moon, weather, windows

Mei-mei,what follows is autumn
Sleep with closed lips, and tenderness

Tender is your scarf, to and fro, in the breeze
What follows is 
The palm of my hand - warm and full of memory

Not you, it's a garden that I am watering
Mei-mei, a safe place is spacious
On those delicate petals, what follows is
A silent, fleeting message

Moon, weather, windows lightly open
Clear bright lake
Close your eyes, Mei-mei
What follows is 
A gentle rainfall
And my feelings hurt suddenly by the leaves

-Zheng Danyi

Halloween, Ohio, and an Appropriately Named Lake

See, I've reserved Lake Erie for us,
and as we push away in our canoe, our eyes
touch everything, and it turns to costume.
The sky is a negative of a ghost, a black sheet
with star-slits for eyes, the lighthouse a hero
flashing his x-ray eye, and the flagpole on the shore
is the world's tallest matador waving, Ole! Ole! Ole!

Forgive me. I'm from a state shaped like a heart,
and this thought raises my soul as though by séance:
the seaweed bending in our direction, extending a dance,
the undead eyes of infinite fish surrounding us. And me,
setting aside my oar, bobbing for you Adam's apple,
whispering, See what a haunted house my arms make.
Then like a bully child: I dare you. Spend one night inside.

Stacy Gnall, excerpt from Halloween, Ohio, and an Appropriately Named Lake

image via

I scrub and lather him like a salmon

until he spits
soapy water. "Pig" I smile—

This man smells better than his country
I throw his shoes
and glasses in the air,

take off his t-shirt and socks, and kneel
in honor of Sasha Petrov
who was amputated, in honor of Lesha Vatkii the taken.

I dip a glass in a bath-tub,
drink dirty water.
Soaping together—that

is sacred to me. Washing mouths together.
You can fuck
anyone—but with whom can you sit in water?

And the cuddling up
before sleep!—and back-scratching
in the morning. My back, not yours!

I knew I had caught the fish
and he knew he had been caught.
He sings as I dry his chest & penis

"Sonya, I was a glad man with you—"

Ilya Kaminsky's "After Sonya, Bombardment"

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