"the mesh of a contusion"

i.


the heat of your hormones beats through well-worn trails, tigers
push through weak bivouacs. an opportunity to catch a dragonfly

arises, drawn irresistibly like a kite pulled to its grounding. natural
as an outbreak of brushfire, you caress her white skin feeling as if

your world had never ended the first time. tendrils turning towards
her sun, burning as if molten gold filled your cavity, you yearn to

drench your incandescent center in her timeless tides. your mind's
eye erases our sketches, the dandelion seed is supplanted. you are

engulfed as if rising through loaves of bread, only to crash into a
detailed picture of pale sunrise hair, near an aquiline face. her

eyes are like the skies in heaven, but her laugh will be
sharp hoes, cutting rows in your gentle landscape.



ii.


this spider's gossamer unspins, an orbit corrupts. a starling
falters and plummets towards earth, the wide ocean. sight

fades gray like a cat's paw, creation's air rushes out of this compressed
chamber. ground crumbles into spineless fossils, time holds still like a

lingering reflection of late sun on steel green buildings. morphine
can hardly quell the phantom limb, pictures curl, ochred on carpet

in abandon. a swan lake dancer became disabled from your steps that
nightfall. cinderella was only a poor girl after all. my mind's

engravings rotate in a museum's halls, lying in bed, waiting to die
takes longer than all afternoon. there was a vacuum waiting to be

unsealed, tomblike. dust of the ages will rise and spell
the same story, written in more than three languages.



--jennifer crystal chien