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HOW TO LIVE IN A FUNK
(after Eleanor R.
Taylor)
First, build yourself a trapdoor
let your cringed soul wander
like a dog with its tongue hanging out.
Remember: it’s only a
funk, only a state
of being like a daydream or inertia,
snap out of it when you are ready,
ready as the frozen smile forever saying please.
Keep pain in check.
Practice don’t-tell.
Blame it on the weather, how
heat drains you, rain empties
you. It’s the sinus, never tears.
Feign hard and lie
harder.
When asked, say you like it, yes, yes
yes and you want more. Say Thank You.
And when your island of
sorrow
rises from beneath you, rise.
Float, feel
how it is, without gravity.
THE ELM TREE IN FRONT OF THE PHARMACY
Say to it what you will, the tree is three stories tall.
Its branches give shade to a few windows, its roots
push up the sidewalk. Two years now, red, white, & blue
ribbons loop around it, then yellow. People leave photographs
of the old evening skyline, indigo blue still tugs like teen love.
At first, kids tagged poems on the trunk, drawings
of black smoke and angels went up too.
Slowly, rain and snow washed them away.
We filled our days making pastas, baked loaf after loaf
of bread as if we didn’t know what we hungered for.
All that’s left are a few plastic orchid stems,
twining around a fresh ribbon someone just put up.
Of course we don’t always notice these changes, these erasures
and remembrances, the way we don’t notice
the crease between our eyebrows, the scab
that’s grown thick around our heart. And when we do,
like coming home today, I found myself
looking at the tree and recognized at last,
an old friend, limping, is here to stay.
PRAYER AT MID FLIGHT
Bury me in your hem,
let not a single strand of my hair
escape your gazing. Listen: your job
is done. I am no use to this world. Truth
comes slowly, between vespers and nightingales' song,
sackcloth has been woven for me. Still I fluttered toward
the stars, only to find my wings were made of wax. Tell me
how can I bear the tearing away of my own flesh! I can’t go on,
can’t turn back. Below me, gray sea shifts like glass,
light plummets into islands of clouds, deniers
of silk webs warped inside their own
shining. And God You turn and
multiply your muted face
in each hexagonal wave.
Pui Ying is a native of Hong Kong & writes in both Chinese and English.
Her poems have appeared in The Asian Pacific American Journal and in other
Chinese language publications. She lives in Brooklyn & is working on a
poetry collection as well as translation work. |