By Aimee Nezhukumatathil
When it comes to clothes, make
an allowance for the unexpected.
Be sure the spare in the trunk
of your station wagon with wood paneling
isn’t in need of repair. A simple jean jacket
says Hey, if you aren’t trying to smuggle
rare Incan coins through this peaceful
little town and kidnap the local orphan,
I can be one heck of a mellow kinda guy.
But no matter how angry a man gets, a smile
and a soft stroke on his bicep can work
wonders. I learned that male chests
also have nipples, warm and established—
green doesn’t always mean envy.
It’s the meadows full of clover
and chicory the Hulk seeks for rest, a return
to normal. And sometimes, a woman
gets to go with him, her tiny hands
correcting his rumpled hair, the cuts
in his hand. Green is the space between
water and sun, cover for a quiet man,
each rib shuttling drops of liquid light.
Aimee Nezhukumatathil, "What I Learned from the Incredible Hulk" from Miracle Fruit. Copyright © 2003 by Aimee Nezhukumatathil. Reprinted by permission of Tupelo Press.
Source: Miracle Fruit (Tupelo Press, 2003)
Poet Bio
More By This Poet
On Listening to Your Teacher Take Attendance
Breathe deep even if it means you wrinkle
your nose from the fake-lemon antiseptic
of the mopped floors and wiped-down
doorknobs. The freshly soaped necks
and armpits. Your teacher means well,
even if he butchers your name like
he has a bloody sausage casing stuck
between his...
Sea Church
Give me a church
made entirely of salt.
Let the walls hiss
and smoke when
I return to shore.
I ask for the grace
of a new freckle
on my cheek, the lift
of blue and my mother’s
soapy skin to greet me.
Hide me in a room
with no windows.
Never...
More Poems about Relationships
Meanwhile
Water of the womb
It is winter in Anchorage, and I am only as tall as the shoveled snowbanks in the parking lot of the pink apartments. I am old enough to have chores but young enough not to fully understand frostbite. It is...
More Poems about Social Commentaries
From the Sky
When I die,
bury me in the sky—
no one is fighting over it.
Children are playing soccer
with empty bomb shells
(from the sky I can see them).
A grandmother is baking
her Eid makroota and mamoul
(from the sky I can taste them).
Teens are writing love...
Poem with Human Intelligence
This century is younger than me.
It dresses itself
in an overlong coat of Enlightenment thinking
despite the disappearing winter.
It twirls the light-up fidget spinner
won from the carnival of oil economies.
In this century, chatbots write poems
where starlings wander from their murmuration
into the denim-thick...