Thirty (Reprise), and: from Ceremony
- Thirty (Reprise), and: from Ceremony
Thirty (Reprise)
Summer mold knits the Parkway,headlights of velvet.
With what eyes can I see throughsuch bright confines?
My husband hits a tree at 55and we spin a couple of lanes.
My eyes double over, as if in loveor at once lonely. We spin
and the insides of the car spill,all sick in a marsh
of whiskey water. Cigarette ashsoothes my son’s wild teething.
He is awake and blinking to seeanything. Cars slow down
to watch us flail. All around us,mosquitoes ignite small fires
and they are our fires.A country away, I can hear oxen
snorting in milk-colored fog.But in this country, in the small fires [End Page 182]
of this spinning house,the fingers of a highway fern
are brushing my lungs awake. [End Page 183]
from Ceremony
Giant tumbleweeds float across the movie screen like massive wigs.I shake my hair to replicate such loneliness.I count the days without another body to keep warm.At the market, fish hang to dry, clothes-pinned by the tail.I pin each promise to my lapel.For empathy, trace the sloping sides of a highway waterpark.For solitude, clean flour off a rolling pin.Outside, a soiled mattress slumps on a street corner, completely free.The moon will not make its debut tonight.My rattlesnake has been swallowing a mouse for too many days.I give him a heavy pour of salt to help the taste.These days, I’m worried the earth will crease from too much stress.These days, I wish I could tell you something.Instead, the dangling legs of a horse trample me from above. [End Page 184]
I hold a flashlight to your organs.A liver should not be transparent.I hold your liver like a dead, stinking shark.I cradle your fins, your roving eye.I cut slivers of my heart, onion-thin, good for any salad.At night, mosquitoes bite our eyes, bed bugs bite our thighs.Flies beam from the compost and beckon us home.Where do I bury the evidence of my failure?For a better view, cut down a tree.For mercy, share this roasted chicken.The soap scum at the bottom of my tub grows another life.This is what we were promised: another life.Today, I run with a flare in my hand like a bouquet of exploding flowers.Today, I will not be transparent. [End Page 185]
Jane Wong’s most recent chapbook is Kudzu Does Not Stop (Organic Weapon Arts). Her work is in Best American Poetry 2015, Best New Poets 2012, The Volta, and others. A Kundiman fellow, the recipient of U.S. Fulbright Program, the Fine Arts Work Center, and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference scholarships, Jane lives in Seattle, teaches at the Hugo House and the University of Washington.
