Stories

“Feathered Cup” by Shangyang Fang. A complete poem in a single screen.

By the kitchen sink, my aunt held a fish as if holding the Holy Body.

The light, returning, nudged me from sleep, and walked me to dinner.

My husband shovels snow from flower beds back onto the drive.

What I eat, that heap has eaten. What I like, it gets, but less of.

Motionless at the window. Forehead beaded with a line of fevered moons.

you crawl into a hole & pull the hole in after you on judgment day even our mothers will flee from us.

There, in the courtyard, a man might sit and call himself your friend.

I know about sex. It’s not a cardinal flying into the wrong window.

Because I am lonely, I am always shying away from the mirror.

They’re shrieking down Little Round Top, receiving the good girls’ glares.

At night the wildfire swelled the blurred interior like a lung of light.

We roasted mastodons. Designed skewers, ovens, steampits.

Less magic, less defense, more speed, more stealth.

There’s anger in the sound of a V-8 engine that puts me at ease.

You’d probably prefer to sneak back into me very still, swollen.

I slipped one sparrow black and shivering into my mouth.

I blush whenever that room in Ensenada comes to mind.

I’d have guessed the winter this way, every bitter plum already singing.

The smell of death, once it gets inside your nose, is unmistakable.

Lure, yes, you would know how to catch and clean such a thing.

The dugout boats kissing the shoreline have ferried us into open markets. Girl, you call me in time, where this too can be forgotten. The hands that made them asking for more things in dim light.

Welcome to my bed. I have these two beers, do you want them?

The pupils are toothpicks. The lake is a sky with a circle beneath.

Everything hung in perfect balance. Light and dark, heaven and hell.

I'll pick a black card of luck for you: star, pinkmoon, mirror, ostrich eye.

I’m going to save up against the flood and stagger to carry nothing.

It is here I learn the speech of men. The speechless guilt of every swig.

Time is a hearse and horse, a carrot and stick, a window and widow.

Imagine the world you want to live in; make the world in this image.