Some days I feel more like a ghost

than a human being:  soft, untethered.  Words
I do not say curdle beneath my tongue.  Silence:

a comfortable home; body, less so.  Hair collects
in the bathtub drain, a piece of me that won’t stop

growing.  America is a land without ghosts so everything
stings of wet paint, alcohol.  I wander convenience

stores past midnight.  Scrub dishes as soon as I
dirty them.  Save my wisdom teeth, mined from fleshy

gums, wake unfluid and sticky-eyed.  Each day round
and crisp as a cold apple.  Beside my limbs, late nights,

I lie and look at the moon.  An eyelash.  Its light
slats in between the blinds, silver, wet, identical.

* “America is a land without ghosts.” —Fei Xiaotong, Chinese sociologist, 1944