Category: Poetry Issue 1

…and I begin to hyperventilate
in a J.C. Penny’s dressing room.
Not because the fit but the make
And model. Am I a Boot-Cut?
No, I am the Minotaur; I storm
from the store, grumble my way
into the outdoor mall. Dizzy and
snorting amongst the sunglasses
huts and ground fountains, my head,
grotesque as a buoy, sweats as all the fat
neo-Athenians scurry by. Before
a Cinnabon, I snarl at the cashier brat
who seems repulsed by an old woman
rummaging for exact change. Give her
time, you. I flare my nostrils through
the crowd, bend my brow. Move, you
big bastard. My palms feel empty
without a hammer, something to swing,
something dainty to smash. Ash look,
some people have brought along
their stupid dogs with their mouthy
little faces. I am like them, the mongrels.
From under an umbrella in the food court,
I imagine the movie we’d star in, the terrier there,
that other lummox and I, where in the end
we all split, a good runaway bit full of
cowardliness, lots of yipping. Digging
for a cigarette, I find your postcard,
and again I’m fighting back stupid
Tears. In this city alone, I’m a lout
without you. A ferine, brutish phony,
wandering about, without you.

Miluo on Qu Yuan[1]

He came back to me fully dressed.

I thought it strange he could
one moment
be towering above me
serenading me with a face reflection
scattered
in the next–carefully floating
a peculiar arm and leg
emerging from my pools.

I begged the kakams to see what
remained
of his thin-framed form;
fervently grasped at passing fish
as the wind moaned
through bare-branched trees.

They came and splashed drums,
ordered rice to fall
from heavens,

carefully wrapped in silk
to feed the River Dragon.

They never did find you that night
when it was already too late to save you,
you who had been lost to
a different drumming.

For safe keeping,
now,
I hold your Songs,
the man I had myself
to save

when you had returned
fully dressed.

[1] Qu Yuan (340 B.C.E- 278 B.C.E.) was a Chinese patriotic poet from Southern Chu during the Warring States Period. Born into a noble family, he achieved a high position in court, but was slandered by his enemies and sent into exile. During his exile, his home capital, Chu, was overtaken by the state of Qin. Upon hearing this news, Yuan is said to have written the lengthy poem, “Lament for Ying” and later to have drowned himself in the Miluo River as a form of protest against the corruption of the era.

[2] Legend has it that the local villagers threw rice into the water as an offering to keep the River Dragon spirit from eating Yuan’s body. This legend persists in the form of dragon boat racing, where boats reenact the symbolic search for Qu Yuan’s body.

ROCKET CAR

Last night, Lora, everyone dreamt
About me. Okay, just an ex-girlfriend
Who wouldn’t tell me anything
And my boss, who claimed I had
A cool rocket car. Like in the Jetsons,
She said. I suppose that is good
Enough. Look: in real life,
I have a billfold full of petty
Expectations, the currency
Of small states in ever reducing
Denominations. Here is a note
The size of something Barbie
Would take out of Ken’s wallet
The morning after. If you look
Carefully, you can almost
Make it out. I think it is worth
A third of something that is a third
Of something worthless. So at this
Point, I am happy to settle for
Rocket cars and living
The glamorous unkown
In someone else’s dreams.

SECRETS OF THE SEA

Science tells us that the common
American Lobster, Homarus
Americanus, can hold a grudge for two
Weeks. After that, all is forgiven.
Seriously. Ask The Journal of Animal
Behavior. They published C. Karavanich
And J. Atema’s article on the subject
In 1998, so it must be true. There are,
Therefore, no lobster Hatfields or lobster
McCoys. And if a lobster archduke
Is assassinated by a Serbian
Lobster in an undersea Sarajevo,
The whole mess boils over
In fourteen hardshelled days,
And if the plot took longer
Than that to hatch, it never took place.
That’s why lobsters don’t bother
With chemical weapons, none of them
Ever get out of organic chemistry,
They all fail their midterms and get made
Into rolls. Of course if the grudge is
Immediate, all bets are off, the little
Bastards will pull each other to pieces.
Science has no name for this, but cooking
Does. A lobster, utterly denuded of all
Useful appendages is called a bullet.
Surrealism suggests that lobster bullets
Must be loaded into special lobster guns.
Salvador Dali shot Filippo Tommaso Marinetti
With a lobster gun at the Armory Show
In 1913, after Marinetti claimed lobsters
Had no future. Indeed, Carlo Carrà’s August
Manifesto contains no mention of taste
And therefore, no mention of lobsters.

1. Hunger
I tried to make her talk
about her movements
but nothing would do.
The slats in the floor
kept moving
with the rhythms of a broken raft
and the back burner
would not stop clicking.
Then silence, palpable
as the blood
-taste of metal before a snow storm,
and the sweet smell left
behind was haunting.
Two bodies at rest, the map on by the window,
and the shades drawn.

2. Decay
I died so calmly
this time I thought I was constructed
from freestanding porcelain
I could almost see my silver
and pewter insides, wrapped
around so carefully
like a Balinese watch strapped slender
and ornate around my ribcage.

3. October
She moved like the taut skin
of sleep right before the dawn.
She wore a cascade
of well-placed words
and tender lips.
She said blood made her think
of breast-milk and money
and when she kissed me I knew
I had stepped into something dying.
I could taste the white moths  in her mouth,
beating themselves into dust
against the outside door
before the first frost,
and I imagined the noise
of my head hitting the bathroom mirror
that summer so many seasons ago.
Her fingers on my face were glass-tipped
and I thought how they might feel under my teeth.

4. Yesterday
In the morning I dreamt it into life:
two pairs of eyes and the delicate impression of bruised wrists
lying next to me on the sheet.