The Neighbourhood Cat

I like rhymes. Sometimes.

[mjao7]

ghazal in green

I wake up unjealous and go to bed green.

my days could be rose-gold but they’re instead green

 

like screens made to be replaced. I do wonder

if that’s why in my youth I was force-fed greens.

 

wings raku-fired, I was but a grasshopper

so when my friends bit off my head I bled green

 

I grew back into a Goliath beetle,

wings azure and lilac and an unsaid green.

 

through one thousand lenses I saw the whole world,

tried to tell someone but my brother’s red-green

 

colourblind. and yes, I too have the gene but

it’s quiet. I know that I died bleeding green.

[mjao7]

city girl

cars churn water. lightning,

street lights. reflected in black glass,

I have no face.

[mjao7]

body, water

Feet too secure, I throw my gaze overboard:

the river weeds are about to fall on their face

then the resin sets. Dusted with white down feathers

which could almost be flower petals.

I run my paddle along the surface

it shifts briefly to humour me, then returns to being art.

 

I look ahead and the sky stretches its self-portrait across the ripples,

leaves it to set and crinkle

until there is nothing underneath,

nothing to touch, to reach for.

As I drift downstream, dust collects on dry paint—

no, swan feathers.

[mjao7]

friend

Every time I go to the bathroom, I see her open door,

the big window which trades warmth

for the ocean-wave-roars of passing cars.

 

I see the naked mattress

and empty drawers.

 

I stand there for the two hours I would have talked to her

and a baby stroller chatters across the street in reply.

‎ 

I turn up the water pressure so she’ll hear I’m showering

then turn it down in case she’s sleeping.

 

There will be no footsteps quickening into a morning run to wake me up

so my eyes open in the middle of the night and I set an alarm

to lay in bed for an hour, my mind chasing someone between train stations,

(their luggage catches on the cobblestone)

then get up to walk to the bathroom.

[mjao7]

the dulling of the knife

If I fall in the forest and there’s no one around to hear it

do I still have to wake up tomorrow?

⠀

If I cut a limb off a tree and shave its skin off

until it looks like the legs of my childhood bed

will the grass even care?

⠀

Do the leaves mind when I tear them up and grind their juices out with a rock

and strain the green liquid through my favourite t-shirt

and use the green ink to write the same song again

about the same branches, same leaves, same

1 metre gap between the trees,

pitches scrawled on my left arm and lyrics dripping down my right

then pouring out of my mouth

⠀

I don’t need an applause.

When I fall in the forest, I'm around to hear it.

Is it me who falls?

[mjao7]

the reformed historian

It always feels like a mistake to leave your hometown

no matter how bored you are with the patterns in the clouds.

Or how careful you were to not walk around too much

lest your footsteps pierce roots into the sidewalk.

⠀

Driving to the airport, there’s the bright yellow signage of your neighbourhood restaurant

the uphill road to your old school

but soon any carcasses stinking of the past give way to palm tree plantations and the open highway

and you can’t think over the screaming of the rain and the roaring of the cars.

(Even you aren’t narcissistic enough to think they’re cursing your name.)

⠀

Still, it feels like a mistake.

No matter how lightly you walk, there will be cracks in the sidewalk

to drop keys, coins, souvenir t-shirts down.

Face pressed to the concrete, you launch a rescue effort

then give up and go home.

(Aren’t you already home?)

See them the next day after the nightly storm,

engorged with water, no longer yours.

⠀

Where is your legion of flies?

Where is your blanket of moss?

An ahistorical person who has taken refuge in a miasma of memories

but steps out, smelling of nothing.

[mjao7]

canterbury cathedral

The Sun skewered on cathedral spires. It’s sliding down

clouds soaking up the blood, wind spinning around to dry them,

cobblestones threatening to pull away from my feet.

⠀

Passing by students, tourists and funeral processions,

I don’t breathe until I’m out of earshot.

Yes, I’ll believe in all the ghost stories,

if it means I have someone to walk the dark corridors with.

⠀

I’ll tell you things. I hope you think they’re my secrets.

I’ll never say what I think as I walk past

the cathedral, gold in floodlights.

⠀

I have the right to be buried here.

I’ll return in the morning, wearing white.

[mjao7]

monsoon

Mint-mouthwash-rain. The roof gurgles and spits.

Concrete walls for an asphalt sink.

And when it stops to gasp for air, you can hear the weather. But the whims of the clouds become TV static when you can feel your hands, when you don’t have to pull a hood over your head as it becomes bloated with wind or snap the bones of your umbrella back into position.

The roof must be clean now. There’s only an occasional tap on the window. Any time a daydream becomes too sunlit, a knock on the glass brings the water back.

[mjao7]

half past four

The sun is down, so I will bathe in the tolling of the cathedral bell,

the dull rev of an engine dissolving like salt water in sand,

the fan spinning in my computer like soap down a drain.

⠀

I will soak and I will sink. Enough egg-beater kicks

towards remembering a sky bleeding gold then hell,

chasing the luggage wheels chattering across the cobblestone,

knowing whether the red light in my neighbour’s window calls my name.

⠀

I do not float. I will not float. I will be clean.

[mjao7]

deformation

a tumble-dried credit card/

the smell of burnt hair

a rained-on certificate/

the smell of fragrance-free soap

 

can you make my corners curl in?

could I drape myself around you and be beautiful like

a towel collapsing on a bathroom floor?

can you promise that I will never return to the way I am

now?

[mjao7]

unnatural minor

poking needles into every windowsill of my brain

and sure, the birds stop building nests

but don’t explode into feathers into barbs

they circle around my skull singing

a lament in aeolian mode

no raised 7th rising up to home

a minor key without conviction

a dirge when no one has died

grieving for grief over grief that grieves

in on itself. knock on it:

hollow. throw it—

one bounce. poke a needle in?

swallowed whole.

[mjao7]

Shreds

She comes apart like corn-based plastic:

pull gently and holes appear

like jaws dragged apart in a silent scream.

  

There is nothing to feed them but a widening emptiness.

Her pockets have holes, fabric

that can withstand the straining of her fingers

but not the weight of her hands.

  

She wants to learn to rip paper with a ruler,

how to tear in a straight line without

folding and folding the other way and reversing

and sharpening the crease with overgrown fingernails

and playing with a line like food

until the paper buckles.

  

She is told destruction is fun;

she considers ripping out her hair.

She is told self-destruction is fun;

she considers ripping out all her hair.

  

She clenches a comb and

pulls gently.

[mjao7]

decadence

I‌ think the American Dream is owning a printer

tall enough to be your eleven-year-old son,

majestic enough to warrant its own corner,

delivering a soliloquy every time its switch is flipped.

 

It will print double-sided

and be fed white bricks

and will cheerfully whir 

instead of choking on the paper.

 

Colour will manifest in blocks not stripes.

It will spit out warmth. You will hug it

and sign its adoption papers.

I think that is the American Dream.

[mjao7]

sedoka through a mirror

Are you right- or left-

handed? If the glass between

us broke, which hand should I hold?

-

Hold both. Neither has ever

been held. Through shattered glass, you’ll

have to show me how.

[mjao7]

ode to things that return

a green foam boomerang spinning into

a misshapen paper plane u-turning into

a digital watch choking a wrist coiling into

a loaf with cinnamon swirling into

a call to prayer looping into

a monsoon gust through a window spiralling into

a cheap pen lent to a friend rolling into

 

a black ink pool at the bottom of a bag climbing into

a leaf of a storm-felled tree soaring into

a severed prayer mat tassel growing into

a dust-evicted bread recipe rising into

a second hand swinging up into

a fingernail-sharpened crease flying into

a dirty fluffy foam boomerang that still spins.

//napowrimo.30

[mjao7]

ritual

we recite

“I love you”

each prayer

 

adds a pinch

to the salt

ring circling

 

us. if we

stopped, the wind

would whirl white

//napowrimo.29

[mjao7]

I’m sorry

I don’t love you enough. I don’t

dream of you on weekends. I tire

of constant conversation. I break

my gaze when my eyes itch. I grew

 

roses in my throat but I won’t

stop sweating in front of eternal fires.

For you, my heart will beat and ache

but when I’m dead, that won’t be true:

 

I don’t love you enough to stay awake.

Is it selfish to only give one life to you?

//napowrimo.28