X-ray of My Skull
Hold still, the room is bone-white,
the radiograph is ready.
Before the first X-ray was made,
there was a wife. This tradition
is made in her image.
Before I was anyone’s wife, I was a girl.
Before I was a girl, I was a wave of light.
I still remember what it is like
to move through,
to pass through objects and softer tissues.
What I am doing now is as close
as I have been to that way of movement
because I am telling the truth:
there is you, who I promise myself to,
and there is not you.
I am true to both, both can be true.
My lungs, my heart, these are shadows
on a luminescent screen. My bones are light.
I have nothing to hide. It is true.
The first X-ray was of a wife.
She lay her hand between ray and plate.
And in the faint green light of the screen,
her ring became opaque to the rays.
Yobi-goe (The Call)
The ocean knows that kind-of silence
she came for. The siren-high view
lures her in. To avoid her disquiet
flooding up, a great hollow breaker,
she came for the siren-high view–
on the coast, ocean foams across rock,
flooding up a great hollow breaker
almost over the balcony’s metal edge.
On the coast, ocean foams across rock.
A rogue wave, a surge urges her off
almost over the balcony’s metal edge.
The undercurrent, the persistent blue,
a rogue wave, a surge urges her off,
lures her into a void. Her disquiet,
the undercurrent, the persistent blue–
the ocean knows that kind of silence.