Veil

Shadow cast by a casket:
soon, you too will be buried,
leaving your lonesome friend—

shadow of a gravestone—
to grapple with the coming night.
Shadow shrouding the visage

of the mother of the deceased:
soon, you will recede
as she pulls away her veil,

leaving the light to reveal
eyes newly darkened
by shadows cast from within.

Rain

Huddling under a rotted eave
is the only protest I will offer.

If you send schoolchildren to the graveyard
in search of shelter,
I will not judge you.

Take this crumpled photograph of my love
and smudge it as you will. Or leave it be,

let it soak in the mist of your departure
and leave it to the wind
to bring to my doorstep.

draw

like drunken fireflies
adrift in a knowing wind,
embers come to rest
on her open palms.

blinking into dulled hues
of orange, they float
away as ashen flakes,

leaving, like twisted
black ribbons,

drawings upon her skin.

A thousand paper cranes

An ancient Japanese legend held that a wish would be granted to anyone who folded a thousand paper cranes. A young girl named Sadako Sasaki, stricken with leukemia from the bombing of Hiroshima, spent hours on her deathbed folding paper cranes.

One by one they fall
like little bent feathers
from the tips of her fingers,

gathering like snowfall
till her bed is lined
by a flightless white flock.

With two tiny mirages
of gauzy wings flapping
burnt onto her irises,

she waits in quiet resolve
for the cranes to lift her
in a chorus across the sky.

Anhedonia

Another greyed dawn
pressed against my windowpane.

In quiet procession,
the streetcars are swallowed
behind the horizon’s yellow teeth.

I open the window and let in the chill
so that I can see

how part of me leaves
with each wispy breath.

Igloo

It would all come to be routine:
the drips that fell on our eyelids
jarring us awake at daybreak,
the handfuls of ice we’d gather
for patching our sun-scathed walls.

Even the murky breaths we’d touch
with our frostbitten fingertips,
the bedside stories we’d whisper
against our cold, moonlit walls.

Still, the ice on your eyelashes,
your voice like waxed violin strings,
your smile that curls like a wick:
I needed them. You knew this.

You knew this so you stayed with me.
You stayed when I tipped our lantern,
when drips fell in our open eyes.
You stayed while our igloo gave way.

The Marsupial Prisoner

Life in prison wasn’t easy for a kangaroo. The ceiling of his cell wasn’t tall enough to hop in, so Bobby had to bounce idly on the tips of his heels. The only place he was free to hop was the prison yards, where he was routinely made a mockery of. The other inmates, intoxicated on humorous notions of a boxing kangaroo, forced Bobby to participate in organized fights. Outcries to the guards fell on deaf ears, as many of them had a stake in the gambling ring that had formed; the others were indifferent.

There was nowhere within the confines of the prison for Bobby to graze, and the meals were ill-suited for his herbivorous diet. He had become weak and frail due to his malnutrition and regular fights, and began to wonder if he’d ever live to see the day of his release.

The thought of his joeys was all that kept Bobby’s will alive. It had been years since he was taken from them, but he was confident that his children would be exactly where he had left them.

(Continue reading the story here.)

every passing glow

every passing glow
of headlights on the wall
assumes somehow
the shape of you

and every bit of shadow
that clings on as you
slide on into the night
is me somehow

Roulette

When the executioner was the only one
unconvinced of the killer’s guilt,
he pulled the switch

like rope on the pulley
of his own descending grave.
When the killer’s face began to appear

ruffled and out of place in his dreams,
he would wake up chilled
to the marrow,

his fingers
clutching the rope
that held the pendulum over his head.

Eight-legged reverie

send the flies away
the jilted spider
shouted from the corner!

send away the gleam
that slides across
these silken threads!

the paint chips
mistaken
for snowflakes!

the smell of
glistening venom
in the morning!

leave me to weave
myself cocooned
until she returns!

the little widow!
winding the web
that unwound me.