down
reminds me of another time,
another spring
before I had allergies
when staring at strange snow falling up
might have touched the chord,
an echo on my spine.
Hikikomori
If a plant cannot live according to its nature, it dies; and so a man.
–Thoreau
Following blue footprints
painted on cold sidewalks,
I disappeared behind an old hospital.
Laying on a white H,
I searched the sky
for helicopters or falling stars.
Removing shards of parental debris,
I covered my torso in snow,
buried what sought translation, escaped
a body I never wanted
or felt was mine. It’s easy to mistake
electricity as light. Harder
to convince a flower it’s fine,
a lamp is the sun.
There are one hundred twelve varieties of the lie
and I am not above a few.
How many clung to me as I stood?
Drawn toward a playground,
I touched chains upholding swings,
set metal in motion.
I have no business being here.
Land of the Morning Calm
There is no want in me but for you:
drag a honeycomb through my hair,
deaden all thoughts of dismantling
this stinger in my spine. Mother,
they bleached you into obscurity. Infants
don’t fly, and so, you painted stripes on me,
made me a Korean bee with a quiet stinger
to help me collide with the Yellow Sea.
When I am torn up about who I am,
I take comfort where comfort stings,
sit alone at sunset watching a black sky
swallow tiny silver planes, but nothing
can keep me from swarming the aviary,
a Buddhist bumblebee in the dead of February.
One Hundred Words for Snow
I whisper Yhwh against a rage
that has cost me more than fingers and toes.
I could not hold, bury, or escape
the shape of your grief. It moved
along glaciers snapping the ends
of islands into the sea.
Lips pressed to sleeve, I carried
mouthfuls of your dust mumbling dead prayer,
prayers made and lost within the solitude
of imagined Alaskan parks where
I chased your sorrow only to discover
the land where mine is local legend.
Vanishing woman, the way to the Bering Strait
is lined with lessons of your winter.
I travel by foot against evidence
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