To sit in construction of your memory institutions, wondering if the screaming is malleable
in present company, excluded and included both—in tears of the fabric, bespoke suited fellow
who arrived after you and sat down at your table, the opposite side, only to stare beholden
at her Peruvian lily when you caught him looking too closely at the jacket you lifted
from the boy who had given you a bad book to read, signaling the effortful cool
of a parish in a grotto, and a taste palate weaned on the gentlest of coconut ribbons.
To be poor and sad. The swallows shed like the hollow boned, to live along a blade
their wingspans spread in your presence. To reference the self is like blessing an absence
while sticking to light—cream filling, strawberry shortcake bought from the corner store
a bribe along with the drip if you ever saw one cloaked in the language of the gift economy
as you pause, for give and take, for equilibrium, for what? Dashing between the bushes
for the balance to reach an even keel while the rabbits run in three, four step, twirling,
thinking, guns blazing, in the logic and literary form of those with a stone’s throw
when in fact the suspect was a nested mouser spotted mid-flight, soft landing.
I want a microphone, I war a microphone, so I can fight anything that moves
between the hollows of the trees, the rings around pale saintly owlets shine liquid
in the water, gold ginkgos trodden underfoot in the sleepy wood by Campus Street
He says he took the other way to get there but forgets to set up the voicemail machine
until reminded by her keening, spectral voice and all of its suspenseful deceptions telling her
a one, a two, a microphone. Hand it over and turns, like a candied hawthorn plum on a spit
watching on the big screen the sentient vegans making pour-overs for stickers
while setting up nest in the box of oxtail heaped over rice, a real delicacy of the night.
Danielle Shi 