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It Was a Bird

    steven chung

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In the dim darkness we find

Smooth pebbles underneath our pillows.

 

It is your face, an outline to match

That optical illusion of the kissing vase

 

Holding no flowers.  In a heat map

We are blue because the farther away from

 

The source, the safer, for us a larger ocean

To swim under.  Another day I would have been

 

Shot by a passerby’s glance, pulled down

By a ship’s mast, its muzzle.  And last week you told me,

 

Lips in mine, that every time a green sparrow flies

It gets shot because it doesn’t exist. 

 

The pistol does, even as we pull ourselves

Under sheets, there is an unmistakable glint

 

Perhaps from your eyes,

But mine are closed like our bedroom doors.

 

My mother said never to keep a gun in bed

And to make sure the safety is always on,

 

But I’ve lost my sense of hearing lately,

Too many shots fired near my head.

 

I cannot hear her.  Something the birds

Would speak of in their little tunes.

 

 

 

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Museum Bodies

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Tuesday in a room without furniture,

we tamely toss aside the rest

through the empty window frames.

You lie next to me, nothing but a thread

of air between us.  Is this bareness?

On your skin, nothing.  On mine, yours.

This is living incognito, collecting an empty history,

a history I empty into your mouth each month.

I want to be a stranger to you

like the homeless man sleeping

on the couch we threw outside.

A stranger, so you can want

me all the more,

a museum piece with no caption

that you cannot touch.

 

 

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Morse Code

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The drapes drawn across the windows

can’t hide the transparent: my body

a river flowing backwards, a capsized boat

staying afloat.  In the room things get lost

in translation when tongues

mean whatever is unspoken.  What we forget

in these moments is that words are enough.

the type of words formed by vowels,

spilling out of our mouths into

a vow that we won’t be shattered like the light

falling through the living room blinds

at the other end of the house.

No, we say.  And then our silhouettes

echo each other, one shorter, another faster,

telling ourselves we need no remorse

for the light in our bones, or for the shadows.