Mai Der Vang

You swear the twin spirits taught you to write. At night, you climbed the leaves to hear the gods. Catch in the throat. Hollow breath. Paj is not pam is not pab. Blossom is not blanket is not help. Ntug is not ntuj is not ntub. Edge is not sky is not wet. On sheet of bamboo with indigo branch. To txiav is not the txias. To scissor is not the cold. The obsidian mask will make its own sleep, leave behind the silver your body won’t shed. Now you are Niam Ntawv who was once a young farmer scrawling in secret toward the triggering day. When they could take no more, when all that you had was given, you lined your grave with paper.

For Pos Moua What is the name for an antelope who grazes inside a dream then vanishes into the nebula’s brush. What is the face for refurbishing grammar at each comma’s lip. Whose identity never remembers the shape of beige. What is the word for how to conjure the sigh of a line hushed beneath the flap of a thousand shifting plumes. What is the body of a garden where a crescent despairs, drifts beneath the melt of amber. The season is always growing out its hooves. One cradlesong of your leaving is not larger than the forest of your arrival. To make you a noun forever. A loss of you cannot be equal to the loss of you.

I can’t leave my hurting skull Or the rose apple opening inside me. I’ll count the weeks, months, Unfurling each numbered day in my hair. Frost ribbons inside my brain, Canals push up my leg. I’m moving on To what the world needs me to know. I am the angel trapped inside the bullet. I am the exit wound trapped inside the angel. Am I the scarecrow Perched at the end of the human trail. I’ll palm cotton between my prayers Until the universe has passed, Waving down jellyfish To volcano hours. What force propels a bullet From its chamber. Is it sourced by water Trickling in a karst cave, Or is it an angel’s gasp as she flees. I can’t answer it all, But my mask grows taller every year.

From a recessed hollow Rumble, I unearth as a creature Conceived to be relentless. Depend on me to hunt you Until you find yourself Counting all the uncorked Nightmares you digested. I will let you know the burning Endorsed by the effort of Matches. And you will claw Yourself inward, toward a Conference of heat as the steam Within you surrenders, caves You into a cardboard scar. Even what will wreck you Are your mother’s chapped lips. Even to drip your confession Of empty rooms. I know about Your recipe of rain, your apiary Ways. Trust me to be painful.

I once carried my mollusk tune All the way to the lottery of gods. Rain was the old funeral choir That keened of a hemisphere Moored under lampwings. Clouds never left. I knew The lights would shine clearer If I closed my eyes, just as I knew the Pacific would teach Me to sleep before tying my Name to the flaming. Here I Am now at the end of amethyst, Drizzling another lost sunrise Inside the quilt of your hand.