a child
begins with a yes scatters words across the escaping sky sheep fleeing a warring king
the world awakens in shadow, the scraped scraps shared between arrow and quiver
once our hearts skid against loss in the morning a list of names on rice paper curling as
smoke the afternoon dressed in a mirror a wolf like me
as a bedroom beneath an alabaster sky speaks up in frames a carmine stole
scrawled on the Earth’s lip reams of the world held together by deer gut
ribs built of rock and bike spoke as fan blade presses against
body under another alphabet story ink danks the skin of the statuary in the throat
the jungle tigers a child’s romper room the patriarch parsing pebbles for a stone throne
a child barks at the dark under-carriage of a butterfly barkseed of what was once
water wasted in the arms of young warriors disappear along the horizon History’s
gallop hushed up as lane-land leaned against the wrong night along two figures walk
with cane shell a path where we left pints of prints on the widows of Daan Forest Park
as voices deafened life grown into green-root words webs love leapt off the page
into waves the sea swam away poems gulped down language a hive of stars1 (1Fanny Howe)
with spoons a bow in our throat to improve circumlocution ran in fear, leapt off cliffs
still go it all gone wrong the circular dance in our lungs, dragging are we done now
pick yourself up off the floor on the story circumstance tangoes the silences in the middle
of conversations packed away in knapsacks watched up, unwind the watch’s syllable
syntax the hippopotamus in the backyard essentialize into nothing bodies bay
bark in a barn out back until you & I become a poem once dug up as enormity slips
vowels gurgle into the crest bobble along the sea’s utterance this and that
as the sun undresses in the east two figures in the landscape the poem wingless, sans
plume and a poem bobs in a muddy river until language slacks and verses drown.
for: my friend filmmaker Mai Huyền Chi
