Captive air, captive words, only eyes scan the world.Broken doll with no tongue, little grace still remains.Angry words, all she hears. Selfish tears, she is told. Captive air, heavy lungs, innocent mind holding shame.Little girl, turn the tears into clear, lucid words.Let them shine into light; let them glow in the dark.
You’ve warned me about this, my machine—the threat of linear stains on paper, floodingover letters when you’re copying my pages.Your glassed-in mind is usually mimetic.But when something goes wrong, you’ll startto leak a gray scrim, as when a monk spilled wineon his inked annotation in the thirteenth century,freeing what I have to see as ghosts…
Called widow makers because their branches fallduring droughts. They sever their own branches to conserve water, to save the whole tree. As if cuttingoff a hand to save a whole body. How does the tree decide what to drop? This one dropped two limbs,one onto a car. It only took the men a day to remove the…
No matter where I went todayI was not Michael.I was not even the shadowof my middle name.No name took my place,no name was asked.When I sat on a benchthinking of you, tryingto see your face,I was not Michael—I knew because the rainchose to fall nearbut not upon me,and it wasn’t to makean exception.People were walking…
Friday—first day of fall Two friends, two beers each. One has just held the hand of theother’s dying mama, regaling her with tales of her son’smisadventures. He’s moving to Houston the next day, far intothe flooding swamp. Mama is quiet, peaceful, pain-free. Go, shesays, go have a good time. After the two beers the friends…
My roommate was having an argumentwith his girlfriend: It’s the wrong key. No it’s not. Well it isn’t working. Once you and I had disagreements like that,I ended it. But there was a pointwhen I had a codeto your front door. People had the wrong idea about us.No socks on the stairswas one of your…
I divide my time between the NewYork in my mind and a cow-sprouted field, divide my rightear from my left, though the leftreceives god-like frequencies onlymy poodle can hear. I divide myliver from my brain when I swillwine and smoke. Divide my sunnydisposition from the sun it neverowned. Divide my body frommy bed, home from…
There was a poisoning.Perhaps from the reincarnation ages ago where your hands curled and stitchedthe fake flower bouquets of 1860, dusted them with Scheele’s green,the arsenic powder breathed into your child lungs. Or maybe before that,like Napoleon, copper sulfate from a papered bedroom settled like a secretinto your waistcoat and gloves. Centuries have passed since…
Translated from the Chinese by Liang Yujing When I pass through the years, my younger selfno longer awaits me. He has ridden away on a horse,farther and farther, raising a cloud of dust, and finally gone.I have to look for him in a mirror, and see thisslowly aging face that has gradually become strange….
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