MISC. POEM (AIR)
If you want to catch words flocking in air
you might ask, How do you make a dragon purr?
To bring back from certain death the rarified air
threaded through the lungs, make sure birds can fly through you. How you know
where you are
is by folding one paper charm per person, as Tu Fu’s friend did for the war lost. Are
the winds keeping course this evening, or do they err,
losing their way in the clouds? I sit here, spirit-wounded, tracing words on air.
MISC. POEM (TIME)
When a dying man starts a sentence and untimely
nothing arrives, he may not be able to finish the words for all the times
summer will come again. Where did all this summer come from? The weeping
cherry ties
itself to words. Cold blossoms teem,
spread petals into motion, the slim smell, as if a tame
purlieu were able to gather up the jagging notes of how he tries
to say one word, another, his saying about as close as a robin will let you come—
MISC. POEM (RAGE)
Even in sleep’s breath, rage
against war does not still, when all age is wretched, older age
and younger roll together in ashes. Rage:
smart-bombs prick cerebellum and range
out the ear. Born in North Korea, turned sixteen during Khmer Rouge,
married and un-married in Kabul, I know the pain’s blast that comes with
unwording rage—
not what I want--the spiked pillow I reach for—