Suzume, an Origami Bird at the Apocalypse
1.
What is the universe?
– a paper star flew,
a sparrow
on its wing.
2.
Folded star
aviary –
java sea kenya
song desert cape
russet true suzume
house fox clay
tree olive field
sage rock vesper
3.
A star
flew
a paper sparrow –
the end.
Dear Millennium, on Proof of Beauty in Exile
Exiled, does beauty pose hypotheses without solutions,
i.e. only a desire to prove thingness-as-beauty
or vice versa? If I say a bowl of radish kimchi is gorgeous, for instance,
this is not a proof. Or if I say, bless this head of baechu cabbage,
seasoned with scarlet flakes of gochugaro, it is a performative
utterance. (Bury it in the winter ground.) Dear millennium, a verb
alone proves nothing underground.
If I say, exhume the frozen, uncracked kimchi urn
big enough to ferment the bridled chaos of girlhood –
blood-honey of subterranean
ripening as an object of transformation, then what ensues,
dear millennium?
Let’s open this jar of red spices, of anaerobic organisms,
of your flaming antidote to famine
to simply call it grace.
Invocation for the Water in the Well, Jing Shui
Come to my well and drink
dark cool liquid –
windlass
at your shoulder
of jing shui . It is not gold
or an aqueous orb
to see,
sailing on a lake
of regress. No koi carp loiter in
rain the scent of . Come
for our burdens
are light.
My inner latitude
never touches sky.
Near the rose-canes by holy water,
lepers rejoice,
eyes healed and skin
without lesions –
without transparency,
never say
we wonder or wish.
Instead, we say it is. The roseate
lepers sing, – We exist.
Karen An-hwei Lee is the author of Phyla of Joy (Tupelo 2012), Ardor (Tupelo 2008) and In Medias Res (Sarabande 2004). She authored a novel, Sonata in K (Ellipsis 2017). Currently, she lives in San Diego, where she serves in the university administration at Point Loma Nazarene University.