One of my projects this year is to unearth my old poems. It seems fitting to kick off such an archaeological project with this longish poem that came together in a vulnerable time. I had became a worrier. I was a new mother, I wasn’t writing much, I didn’t like what I was writing, and I watched too much TV crime drama. Meanwhile, the quiet disintegration of my marriage had begun. Reading this poem again feels like sifting through ruins of a burnt down house, trying to recognize what might have been yours.
Photo: Eugene Eric Kim
In the lateness of the world
the television said,
“The two detectives are worn angels,
caught in a permanent investigation
in which they are mirrors
of each other and of our selves.
One looks and looks with kestral eyes,
raking his gaze over the glowing evidence;
the other with ancient feet
and sticky wings
hovers over the crime scene,
waiting for the ineffable,
tears on his cheeks.”
*
in the lateness of the world,
mother’s friend’s sister-in-law
disappeared in February snow.
months
not knowing
Then, one June day,
Missing Pediatrician’s Remains Found Near Ski Resort
search dogs found her body,
pieces of it,
pieces of her body
pieces of flesh,
resembling earth,
*
a kestrel can see where its prey has been,
sentences gleaming in the furrows
a weightless radiant history
a map
a burning shadow the body drags
into the lateness of the world
*
in June
in Canada
he stepped off a building
such distances
*
pieces of a body
crumbling back into earth
one cell at a time
one stitch at a time
she unraveled into soil
*
in the lateness of the world,
a stitched together feeling
is the feeling of living
go on,
might get to a feeling resembling truth
keep trying to trick yourself into writing,
arrange a life that resembles writing,
until the arranging becomes your life
a life resembling real life
*
some cloudless nights after nursing,
wakeful in moonlight, in the lateness of the world,
she pats my breasts,
her small hands,
her black eyes look up, reflecting
extraterrestrial light
a light before knowledge
pure intelligence
conceiving the algebras of attachment
my lovebug, my alien,
my six-month creature
*
at a friend’s mother’s wake:
cinders of spirit money ascending to [
heaven
]
uneven dance on
from the square mortuary windows
diagonals of light
cutting dust columns
almost soundless
then almost a song
*
a stitch at a time
she unraveled into soil
cell by cell
her terrible wounds came undone
*
In the lateness of the world,
a stitched together feeling
is the feeling of living,
the ache you feel is the ache of minutes
between you this month and you last year
and you right now and the ones you love.
Heavy clouds boil and break and shatter
high over the house and the row of houses
and the blocks of rows and rows of blocks.
Once again, you’re alone, making sentences.
It rains all day and it rains all night,
all the way down to the hazy beach
where saltwater rushes this western shore,
endlessly,
composing the distances.
*
1999-2003
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