A Great Pretense 

One of the nights we met up, I accompanied you

to get your ears pierced. There was a tightness in the air 

where we waited for your turn. You didn’t want me 

to see you in pain. It’s industrial, you said, pointing 

at your ears, rosy like the sun the day you left Providence,

and I watched your ears hardening and drew you as the veiled figure

with the weight of the world burning your two cartillages, your figure

that moved towards me, and we left, as you 

stroked my palm under the Providence 

river. Fiddling the dank air,

we arrived at your room where you explained to me, pointing 

at the chairs that you made, and confessed to me 

the old room that fettered your ankles, and in it, you sparked in me 

detonating the lost memory of a figure 

who left me behind, now lying near the nearest ocean, pointing 

towards the furthest horizon. That night, I saw something in you 

bigger than our revelations and turned you into my canvas, the indigo air 

blowing in our ears before the unclenched dawn of Providence.

Providence

is good, but I want to go back to Philadelphia, you told me 

of your departure from everything I knew, nettling air

turned my space inside out, soft and malleable. You handed me a figure

on a worn-out notecard, the one you 

used to fidget with, gray and brown corners of the paper, pointing

at my chest, you were showing me your eulogy, pointing

towards the end. It was Providence. 

I then kissed you

which was no solace but an utterance, you drew close to me 

and I could feel your figure

of ribbed body, dips and lifts, as the air

got tart in our mouths. I blew out air

in your hair. You laughed, cheeks pointing 

at the pungent sun. You are a figure 

that wasn’t invented, yet so transparent like Providence

shining above me 

and you.

It has been some time now, and we both lost Providence. / Our figures look with skeptical eyes /

and I, with inexplicable instinct, still search for you / at the rain’s edge. The waves chop the air /

as I now live by the drizzling sea, pointing / towards Philadelphia. It is the end of the sentence, and you / regret everything to do with me.

The Grievance

after Li Bai’s The Jewel Stairs’ Grievance, translated by Ezra Pound

1.

As soon as I was born, I was bathed in the brew of the root. The

water was murky brown, and the doctor with rolled up sleeves and jewelled 

wedding ring watched me as I paddled and wailed in his white steps

the burden we bore together. I was returned, safely, to a mother, who asked: Are

you my son? to which the doctor replied: It’s a girl. She had already

suffered enough, but in that moment, her face sagged like a kite, not quite

knowing what to say, and we were both removed, her hands tightened against me, white

knuckles smothering my vision. At last, we were home, and she, with

a hasty murmuring, unhooked my blanket, checked the cave of my thighs, her face swollen in the morning’s dew. 

2.

It

swallowed me. It is 

a fist that clenched around my heart so 

tight, late 

night’s wailing, the cosmic glue that

emits and receives no light. The

dew 

calcifies on its eyelashes. Its nose soaks

in life, stunned and thirsty, my 

lungs know this feeling, a primordial defense, gauze 

up memory’s haze dangling in the welt of my stockings,

and 

I am crawling next to it. I 

inherited my mother’s drought. I let 

it slide underneath my belly button, the ancestors down,

as I search, circling around the 

jewelled stairs, crystal 

shadows, invisible curtain. 

3.

You are not a person who complains nor explains. It’s a night, and

you walk towards me with a fickle shadow as I watch 

the framing of a small window, an opening to the 

unknown. The moon 

sees us both naked through 

the movement of our muscles and the flattery of our shoulders. The

message is clear. 

You are as ugly as all love gets. There is a breeze that touches me through the gap. It is autumn.