Three Poems
by Sally Wen Mao
Go
The fissures on your face imply that you need to leave, now.
For hours you've been staring at the ancient photo projector,
eyes watering into the slides of the photographs your daughters
left, blue mosques, the towers of Istanbul, windy Mt. Esmeralda,
susurrus of elephant grasses. For years you've lived in this clock
tower house, by your bedside a shuttered window & a carafe of cream
for your restless throat. I'm tying a kite to the end of your taillight,
fifty balloons to each of your wrists. An acupuncturist will tincture
the healthy aches in your vessels, each hole in your back lulling
a dialectic of space heat. Before you go you'll eat Malaysian for dinner,
and the way you choke a bit on your pineapple chunks
makes me miss you, but not enough. Strip off your tuxedo & see
how boneless your body is. Leave my piebald love behind. Sell
your mattress. Buy a futon, a hammock, & buck out of here.
The Ark Flounders
Ask me whether the night ends
with grinning or grief & I'll tell you a story
about the apocalypse:
some children playing double dutch
& foursquare along the I-90, patches of thorns
pecking their knee-high skeleton socks
some alligators crawling out of their swamps
into abandoned marble coliseums like old mariners
some lobsters snipping the dotted lines
between you & me—your tongue,
my tongue, our love a slaughtered fish head
some toads lying on their backs
burping the lyrics to sad dead love songs
everybody that day eating, kissing, eating, kissing
just like they've always wanted
& then the stasis,
tall and cool as
the light coming, giant bull of saliva
the meteors
alive with interspecies loving
I'll declare my infatuation
with the paperbark tree
my embrace will not be shy
and before it ends you'll finally tell
what you've always wanted to tell
the lovely wild antelope
for so long
Moving In
Climb the stairs.
Drop your suitcase.
Inhale: must, musk,
discarded pits,
apple blossoms.
Touch: the walls,
damaged fruit & fruit
bats, curtains, moon
jellyfish, their tentacles
soft, stinging, singing.
Lie on the flat
bed. Suck in
your flat stomach,
flat chest. Feel your body
flatten. Shut your eyes.
See through the eyelids
a great scarlet mesa,
blood sand rushing
down your windpipe, shoving
you back into your raw,
unsheltered self.
Pretend the music
is distant, dissonant. Make
love to it. Hoard it;
let it snag your lip,
ruffle your hair. It will kill
the desire in your throat.
At night when the cooking
smells from neighbors' kitchens
fade away with your hunger,
your past lovers will climb
into bed with you. Do not
sing into their mouths. Do not
let them ravish, ravage.
Sally Wen Mao likes to eat succulent lychees. A Kundiman fellow and an 826 Valencia Young Author's Scholar, she has work published or forthcoming in Crab Orchard Review, Gargoyle, and Copper Nickel.