surgery poem (2024)

I came to Bangkok in the rainy season
The humidity felt familiar,
Like returning to a faraway dream

They put me up in a nice room
With glossy floors and big windows
I wait there next to grey clouds

A nurse shaves my chest
Making tiny cuts on my skin
Baby hairs float in soapy water

I wipe my legs and she wipes my back
Scrubbing the places I can’t reach
I feel like I’m going to a ball

Remembering a promise,
I tell the sky a secret
Nightfall fills the room with blue

In the bright hallway
A message flashes by:
Nothing matters more than this Day

I repeat this like a mantra
Not wanting to admit
I’m a little bit afraid

Coming back from the dark,
I cried and cried like a baby
Waking up for the first time

Hours pass by the rhythm
Of my blood pressure monitor
My neighbors snore softly

Tubes emerge in four directions
Small rivers carrying the past
They drain my pain and worries

Loneliness sits for a bit
It’s just another visitor
Little ants keep me company

Today the sky is light blue
The sunshine is blinding
And I listen to music again

Who will join me in this new life?
It may be autumn now
But my spring has just arrived

The nurse unwraps my bandages
She calls me beautiful
I think so, too

two poems from 2023

十月一日

桂花开了
风一吹有
蜜糖的味道
我想没必要
比云走得快

_________________________

表弟问我：

你是男还是女
我回答：
我两个都是
我一个也不是

October 1

Osmanthus is blooming
and when the wind blows
the air smells sweet like honey
I think there’s no need to move
faster than the clouds

_________________________

My cousin asked me:

Are you a boy or girl
I replied:
I am both
I am neither

YOU WERE GOD’S CHOICE (2023)

In a chunk of steel and aluminum
we hurtle towards the future at 95 miles an hour

Today the distant horizon is obscured in fog
and last night it was barely visible in the darkness

Light pollution and mountain shadows
vaguely divide asphalt and sky

Our bodies still
we move forward
as if in a trance

Until a sudden torrential downpour blurs the windshield
like an impressionist painting

We clench the steering wheel with sweaty palms
and take cover in the parking lot of this Cracker Barrel.

The morning air smells nostalgic and calm
Clouds upon clouds part to reveal a vast blue sky

So perfect blue it could be sold back to me as an oil paint pigment
and the path forward is crystal clear

The present is full of markers of the past:
we breeze through skid marks on the highway,

passing through a tornado’s wake
as the radio announces the number of lives lost

Under these clouds I feel small
and endless Jesus billboards corroborate my theory
that we were put here by a giant hand

I find myself satisfied with the craftsmanship in this diorama
The attention to detail here is immaculate.




Circadian reset (2022)

In quarantine (2020)

Mom obsessively makes tofu in various forms:
Silky, like the scarves she never wears
Gathering dust in her walk in closet

Firm, dad’s gaze as we walk through the neighborhood
Even when it’s pouring rain
Good for digestion, he says

Mom’s been in contact with this guy from Idaho
He sells her organic soybeans over the internet
I think they talk more than we do

The kid who lives down the street sits in his car
with the engine off. I take a mental picture,
pressing my eyelids down medium-firm

Because it looks cinematic.