Congenital

Leo Kang

Milk blossoms strewn across the cobblestones

like an animal deprived of its violence.

That they worshipped this delicate, ticking thing

which was man-made sorrow. Which was marginally

unborn.

That a vocabulary could not survive without its many

bright dislocations. Nor the koi pond without the kingfishers

aligning above it.

Young tiger, you are casting shadows in the shape of a house.

Washed rice to the knuckle. Left soju for the dead.

That this skin would think persimmon and bear its own

landmarks. Think of gesture. Think of genome

as a terror-comprehending wildflower.

Once, a mother shattered a stone rice bowl

against the floor. Her son gathered up the pieces

and the room was almost empty.

Resuscitation as a Fragment of Film Reel, After Storm

Leo Kang

So we                 tried to be  tried two more

moon-  bitten                birds  tried to

breathe in                and excavate      this dawn

Instruction Manual

Leo Kang

after Emily Skillings’“No People In It”

This here is a method of marking territory. This thrashing

around us. This harry and silo.

Blueprint of sky, so slight it could be

blood-close. Coordinates tendoning, or tincturing,

across the gaps.

This is a rail line. Radiation around the recent.

This is an axiom. Algal bloom.

From here, it is almost impossible not to flutter

from one side of the phrase to the other.

Sever

our tenderest anxieties as they twist

and pupae into chitinous wings. 

Remember to remain perpendicular

against the memory. Upon landing,

gather fistfuls into softer relief.

Knead out this hair. A haze of monosyllables.

This eye-shaped entrance. Iris noun.

They say the names and properties of everything

we ever were will be available only by summertime.

They say these are the burnt and ruined industries 

of our faces.

These ways we are held against the light.

Writer’s Notebook

These poems are (as I suspect all poems are, really) about growing up. Growing up can be a violent act, but it can also be a gentle, habitual one, like brushing your hair or washing rice. 

“Congenital” is one of my first poetic tanglings with my cultural identity. It was inspired by the cataclysmic poems of Sun Yung Shin and borrows its last line from Richard Siken’s “War of the Foxes.” 

“Instruction Manual” began in the belly of Emily Skillings’ “No People In It.” Hers is a tough, luminous creature, all sound and heat and color. As a tribute to John Ashbery, it’s both tragic and playful, and it made me want to dissect myself.

“Resuscitation” is a memory. It came quietly, in tides. Its words are too scared to touch one another. 

I hope these poems say something about the messes of what we were, and are, and will be. Failing that, I hope they tickle your brain for a little while. Or remind you of something you had forgotten.

About the writer