Sometimes it’s seaweed in your throat you can’t cough out / or an ink cloud expanding in your skull
What’s the thin break / inescapable, a sudden thud / on the porch, a phone / vibrating with panic on the nightstand?
Out here, I’m lonely enough to open / my body for anyone that finds me
You can’t control what people make of you. / Some see sacrifice / where others see torture
Able only to recall / his parting footsteps—the chipping away at / a tree one fells at last
Through the window, what light gives / new meaning in the day.
Some days, I sail on an empty boat to a country I don’t know. / With my navy-blue passport, I can go anywhere.
Spring turns to summer, hopes fly high. A golden romance—in my bloody fists I smell osmanthus flowers. Under the pulped sun, lovers grow young and younger.
After the death of the dictator, his son wanted him embalmed. His son wanted him on perpetual display in a glass box.
What damage do I do? / The night avoids my eyes, so does the road. / I am never wholly myself, unto myself.
