Phantom Limbs

How the body remembers

is not at all like how the mind does.

The severing of one’s memory is

Like losing a limb

All along, you reach for the glass half full,

arm outreached, when suddenly

you realize neither the glass nor the arm is even there.

This isn’t a love poem

This isn’t a love poem but

me trying to find a way to love you right to

give back how good you give it to me

Try and find the words between

the body and mind, say,

create words that touch you

like my lips, yours

like my ass, your hands

like my inner thighs, your hips

This isn’t a love poem but

me trying to feel you despite distance

reach for you

by the memory of

your sounds as your warmth spills inside me

the heat of your neck I soak in with my lips

your eyes’ shine as you watch me turn with you inside me

This isn’t a love poem but

it is this, a tasting

so you know

how the whole of you

is loved,

how each crease of every finger

how each line of the palms

how each strand of stubble

every sigh and giggle of you

fully completely wholly.

how silly of me (to say I write yet)

be so unable

to find the words

to tell you precisely

this lusting of the heart.

The Prawn’s Tale

My mother tells me how she

never got over
her motherlessness.

(I am still working on it myself.)

Over coursed Chinese cuisine,

I tell her I felt

compelled to find her,

partially thanks to my father.

“You know, Dad never once said a single thing bad about you.”

She replies, “How could he? I never gave him any reason to.

He was the only one who did anything wrong.”

I sit, eyeing the split back of the giant prawn.

Picking it up, gently twisting off its head

peeling the skin off its back,

I push the flesh out.

An eye dangles to meet mine.

“It depends on whose side to tell a story from.”

The Guilty

Opening the door to leave

he watches her smile,

her eyes vacant rooms

chandeliers cobwebbed

dusty white sheets on furniture,

it has been so long

he has forgotten what was under them.

Turning back to say goodbye once more

he sees the door close.

It is funny

but in dreams

she hums

suspended in screeching silence.

When he moves to touch her,

she flinches as if he is a fist

about to clock her

to scatter all her teeth

on the damp spring soil

like Silver Queen corn kernels.

Excuse

For nine months,

you take the time to know

her name, mutter it even in your sleep.

Say it aloud to bring her into being.

Practice what to call her

when the time is right.

When she comes to town,

she breaks every bough of tree,

uproots your home whole

mauling the gardenia garden

deforming the green truck left out to rust.

As you leave her,
you think

This is why she is the child you refused to get to know

the one you let go

never raised,

the rogue and raging.

Brief Encounter

A man with large hands

waits in line behind me.

The glass of the vending machine

reflects my restless eyes.

They tell me

my face would be missed

but no one ever tells me by whom

so I tell myself I am missed, saying my name aloud

remembering what I was called.

Then, I wondered

if the last time he kissed me

did I taste good

or just good enough for now?

I wanted to tell him

I was all out of that flavor.

My mother once told me

that girls like me are

like airport waiting areas,

only for the time in between

for nodding off to the fluorescent flashing

before a red-eye flight,

like the sticky stains

of the latch-key kid who was left home alone till dawn

calling for her father whose broad back was more familiar.

My mother said

that girls like me are

like the dingy armchairs of

passing through for a stranger who is waiting for

a connecting flight on his way home to his wife.

He is up now.

He glances over at me leaning on the wall

as he fumbles for change.

He presses B4 for chips, gets cookies instead

Smiles saying, “You’ll do for now.”

#Defector

You still sleep with your bedroom door locked

your front door bolted and

Chained
as you are to those memories

how you slept with your most faithful lover (fear).

Tonight
you lie awake with
streams of silver from your lit eyes.
He is still circling just above your head.

Though now,
your belly is thick and full

your lips moist
your head un-cracked

you still remember.

The night he raided your room

sifted the jewel of your body out of your blankets
stripped you
placed bills into your privates, your open mouth,
as you lay on cool concrete floors
speaking gasps like your native tongue.

He asked
"Where were you headed?"

He is smiling.
Crisp. Square. Thick. Solid.
His boots shiny

till the first contact
with your flesh which holds onto each blow like a catcher’s mitt.

An elbow crumbles
your spirited nose line
cracking your face down to your jaw
now unhinged
your mouth gaping open to taste the sour air.

You swear to yourself that
when you open your eyes
you will gather yourself
each piece
and go.

It's just

even after the Leaving
even after you've finally done it and you've finally won
no bolt or lock
can unchain you from his sweat-infused scent,
how it smells of your blood and spit
curdling at the back of your/his throat.

How even now,
each time you try to smile,
the crack beneath the sealed skin still begins
to part.

**

This poem is about North Korean defector and survivor who was caught in China, beaten and raped. It is based on an actual occurrence as described from a KBS documentary.

Somedays

by Billy Collins

Some days I put the people in their places at the table, bend their legs at the knees, if they come with that feature, and fix them into the tiny wooden chairs. All afternoon they face one another, the man in the brown suit, the woman in the blue dress, perfectly motionless, perfectly behaved. But other days, I am the one who is lifted up by the ribs, then lowered into the dining room of a dollhouse to sit with the others at the long table. Very funny, but how would you like it if you never knew from one day to the next if you were going to spend it striding around like a vivid god, your shoulders in the clouds, or sitting down there amidst the wallpaper, staring straight ahead with your little plastic face?

Dialect of a Skirt

The young girl wanted a new voice. After all, people got new things every day. A new hip, a new nose, a new set of suspenders. She adored the consonants that landed like wooden shoes. She loved the type of L-sounds that made a mouth drool from the back of the tongue to the front. She practiced her new voice into seashells, tin cans, caves. She gave her first performance quietly, into the ear of her sleeping dog. She could tell by his snorting that his dreams were of fat tree trunks and black, truffle-filled soil. Later, she drove to the local gas station and used her new voice to ask for a pack of cigarettes. She wasn't wearing a bra, but the attendant didn't notice. He was too busy listening to the way sound seemed to drip out of her mouth as she said the word, Camel. by Erica Miriam Fabri

Grief

Trying to remember you

is like carrying water
in my hands a long distance
across sand. Somewhere people are waiting.
They have drunk nothing for days.

Your name was the food I lived on;
now my mouth is full of dirt and ash.
To say your name was to be surrounded
by feathers and silk; now, reaching out,
I touch glass and barbed wire.
Your name was the thread connecting my life;
now I am fragments on a tailor's floor.

I was dancing when I
learned of your death; may
my feet be severed from my body. 

Stephen Dobyns

Balances

in life
one is always
balancing

like we juggle our mothers
against our fathers

or one teacher
against another
(only to balance our grade average)

3 grains of salt
to one ounce truth

our sweet black essence
or the funky honkies down the street

and lately i’ve begun wondering
if you're trying to tell me something

we used to talk all night
and do things alone together

and i’ve begun

(as a reaction to a feeling)
to balance
the pleasure of loneliness
against the pain
of loving you

—Nikki  Giovanni

Communication

She purposely did not wear panties

stood above his head to pretend-adjust

the lights above.

He looked up

and wondered if he'd remembered

to turn out the lights at his house,

knowing from her smile

that he would sleep and wake

beside her again.

Hymn

Outside the window,

hymns filled the church's halls,

flowed onto the sidewalks,

into the streets.

A boy lifted his head to follow the sound

to the church window then stared at the window beside it

the one with daffodils brightly drooping against the pane.

Inside

she is sitting in yesterday's petticoat

legs raw from running

from her heart being pressed to the rotating blade of his smile

she'd sworn off 2 seasons ago.

In the winter,

as thick blood rose to the skin's surface and froze,

she thought,

This is all right. This, it's really not so bad.

'Cept now, it is summer so

it begins to thaw, as the cut reopens, the past still thick and brooding

oozing onto the hard wooden floors.

2 Cents

I ate too much

drank too much

paid too much

stayed too long

waited too long

took too long

so I thought this time,

for you,

I might try to do it right.

Tool Kit

If you must know

I'm not waiting for anyone today

The lines I drew to my center

follows me

even as I sit to avoid the sun

there isn't anyone to talk to

I slept in the same sheets since the day he left,

his dirty socks still balled up in the corner of the room

in his drawer, a "Virginia is for Lovers" t-shirt,

a pair of boxers and some grey shorts.

Everyday he becomes a little less on the sheets

Yet as for me…

I don't try to fake resilience.

It is that time of the day again

to wear my clothes inside out

to take them off the right way

And surely

there is there is a cure for this madness

as there is the feigned undying to cure

the silence of being alone.

A Girl Without a Past

i lay upon the  crisp sheets before you

to come to you without a past.

to never hear nor tell

those stories

long cords coiled red

frayed to the wire  at the edges

for those aren't our stories

they're everyone else's but ours

so im far and distant a complete

an un-storied girl before you.

before you. i come

i come loudly with streaming fears and tears

without a past i come

i come so violently

i crash into your body

and for that moment a question hovers above your lips

so i say shhh. it's just you.

it's always just been you.

게처럼 꽉 물고

게처럼 꽉 물고
놓지 않으려는 마음을
게 발처럼 뚝뚝 끊어 버리고
마음 없이 살고 싶다

조용히 방금 스쳐간
구름보다도 조용히
마음 비우고가 아니라
그냥 마음 없이 살고 싶다
저물녘 마음속 흐르던 강물들
서로 엃겨 온 길
갈 길 잃고 헤맬 때
어떤 강물은 가슴 답답해
둔치에 기어 올랐다가
할 수 없이 흘러내린다
그 흘러 내린 자리를
마음 사라진 자리로 삼고 싶다
내림 줄 쳐진 시간 본 적이 있는가?

- 황동규

自殺

I wanted to tell you
Today that

I will not
I will not sleep

to your breathing today.

Instead
I will be flailing
limbs
Un-wanting
Dismantling
Body

Shattered
Dangled
Cracked

Holes
in place

for your exit.

I'm no longer
You couldn't be

Home

Armor

I slit
the soft veil of my
thin skin
following the blue lines
now crimson.

Trailing home
to the palm

closed
tightened
fist

I warp
how I remember you.

You

the one who
wears the taste of my
collar bone,
the small of my back,
the taste of
the back of my knees
(now blown)
like yesterday's laundry.

the one who
dabs the scent of my flesh
as unwashed sheets of mornings after
drained of sweat nothings.

Once, you held my palm to your lips
tasting my subtle singularity
hardening to my warmth

Rivers rose
rushing
following
the blue-hue veins back
the hardened, criminal walls of this heart.

Stealing Bases

In the morning mess
I find you waiting

The sky thick with wet

Clouds
Unable to
Hold it all in

You on your dark
Brooding cloud
Offer to take me

To places I need to be

I rage against you
For I cannot abide by
Such laws of (your)confusion

Bound by floods,
Diminished shorelines

You stand where if you wait long enough
The tides will pull you in

(Everyone's bound to be
Pulled in
by the tow)

So no.

I'm waiting for the one
Who remains steady
Just a soft rocking over my waves

He'll anchor
Wait
Then
Sail us both back
To(for) shore.