h o m e........

p a s t   i s s u e s....

s u b m i s s i o n s....

l i n k s

ANNA MARIA HONG

CASSANDRA

I was about as wanted as a pang,

the kind in which

you know you’re not wound but fang,

not nun but perve, not helping hand but ditch . . .



Thus my popularity and hyper-

marketability in the personal

arena, though that’s not my problem either.

My problem is I’m shy. My arsenal



all organic matter: entrails, birds, skulls.

Or pattern, gleam, and some weird feeling that

I get to follow duly like a devil

fish and her probe. The subject of this portrait



is neither loathsome nor appealing but

is rather pleased because I say it.–

CIRCE
 

The fuck you in me crosses the street to

avert the fuck you in you. This fuck you

subverted gnaws the hasp of my liking you

until I don’t really like you and woe



is we. The former us in me would like

to be jettisoned too or at least have

a deck to leap from. The you I knew sticks

around in spite of the editions luck



would have of me and you. My memory

is quite specific: fucking you in the 

garden at night at last. Fucking you-me



Edenic with no future like the present.

A good fuck you to give fucking some love

too, looking back when it hasn’t happened yet.

PANDORA

To be adorable and thus worshipped 

to the world’s eight corners, all-gifted and given 

to hot Prometheus’ less foxy brother who said,

“I don’t mind getting hurt,” blurting it out



and smiling like he’d earned a piece of candy.

It took me ages to get over hating

the gods who made me. In the meantime, more

mundanity: humanity prospering,



blah, blah, blah. Meanwhile, they kept shoving

that thing in front of me, moving it around

the bedroom so I’d see it upon waking:



six surfaces, all containment all the time.

“Sure as metaphor’s a whore,” said E.

I flipped my lid and changed my name to Sally.

MINOS

Time to lower you into the correct

division. Ring on ring, not my design

but it is interesting. This will take

forever. Count backwards from ten. You might



feel a thing. It won’t stop hurting.

I have to find it to assess it. Not

great, but it’s what you had to work with. Like

a bean on a scale. A dried bean.



I’m writing this up for no one you know.

Yes, it’s always chaos on the seventh

floor. There are worse situations, as I 

think you knew. Beyond boring or reason



or weeping treason ad infinitum.

Did you love the burning world? I did.

WHO SO LIST TO
After Thomas Wyatt

The one one one. The one. I slept

apart from you because I felt so

pretty. Apart, apart—am I your sweet

morass? I am I am I am to you



more ass to you. Than any one! And thus,

thus, you you me. Must you must, because

thus. And thusly am I musting? Sidelong.

Because who so? Who so list to make big



so much. Baby. Are you mussing babies

along my side? Because and thus my sleep

on its assy side inside my big fuss.

Do you must? Now will you must long



me must? Who so must to make thus you 

sidelong you me baby bus inside aussi.







Anna Maria Hong’s poems are published and forthcoming in publications including Boston Review,  
jubilat, Verse Daily, The Harvard Gazette, Mandorla, No Tell Motel, and Green Mountains Review. 
The 2010-11 Bunting Fellow in Poetry at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, she has 
received residencies from Yaddo and Djerassi.