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Cynthia Dewi Oka: Pulses

August 17, 2017 by PBQ Leave a Comment

begin the body’s wick
the kidney-root of flame
 
muscular palimpsest    my father’s
lips a memory of water
 
hold vigil around the bed
        	    become garden
    	float and bless
                    	 life’s effort to lift
 
 	 the dark helmet :
 
(a) he throbbed like a mountain range
(b) cold is a field of tulips somewhere in northern Washington
 
the sky empties of conviction
 	each downward stroke
  a bony green    frost
simultaneous char
 
there are waves we cannot
resist    waves like God’s
 
fingernails dragged
across a veil :
 
(c) field of insects, sheen of eyes, field of frozen lightning
(d) o, petal, please defend the yellow, the red, the purple, the blue
 
see the son he was
the lineage of winds that made
                 	refugee of his heart
 
hands folded now	immune
to shadows in the corners
of his mind only velvet
 
   tulips
    thicken calcify      knuckles
split at the seams     walls
    	of the damage taken
 
                                            	apart :
 
(e) a smile is a perfectly tied shoelace, a black windbreaker
(f) with blue fleece collar the body pushes out
 
his salt in the bowl of my neck
 newly formed
	   plateau on earth       from one
    	 absence
 to another
 
what is weight    what is human
but the blinking of tulips
 
	 around a small downed moon?
 
(g) both the skin of the egg and the hair caught in a bun are efforts
(h) to bind memory
 
father        my head, we are
twin fruits gnarled into one
   	the neck our pulses
      	beat in battle
 
mother     a mesh of nights is thrown
over your cheeks a country
 
        	 	which will not leave
       	my body :
 
(i) we are always approaching the edge of a foreign land
(j) we are no less afraid
 
	 of the sweetness left
    for bees to redeem
  	stamen knuckles the dust
    	gathering force our love
 
                    	 this wind-bowed grass

Filed Under: Contributors 93, Issue 93, Poetry, Poetry 93 Tagged With: Contributors 93, Cynthia Dewi Oka, Issue 93, Poetry, Poetry 93

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