPAA rates films NC17 if a woman receives oral. If a film is rated NC17, most major theaters will not show it. Five, in her college textbook she reads that the clitoris has 8,000 nerve endings and the penis only has 4,000. The textbook does not say only 30% of women can orgasm from penetrative sex alone. She reads this much later after she begins to take matters and nerve endings into her own hands. Six, she's tried to get into it, but she thinks porn is like watching a girl slit her wrist and pretend she likes the blood dripping down her, the dead indifference in her eyes masked by moan. You really don't find this hot, her boyfriend asks, and she tries to pinpoint why. She wants to see herself on the screen. She wants to hear a moan that comes from effort, not direction. She wants to believe the girl on the screen is more than a vessel that sometimes she orgasms too. Seven, in the womb we all begin as female. The clitoris develops into a penis only when the SROI gene signals testes to grow in the second month. We begin as one form, yet claim that XX and XY are opposite binary beings. XX must not show signs, she is similar to XY. Meanwhile, XY has nipples and a faint scar down the scrotum where an opening could be. Retrograde. A child sneezes and a bud blossoms. A calloused finger strums strings and a picture frame shifts 0.25 degrees east on a summer afternoon with bees humming and dropping pollen like napalm while a man swallows the lemon seed in his iced tea. Meanwhile, the planet closest to the sun makes a ribbon-shaped pier away and the heel of a woman's pump catches between the ridges of an escalator step. Grandma gets vertigo while dusting the armoire and 50,000 people go to work groggy and sleep deprived. We are not immune to motion sickness. A single drop of water makes waves. Where's that? I'm gonna end on a more lyrical poem. Only mold grows in vases. Never, never may the flower be clipped and vase to bloom forever. One that cultivates love must keep it rooted. Though petals open opal, though bloom beckons touch, one that cultivates love must know it's enough to smile in the springtime and trust that winter will pass. No petals browned at bud, no stems stuffed into glass. Never, never may the flower be clipped and vase to meet its bloom. The seasons renew what's faded but not what's clipped away too soon. Thank you.