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

DIANA KHOI NGUYEN

NUDE IN FOREST

The Everything Guide set me here, shed my gamine
to an old blue year.  Clothesless in the wild river,
I tried to drown myself so I could remember 
how to rise.  I am lily-sister and raven bound: 
I consume and destroy and excruciate.  Even alone, 
in this indefatigable hour, my sleepless legs 
reach for a warm thing.  There is nothing of yours
for me to use.  Tomorrow I will mend 
the dragon’s-blood tree, madly holding to a form.
I cannot not come back to the girl with the red bow.

ABDUCTION

I wake to find                            a moth beneath my pillow

It makes the sound of an alien lost in flesh


---
                 There is seizing

                                        It’s 
sweaty in paradise

Night strikes dawn with a stick                
It’s bright as a desert & no one is choking


---
My heart blacked out
but came to, leathered
                                          Magellan handcuffs me

I whistle a moth leg               off the bed
pick at the lock with it


---
                                      A lamp explodes:                
                                            he reaches over & finds neither             
light nor dark              


                      Stop Plate Tectonics

MAN WITH SWAN ARM

He didn't return as a reborn. 
It was awful to be in the vehicle for rooms, 
to never escape walking.  Wind brought the scent 
of reeds, the beetle's salt marsh and the mute 
swan-wife's call, unanswered.  Nesting failure was certain 
because he could not shed the failure of his form.  
Reality is impenetrable.
Only one wet life from his egg clutch loved him.
Loved him through his absence with the blindness
of a god.  Domestic ghosts took the rest.
Left remainders of his former life: eggshells
caught in fruitless brambles.