Möng-Lan

Three-Auricled Heart

1

  a clock tower
                     there is nothing around      but houses
                                   monochrome dusk & mist
                            as if in a black & white film
                                                 a man counts down


              because the waves
            of Zepolite (el lugar de la muerte)
  the fiesty waters of Nha Trang
                                              choked on their turquoise
                      carrying me away their mercurial arms
                                   because the shards experience
                                                                metallic pieces
                     are miniscule worlds  desolate
because that first slip into the world
                the second and the third
                                                        glitched on an opaque membrane
              has for its substance    patience
we shovel against the densest part of earth
               choking up iron  ions  Icons
                                          desiring the body
                  until the spirit is felt


2

            births & deaths schlepped
                                            on my back    trinkets
                                  of the Fool    the Buddha
(in front of me   a jade sculpture
               my mother’s)   spews
                                                  out his thoughts
                                   ensnared in my throat like a catfish
        with enormous whiskers


the Golden Gate Bridge  from my window
                                                   is a red of smothered crabs
                  cooked in dreamfog
   savage-haired
                                     drummers in the park    beat on
                           African rhythms cunning
         bodies seducing


3

catfish dissected  in Tenderloin, a baby ruptures its own three-auricled heart with a pair of rusty scissors.  heart is found lying on stairway ledge next to rusty scissors.  bits of its twitching muscle cling to corridor.  baby is carried in hands of uncle, buried half-alive.



               dream-stricken hand
   my hair pushed back
                       the nightmare wind
      deep in my skin


                               King Lear is Prospero
              by gregarious wind



       glass   cracked spontaneously
                                            broken shard tattling
                   to floor    the distraught season
                                                      white voices
                               embers of utterances


4

Kant’s clock tower hovering a space of no time

the city is split in half a geode of skyscrapers

weeds have grown legs sprawling over highways

fossil vortex and your vices

splayed over the walls of the room

hint of magnolias  splurge of daisies

for a while then ashes dispersed

what is left what is this season a name your nemesis

death and the scent of a particular


5

                   the seas dry up

leaving fossilized fish    salt diamonds

            then do we withdraw from life

                  leave no trace

  our breaths’ embroidered

                design   hardly cryptic

        whole lifetimes

        laid full     bare

    a camel’s humped back


                                       fragments sated with voices