by Mai Der Vang
The way their eyes turn lunar, rogue as dead stars
Thrown back to the graveyard in heaven. In the
Afterwar, there are no more terraces, no more hills,
No hand to sweep the hearth, but always, there remains
A man omitted, and that she knows as well.
Beyond the Backyard
Light passing through
geometry of chain-link gate.
Wig of barbed wire.
All, I might see.
We pay our rent
to the mechanic next door.
He’s industry too.
Someday,
I will forgive dirt floor
alleys with dumpsters everyone used.
Forgive forklifts
crawling in the lumberyard.
Forgive acoustic winds
lashing open the back door.
Anchor let go.
I will climb on the ledge
to peer over,
beggar my eyes
to a view.
Rusted sedan, wire zipline
to stapled roof, retired
shopping cart missing wheel.
My parents fled for this.
Sojourn with Snow
That day you brought it home
It’s like tiny diamonds
That turn to water
Taste like ice Try it
You too
Once saw how it dropped
A slow searching
Until it went away
Gone are the warm banana leaves
The vapor rains
Evacuee from a rainforest
Hostile frost
Settled your skinny body
Or maybe that city
Would start you over
No layers felt enough
We played with this gift
Every day
Compressed to no more
Numbed in our flushed palms:
Those of refugee children
Who now believed
Sprinkle more
In my pile
My footprint stays
Make me the jasper from
nectar of summer snow.
Original Bones
I wander the earliest days
When I had a written language
Before 1952 when missionaries
In laos wrote one for me
Before 1959 when a phantom script
Came to the mother of writing
Before 1986 when I drew
The letters of mai der
I showed up in southern china
A few millennia back
Uncooked people
Led to war
As a child I once looked up
From a farm in fresno’s valley
So much deeper the engine echoes
In my kicking eardrum
Grayer now my eyelids
Gnarl into clouds
There was a time
The mountain came to surrender
Pressed itself down as my page
The Hour after Stars
Rose petals wash in fire.
I graze my swidden body.
I hear the crow’s voice
before I see it land in the leaves.
A handwritten letter of provision
hides inside
the pantry.
Cold as the wolf
who takes the calf,
I stare into the boulder’s mouth,
make my kills in this citadel season.
I drink from a nest of bees,
sip their stings as ginger
on my tongue.
Afterlife comes at the end
of a book,
when I walk into the opal winter.
The lines are roped into a ladder.
My dew of blood adjourns.
The latticed coffer closes over
the little horse.
My Attire Is the Kingdom
Folio of roads
On a hand-woven cape
Capitol
To my shoulders
Hem whose pleats
Are foothills in exile
Every empty space
Grain walls
Garnish the folds
Linen wraps the leg
Recalls how much I bled
Round patterned copper
Hair in coils:
Where I stored corn before
Crossing water
Disconnected middle
Silver necklace reminds
Of the iron collar
Quotations braid
Into wool
Five hundred years:
I wear the mark
In a belt of coins.
After All Have Gone
I once carried my mollusk tune
All the way to the lottery of gods.
Rain was the old funeral choir
That keened of a hemisphere
Moored under lampwings.
Clouds never left. I knew
The lights would shine clearer
If I closed my eyes, just as
I knew the Pacific would teach
Me to sleep before tying my
Name to the flaming. Here I
Am now at the end of amethyst,
Drizzling another lost sunrise
Inside the quilt of my hand.
Grand Mal
Now that your seizures,
sage of spells,
has untethered you
from living, we read
once more your story,
a girl who shook the land.
Touch
where you meant
to speak,
we could never know.
Wings as monarch
on cheek. Fighter descends,
hurts to feed
from knees that
won’t, will be,
never am.
Woman of deep,
held as love
thundering home,
here is the coming
of every child lost,
the trembling this moment
of your late stare.
Last Body
I can’t leave my hurting skull
Or the rose apple opening inside me.
I’ll count the weeks, months,
Unfurling each numbered day in my hair.
Frost ribbons inside my brain,
Canals push up my leg.
I’m moving on
To what the world needs me to know.
I am the angel trapped inside the bullet.
I am the exit wound trapped inside the angel.
Am I the scarecrow
Perched at the end of the human trail.
I’ll palm cotton between my prayers
Until the universe has passed,
Waving down jellyfish
To volcano hours.
What force propels a bullet
From its chamber. Is it sourced by water
Trickling in a karst cave,
Or is it an angel’s gasp as she flees.
I can’t answer it all,
But my mask grows taller every year.
Gray Vestige
From a half-mile, I thought
you were some crust of kelp
and drift. I never could have
guessed it was the last lying
down of you, submitting to
wreckage on this side
of the wind. Dear humpback,
this land is too dry to carry
you further. Soon, you will
be taken, your salty oils,
fragment of sea-frosted spine.
Take every sinew adrift where
barnacles splayed pectoral
fins, your mammal tissue
putrefied into aquatic skin.
Long ago, you were the arched
door into the ocean having
built an orchestra for your
own kind of flight. Some things
return, but never really do.
/> Like the sifting ground,
the scattered baleen,
and this your body ancient
turned upside down.
Heart Swathing in Late Summer
In the penumbra of an oak under sculpted
Moonlight, we pile the last waking hours
On our faces, breathe the wilderness of dry
Heat waiting for fall ventilations. It feels
Later than it is and the air is already mouthing
The date for tomorrow. At least now, our eyes
Can fall into the craters of a waterproof
Reflection, and we stop for a moment to fill
Ourselves with the kind of light that can only
Be found in the dark. What is night if not for
It being a repetition of unlit squares glued
Jointly, plastered against the thought of midday.
What is not seeing but to echolocate a name.
It’s how I find your chin when I can’t sense
The meaning of your hands. Weeks ago, it was
Astral rebounds, shiny hinges. We harvested
The fertile Perseids posed recumbent
In the back of a flatbed, tallying the mineral
Opulence reserved for those who wait. Not
Ever so many in return. Now this moon in its
Entirety has never looked so much like
A distant circular kite set ablaze, doused by
The kind of burning a man feels when he hears
The humming of rain against a woman’s bare neck.
Meditation of the Lioness
Violets are hatching volcanoes.
Today’s bees have swallowed
The last milk of lanterns.
All the whisper goes out in a drum.
An empire separates inside the nautilus.
On a bed floating the basin,
We fall asleep in fog of the ancients.
By daybreak, we trill
Through cavesongs,
Skate our soles
Toward the next aurora,
Listen to our fingers
Kindled as white sage.
Then every cloud is a crib,
Every snowflake a small city
Falling on the eyelash.
Then child, you are cultivated,
Fit to obey
The balconies inside you.
Now you are free to follow your prey.
Days of ’87
You lean by the door before me,
Tall, unshaven, arms at your side,
Oversized duffle by your feet.
I stare at the ironing board, unable
To speak. My fingers unfold the shirt’s
collar before trailing it with an iron.
Steam locomotive combing through
A snowy night. Metal tosses vapors.
Mist touches you, then leaves the room.
Five years before, the argument set
You loose. Your father cursed you
From the house on a shining afternoon.
In an hour, he returns from work.
What hangs in the mind, a crumpled
Sleeve, wrinkles stay. Does the mist
Kneel captive to a traveler in a train
Heading toward a salty canyon.
Too much has been asked.
A solitary engine, the waiting room,
The feral call.
At Birth I Was Given a Book
I have heard the flames
hunting inside your glossary.
A starling calls
from my folded window.
I won’t outgrow next year’s stone.
Beneath your cordilleras,
exhibit of ripe artery
I take my feed, I drink
my childhood thread.
I find no stamps
in your red lagoon,
only scent of cypress burning.
They say each birth is given pages
that equals the span of its life.
Last breath happens
when last word has been seen.
As if you knew,
long before the war
where you slept on your kills,
centuries before building
your nation of scars.
You are the pound
of pink cold
unlocking from the water’s spine.
Late Harvest
It started with the apricots
Turning all copper hues on the orchard floor.
The farmer had no one to pick them.
Then oranges.
And the tomatoes.
Someone has tilted the land.
A star flashes
As if it needs help.
Other times it is a loose tooth
In the open mouth of the galaxy.
There are no laborers.
The crates, empty.
Stare long enough at the fields,
The parched horizon,
And you will see, from its lifting,
A kind of smalt fog.
Cipher Song
It’s come to this. We hide the stories
on our sleeves, patchwork of cotton veins.
Scribe them on carriers for sleeping
babies, weave our ballads to the sash.
Forge paper from our aprons, and our
bodies will be books. Learn the language
of jackets: the way a pleat commands
a line, the way collars unfold as page,
sign our names in thread. The footprint
of an elephant. Snail’s shell. Ram’s horn.
When the words burn, all that’s left is ash.
Turn me into
starlight lattice,
riding mudwinds at post-thunder.
I Am the Whole Defense
Mid-1700s, Southwestern China
Lightning is the creature who carries a knife.
Two months now,
The rains hold watch.
Statues bury in teak
Smeared with old egret’s blood.
I feel the pulse of this inferno,
Tested by the hour to know
That even torches must not waver.
In the garrison, I teach boulders
To trickle from the cliff.
My fallen grow parchment from their hair,
Calligraphy descends
From their lips.
Infantry attack
But my musket knows.
They scale the sides
Yet I tear the rocks.
I am not wife, but my name is Widow.
Let them arrive
To my ready door,
The earth I’ve already dug.
Diadem on Lined Paper
I saw you first as a man
Whose left arm was the branch of a tree.
Your frail stretch
No thicker than fingers on a gingko,
A body
Meant for downfall.
Then you turned over
And became a tree
Whose branches were the arms of a queen,
Spanning before me
Like a bridge, earthen silk,
Consanguinity,
Love that works without a thumb.
I took to you my birth,
My almond song, chrysanthemums
Spun into corona and gold.
Before morning, I gave you
Memory of blossoms,
Carried your scapular weight.
You learned me, I did not walk
But my feet did.
When fire set itself to expired nights,
I uprooted you from a grave
To mark my body mourned.
Ear to the Night
I press my hand to your sleep.
Then I find your spent head under small
whirling tresses
having digested the clatter
of car horns, children
bustling into sweet shops.
This
might be
the gift of a street:
drumming Saturdays and a Monday palm of heart.
I’ve learned that yours
is the chorus of breathing,
a rhythm, forgiving,
that nuzzles the margin within my nature’s cratered sigh.
Once, I felt the feet
of a canyon collapse within you.
Then I come to eyes,
heavy with the tumble of night dew
having collected verdigris
off the entrance gate.
Never mind the umbrella
you lost on the subway tracks.
The head is an iron jar filled with many swiveling hours.
All day, I listened,
a city carved
from the hollows of a wire woven shell.
Phantom Talker
You must know
I am the ghost
with creosote mouth
hiding behind
your silent head
in the vermilion portrait.
My body reduced
to three urns of calories.
Turn the clutter down,
saucer, candlestick, doily.
Can’t clear out the deceased
from a secondhand store.
My sleepwalker
is amnesia.
To peel an orange
with closed hands,
broke potpourri, sparse-tooth,
wedding shoes.
Slow pages widow my way.
This Heft upon Your Leaving
I peel to the center for the shape
of an answer to give you,
for the way an answer cures
in wet resin
or can hook through the days
toward the pendulous
blink of your eye.
I answer as air
answering a clapper
against edges of bronze
before belting out an anthem
of a thousand grazes,
until I hear paper stones fall
at your softening window.
Years ago, it seemed we were loose
strands swept from our ways,
two vestigial selves
to hide behind.
Only the smell darkened when
we washed our hands in a brew
of cardamom and clove,
and your arms blushed
over me in earnest.
I tell to your thick listening
as the mouth to a sudden ear,
to your shimmering heat
as it condenses around me.