Proudly standing, rigid trees
   Swaying gently in the breeze
We watch the shadows fall
   Switches whip, the twigs are severed
   Yet the mighty wood persevers
Awaiting its next call
   Day becomes night; sunshine ends
   Branches soon begin to bend
Raw bark peels in strips.
   Autumn comes; the trees must fight
   For each burning speck of light
Drudged from unwilling lips.
   We watch them quiver in the breeze
   The axe-man comes to fell the trees
The thinnest shall go first.
   Year by year, the seasons change
   We ignore the passing strange
Stiff bodies, in one hearse.
   No one knows if it shall end
   The loss of foe, alike with friend
Means sunlight for the living.
   “What shall happen to them all?”
   Still we watch the shadows fall
A gift that keeps on giving.

The colors in your eyes swirl through each other
Like chromatic snakes
Locked in embrace
Or perhaps a fight to the death.
Ring around the rosy;
I cannot catch my breath.
Their scales diffract my tiny face
And send me to another place
They leave me guessing
Too busy, impressing
You

Sometimes you want to text your girlfriend
“how are you, baby” but then realize you’ve
never called her baby and now might be a
strange time to start so you backspace
four characters and now it says “how are you,
love” but then you realize you haven’t
said you love her yet and tho she’s said it to you
now might be a strange time to start, so
you backspace and say “how are you” and pick out
the male zombie emoji and send
and
a few
minutes later
your phone pings
and she says she’s reading about ears

My first year I learned to do my work
The second one I learned to love it too
The third year I learned to talk to people
Finally, I fell in love with you

When I am with you, you shall find
I undoubtably lose my mind
I hate my life, I thrash, you sneer
You do this to me every year!

The pain is like a tearing scorcher
You subject me to such deadly torture
I will not stand it. I cannot.
I must not get another shot.

Somehow, I’m not yours
you’re the only thing you own
or at least not the only thing that’s yours.

I can tell you love me from the way you twist my hair around your fingers
bore your eyes into my smile
and touch me around others, when you never dared before
and absence
of prior barriers

I am rhapsodic
and complimenting friends feels awfully droll
but I could speak about you forever and never tire of it
Would you ever tire of me
with someone else swimming in your sea
or might you stay twined underneath my veins for as long as I
want you to be?

I would **** to be in any other place but this happiest girl
sip coffee and dance forever
I’d write the greatest song on earth - though I hate melody - to keep you.

Goodnight
Sleep tight
Stick around another year for me
Put up with my strangeness
The occasional sameness
But branch out to others in your friendship tree

My outer layers are ephemeral,
Shifting from day to day
At one time, all I want is some rest
The next, to go out and play.

There’s an Annie that loves to be seen by others
Full of charm, glamour and style
This person is rare, and once coming out
Likes to stay in and hide for a while.

The scientist in me loves reason and rhyme
It gives her a means to an end.
She’s the most relaxing to stay in for a time
But fails to amuse her friends.

Emotionasia loves deep conversations
The kinds hipsters will have in college
She’s impatient, tempestuous, selfish at times
And has deep empathetic knowledge.

When I chance to change, which happens quite often
I don’t understand why I’m here.
It’s scary to see the world different each day
Both wonderful, and filled with fear.

I’m not just a disordered amalgam of traits.
I have purpose, a worldview, a home.
But when each of these traits in my change every day,
It’s hard to think much is my own.

The quakes run through my veins
The fire and the pain
Of tiny pieces of lead
Churning inside my head.

If I could build a house, it'd be of teak.
I'd plant it in a basin of cement
the shingles, swirling up to pine-like peak
would push through rainclouds as they came and went.
…
And yet, my house is crumbling debris
without you there to keep me company

The salt of the earth
Seasons fresh mirth
on the plates of the gifted among us.
Gifted with pride,
And holding inside
A wealth of greed stronger than all lust.

I have an artist’s heart and I regret it
I know I’m better off than those who shred it
when all they seek to worship’s lucrativity
yet trapped in cages of their own passivity.

All I want is deep dives to the hearts
of mine and others. Chugging in the back
in sickness and health, those relentless parts
will carry on, always craving attack.

Why couldn’t you have given me more skill?
A teaspoon’s all I think I’d have required.
I’m told I have more than wholly desired
in other fields, still left unfulfilled.

I know I’m better off than those who shred it.
Why does it feel so difficult to get it?

this sickening feeling is easy to return to
like caffeine sinking a hole in my stomach.
I thought I was earning a thicker-skinned future
but it gives me more extreme things to get high from.

sometimes I figure I’d make a good escort
yet just want another soft place to land on.
my eyes glaze over at all the disgusting
pieces of others. i gorge them like peaches.

some days laughing seems unsightly don’t it?
will you still love me if i lose my temper
or how would it change me? the scent of vanilla
is more pungent than I can stand.

I will drink anything sweetened which calls me
I can resist anything til I try it.

Fare thee well / Fare thee well.
May we never meet again
Until we both go back to hell.

Sunbeams stretching
A single housefly struggles
under plastic wrap

Stainless steel
Cool to the furnace
Hot to the body

Dragon pushes
through the skyscraper gate
cracking jade

The moon waxes
a man gazes
paper scratches

Winter gusts
Tear rainbows of posters from
damp cork

Golden maple
nestled on bent twigs
a single tennis ball

Girl in a cotton dress
streams through violet fields
trailing shadows

From a clear sky
dogwood leaves helicopter over
glistening pinwheels

Crunching steps
Ivy grasps and pushes
through bicycle spokes

Puddles rising
Earthworms crawl through
chocolate soil

Cool water running
over bathroom tiles
scent of mint

A frog sits
on bobbing lilies, eyes flitting
from ripple to ripple

I search at midnight
Your face, once a marble mask
mobile, uncertain

A body, embraced
by shadows and myself
panes lit by moonlight

And meeting your palms
your touches gentler than
a falling silk shawl

All the spans of time
stretch out to eternity
instantaneous

Hands reaching over
and dozens of surfaces
tesselate softly

For a while, I think
the meaning of life is this
and then so it is

Is wanting you all?
I wish I were your habit
Wanting together

Leaving by lamplight
Your spirit a firefly
I’ve kept in a jar

Uncertain future
suspended in brief moments
of today’s meeting

I’d rather make something else
than ever acknowledge it was less than perfect.
“Self-improvement” rings of greedy influencers.
Constant change that of
a flaky millennial who won’t admit she cares about you
who’d prefer staring in the rearview
and changing her hair a third time.
it’s difficult to find this urge to make things better.

Isn’t it odd
that one of the most traditional institutions creates countercultural niche-ers?
Locked up in libraries with products newer than scars
holed up in memories of a better way
re-creating what anyone has said before.
Seems I am one of the prideful.

Just because you’re feeling sick of it,
does not mean that I am sick of it.

Are we not quite good at faking?
We ought to record a flick of it.

Make sure you show it to Mom;
you know that she’ll get a kick of it.

…And Babel’s tower collapses;
It’s lucky we still have a brick of it.

The present is almost invisible
whilst one is in stood in the thick of it.

F*, how are you still so pretty?
I don’t understand the trick of it.

And hours of effort are lost now;
all that it took was one click of it.

Doorways are metaphorical, she said,
as she made short work with a pick of it.

Just because I am now sick of it
does not mean you must be sick of it.

My heart skips a beat at a baseball cap
Or at a lone runner, dressed only in black.
Cool-colored curls trapped under a hat
Or tied, cascading across your back.

I’m a fan of mischievous smiles as well;
Glowing complexions put me in a spell.
Habits that show someone wants to rebel,
Or parting gifts during a quiet farewell.

Low voices with gravelly tones
Or pacing after you’ve picked up the phone.
Analytical gazes when something’s not known,
Contained frustration while sitting alone.

These features are lovely in others, it’s true,
But most importantly, they comprise you.

Just one class today
out of mind, my cellphone holds
the day’s happenings

Thoughts and plans extend
into ellipses, like torn
cobwebs reaching for
incomplete parts in the wind.

Bannisters of pine
creeping as I walk below
stretch to meet the rain

Through university
I am becoming convinced
Genius can’t be trained

Crimson poppies sprout
from her butterflied neck
but not as graceful

The squid’s creation
Unbeknownst to himself
idleness and bubbles

You read, I’m writing
Nothing that hasn’t been done
So- why bother?

You write while I read
remnants of past monuments
The moral is nothing

A pristine kitchen
In my community dorm
No cups to be found

Ah, I don’t know this
I’ll decorate my ignorance
and most will be fooled

Some occasions I
make people very happy
and I don’t know why

If you leave who will prove that my cry existed?
Tell me what was I like before I existed.

Once by my ear, having passed through my brain
I can barely remember your sigh existed.

She tried to replace cake with another’s bread
although we all knew no supply existed.

I reached my goal anonymously
They had no knowledge my try existed.

Bursting with implosions and marble-seamed spikes
you, Annie, were thus, before “goodbye” existed.

feels like dark chocolate on my tongue
        smooth nibs butter fruits solid   wine,   mine,
            slowing me down with a crash.
Like,
    the time loop with each instance equally delicious
in
    cream clamor of daylight, hid from yesterday’s enticements
        pinned feathers mark me
           an approved rebel. I hope
zest
    not too bitter, a pairing
       fresh taken in sharper soothing
         trappings of a recipe too small
            all I can do is say it sincerely.

Oh god, I hate the silence
I have much more to show you
I haven’t been this dull since
I spoke to those who know you.

When we met, I couldn’t eat
and when we’ve met again, I’d hide
my skinnied body under coats
hoping you’d overlook my dearth

The emptier I got, the more I said
to others, the more my fingers whispered
psalms or songs of trust while lain in bed
my brain scrambled like eggs which I ignored.

Now with you gone, I fill my own mind
with ping-pong conversations, fill the lack
with fluffy pancakes, syrup, morning biscuits
fill the eve with Thai food and my friends,
all while my form rejects this strange nutrition;
to not be empty drives it to sedition.

Unhappiness creeps
on the spine like spider’s feet
too late to smash it

Cows meandering
through yellowed autumn grasses
the world’s groundskeepers.

Baja fish taco
Bad phrase for poetry, good
culinarily

Just one class today
succeeded by morning rain
how fast I forget

Say: the past is dead
I want nothing to do with it
while you’re here instead

Morning fog descends
why should I write of seasons
if nothing is new

Memories drape like
cobwebs on old furnishings
spiders in their nooks

Encircled by strangers
brushing a body feels like
static in winter

In Heresville, you can
walk to the edge of the world
within the hour

“Your life is boring”
and so? It’s not like I was
given another.

Pry into me please
I won’t know unless someone
else does it for me

I look away
find a hole in my vision
unyielding lamplight

It just so happens that my Shrek toothpaste somehow
went splat on the floor, covered in ants
I don’t know how
to clean a bathroom, properly
and now mother knocks
asking if I’ve seen her foot cream and will I be done
in there soon
and I say go change out of your work shirt
Mythology week awards require at least a toga
“Rome outfits weren’t built in a day,” she bubbles.

Last August I cleaned the toilet I think
inhaling unhealthy degrees of artificial orange scrub.
One of my favorites,
but not as good as coca-cola
which I was forbidden from trying until I was 16.
I hear: “Constantinople will be Istanbul by the time you’re out
of there” and she may be right

I am a lady.
I have flaws.
Some are my fault,
many are not.

I am a fighter
triumphing over
fears of the past and
the uncertain future.

Many who see me
will think me unbroken
and are shocked to witness
how much I have changed.

Others will mention
how glad they are seeing
that their base perception
of me is the same.

A human goddess on the sand
Stood barely in my sight.
Her gown was made of drumbeats and
Her voice was made of light.

Each ear was a translucent shell
Each eyelid mother-of-pearl;
Her voice a steady tolling bell
By which time’s hands would twirl.

O Goddess with my shape and mind
Your worth unknown to man
How can someone worship your kind
Sans structure or a plan?

As such, the price to build a temple here
Would be to watch the whole world disappear.

Once more, I must write about you,
as all of my thoughts are about you.

You said we’d be late, and we were!
I never had reason to doubt you.

These false-framed friends of the system
theatric, purport to flout you.

Fingers in everyone’s purses
ensure none shall actually rout you.

Without trying, I collect mythos.
None have the power to doubt you.

…(Your) wrist was chill to my touch,
as the void won battles throughout you.

Annie, why bother with others
knowing none shall write about you?

The screen glow flashes
my brain buzzes like fireflies
Refreshing the page

My silkworms wriggle
across the knolls of my hand
traces of silver

If I could enchant
without thinking about it
all would be set right

****! I find my phone
cracked like an onyx mirror
my face in two parts

On this winter night
The moon lights you from the east
an opera mask

What gave it away?
My face in the low lighting?
The night stretches on

We are not ourselves
the room empty except for
Dust motes in the air

I don’t regret this
searching to find you perfect
I do wish you weren’t

I wanted to see you
And in the evening you came
Is it that simple?

Visiting Beijing
industrialization
ages my breathing

The fear of failure
proves nature itself can make
a type I error.

Can’t improve, I fear
iterative editing
is not my strong suit.

A better approach
for me is to engender
dandelion seeds

Existing can bring pain, I must confess;
from diseased innards, torn by obstacles,
to hands that crack and bleed from nothingness,
or senses hurt by minute particles.

And yet there’s power strewn within these limbs;
looks which inspire artworks quite sublime,
spirits almost immune to mortal whims,
tongues that can sell souls or others’ time.

This is the catalogue of human parts.
The price of purchase: absolutely free
and whether you’re dealt threes or kings of hearts
is not determined by you or by me.

For each feature assessed by this self-measure
may be one person’s curse; another’s treasure.

Golden threads sink behind eyes
A marionette, diving from damp leaves
which crack my new flats on the pavement.

Now rose-freckled, I’m reminded
of spackled nails on
shoulderblades

My cheeks tight, sun-roasted,
heady from new sangria.
Your hair stings my face, swift as forgetting.

Crackling with charisma
I examine you examine her
soft-eyed and hard-hearted.

Sinking in silence
like mushed matcha coating an overpriced glass
her translucent hem spinning and spinning.

Is what I think of poker chips colliding
Across the rosewood furniture so smoothly they can’t breathe

Orange
A autumnal of gothic branches
Which bring back Massachusetts, blocking every passing beam

Green
The fuzzy wilted leaf in your incisors
Which you found with rising horror on the night of our first date

Blue
A file containing years of conversation
Tucked away from memory to not be read again.

Lately I’ve learned to tolerate the rush
Which once flowed with each instance of your name
Reminders of you, now, less often brush
Against my soul or set my nerves aflame.

At times, it can still be unearthed in me
Borne from soft fingers on my wrist; a sigh
Those gestures of yours, light and feathery
With power to stop hearts or clear the sky.

What once was constant will evaporate
From scarlet oceans to soft meadow greens.
Schrödinger’s cat will choose a final state,
And branches brought down by time’s thoughtless streams.

When none is left except my thoughts of you,
Will this be worth what you’ve witnessed me do?

Back when my face was curtained with bangs,
I would pick flowers, playing by the door.
You rode your stick horse toward me
rounding the bench, knocking off the fresh plums.

Together we lived in Changgan,
the two little ones without suspicion. At 14, I became wife to you,
shy glances hiding my smile.

I dipped my head toward the gloomy walls
of your thousands of gentle calls.
At 15, my expressions relaxed,
and I longed for our dust and ashes to be mingled forever.

I trusted like the one holding a pillar in a storm; why do I still climb, anticipating your visit?
At 16, my lord traveled far from home,
through the Qutang gorge and floods of Yu.

For five months we made no contact, monkeys mourning overhead.
By the doorway are your hesitant footprints, slowly growing in with moss.

The coating is deep, it cannot be swept away—the early Autumn Winds bring leaf-fall. August’s butterflies turn yellow
flying two-by-two to Western orchards.

My heart is wounded at this,
I sit anxiously and my youth fades.
Sooner or later you’ll cross down through Sanba, sending a letter in advance your return.

To reunite with you, no matter the distance—I will go all the way to Changfensha.

Honey, are we out of yogurt?
No, the omen grants it so.
Chalk keeps oozing through our cupboard,
Are your mumbles just for show?
Pale, more pale than morning’s dough.

I hate being without you
and hate the prospect of seeing you
in case the event of us meeting again
doesn’t quell my hate
Wear my sweater, wear myself
twine your veins under my skin
we’d be perfect, I think
sipping my cups of coffee
comfortable alone.

A girl squirts Reddi-whip from a bottle into her boyfriend’s mouth. I briefly consider asking for some and skipping away.

“No, that’s not the person I am today.” But it could be.

I joy in the person I am, the person I would be around others right now. I’m one of the most delightful creatures in existence, and **** if others don’t know that.

Work feels like an improvement. Struggle the next great horizon.

My friend is singing in the shower. Small music notes waft out the door.

My joints feel loose and battered apart like a broken doll, my ankles like overstretched rubber bands

Mind foggy; caffeine wears off twice as fast

Will low. Wit low. Appetite vague and mercurial, occasional lower body pangs which convince my stomach it has a bug. In search of constant comfort.

The detritus of dozens of “not a big deals.”

Faces of sharp glass
acrylic eyes, mercury noses
Showdolls of the falsest kind
Leave my homeland and destroy me more.

My love affair with language is ending.
===
How odd that the lonely are the hardest to spend time with.
===
Summer! Summer is here!
The one I love is leaving
It is a good thing
My thoughts can at last be free.

I want you more than I can currently say,
Literally, I do not know how to say
in this dimension I hear, do, know
nothing but my place on the line

Treat everything in terms of its relationships
then it all looks to be made of the same stuff
why not know what’s a few leaps ahead?
I guess you should know—

Maybe (a point) would bleed, feel splendid as silk,
But why weight a blooming tendril
Which has been there since forever just now zoomed
enough to see? Can’t you curl toward another infinity?

I don’t think anyone remembers the language, but if you touch me
I’ll stop thinking, and everyone is fluent in that.

I find myself disengaged—why? When everything is the same but—
-I am 3 months older
-She is less easily delighted
-The sleepy aura of heaters coated in snow
==
We are the x in front of a word, not behind it. We put the cart before the horse.
==
Poetry prunes the spiky thoughts off
us so what is left is smooth and
inoffensive. But others are radicals
and then without their words, their messages
lose force, like judo kicks over the course of hours.
==
Rhyme is so sincere, that when there’s lack of trust, there’s lack of soundalikes.
==
What is there to be upset about
except for what others infuse in you?
Think how successful one’s own life could be
without the core, without others who care,
Freer than a paper snowflake with one too many cuts.
==
A story cannot reach its full potential until it loses its identity
and the protagonist scrubbed clean
existing in the minds of the collective.
==
Sometimes you get stuck in academia;
EA would suggest you allocate your time more effectively
but then, full time lit profs would not exist
and there is demand for them. So what’s the point?
I guess liberal arts promotes the self-improvement required for clear thinking,
while EA takes a more biological tone
skim the cream and fridge the rest.
==
The life of the mind is the sacrifice of the life
or at least the other 90%
Those who put you down for living
are not worth your time.
Live the life of your life,
and 髮 yourself until no one knows you
outlive the minds with your grace/wisdom/tenacity
show them how it’s done.
==
Green, stained cloths
lie over the donuts

The favored poets: Browning, Teasdale, Auden
Dickinson and Shakespeare, Sones, and Li.
and while the fire told me it was true
what stoked the coals of liking poetry?

Of nature, nurture, choice: it was not nature
I come from several cynic engineers
and while from nature my mind now sings music
no poems were explored in those young years.

But I don’t choose which nerves are set aflame
and melt out of compassion for those words,
or else that state would happen every time
I reached the next work in my syllabus.

What makes her like them? Maybe it’s because
her boyfriend left her world the night before.
The swirl of pain flowed out of the trapdoor
and made her brain susceptible to love.

Her eyes would flash, the key hormone would rise
and Whitman croon just the right qualities
to leave her re-seduced. But maybe not.
If anything else happened, she forgot.

Perhaps it was the recent phone call home,
a gentle teacher urging her to grow,
or snowflakes landing on her face like foam.
If I knew what, then I would let you know.

Your eyes pore above me, inkwells from
which your curls spill forth, dripping down
on unwritten I, down, down comes
a splash on my collar, splattering spiders.
A feather traces my faultlines, miniature quakes the only
sign, the meteorologist who breaks more than he heals,
for once.
Your eyelids burn, a candle burn, revealing handiwork too numerous to read.

There’s a crown around your earlobes which nobody can see
And if I pushed in the right place you’d wind up like Rose Kennedy
But maybe there’d be no difference from the person I see now
The probe that’s reaching out to find a hollow in your skull
Eaten by wasps. They’re still alive, you know.

By my feet I notice coffee dregs
Drip from your eyeballs, with each trail
A garden sprouts. The hearts of roses
Stare me down, wishing me dead.
I pull out my handkerchief and wipe
Your brown sclera.

I’m hollowed out from
thorns slurping up juicy sugar, pumping venom
into my lovely bones.

Cute. I could write a whole poem about it, but poems are hard, and it’d seem too trite. So I think I’ll write an essay.

I’m the oldest of an oldest of an oldest. The example for three people. The person my father speaks to like a peer and my mother like I’m a particularly diligent subordinate.

I take responsibility in the airport, through the stress of nothing to do during two-hours delays. I learn to entertain.

I take charge of gathering, comforting, keeping out of the way during the most unsavory disagreements. I learn to protect.

I take charge of washing hair without stinging her eyes, talking about goals without the pressure of a watchful future, comforting her over a particularly harsh scolding.

Even before I had the “her”s, my soul has felt the same at 4 and 16 and 20. I think it may well feel the same at 80.

I was the one who faced cursing, stalking, online searches and mid-day phone calls. Who read emails and was read into. Who developed a rusted colander of a shield to use 20 times per week. Who was chased through hallways and stonewalled and screamed for it to go away, knowing it’d do nothing. Who was told I was weak but stubborn, smart but wasting my talent, compassionate but selfish, wise but not knowing what was best for myself, open-minded but choosing the wrong people. Who was told I was difficult and far from anyone’s ideal child. But still my presence was relied on.

Cute suggests rest. It implies a lack of responsibility aside from your appeal to others. It’s bizarre to hear, especially from those I’m supposed to be caring for. What in me could be gently prodded, amusedly accepted? I haven’t been the cute one since 2004.

There’s nothing praiseworthy here. There’s nothing to take care of here.

Set your heart at rest.