JANE WONG

THE NEW YEAR


I spent all morning
Trying to behead a cloud

Its neck was all gristle
I couldn’t understand why

Tooth and nail, I fought
Nothing at all

A future tense hit me
Right in the forehead

Brow to brow I held on
To be allowed this joy

Water pools in the eye of a cactus
Flowering among the needles

I will, would, would’ve
Kissed each eye that woke

Each bending lash
A blistering black

*

January fog stretches
Across lanes of traffic

The steel factory shines in silver
Like the pelt of an otter

To clear the year from guilt
I cleaned the insides of a squash

I scrapped my knee on the street
Everyone laughed and pointed

I held my fingers
In my own mouth

I would like it this way,
Wouldn’t I?

Black flies in the kitchen
Knit me a scarf

What bliss buzzing
Along this clean clavicle

*

A snake with its head cut off
Encircles my waist

I count to three and
Cut off each bad temper

Isn’t it just? This is a declaration
I have yet to make

Nightly, I sweep the kitchen floor
I brush fields of dandelions

My legs a broom
Spores in the thick of it

I spent the day
Climbing your back

How busy we get
Making and unmaking the bed

*

A small island is formed
By the accumulation of trash

Can I declare sovereignty here?
Raise all my flags here?

In the supermarket
A ponytail hits me in the face

Physics can explain most phenomena
How the body in sleep cannot move

Explain this dead weight
Explain this straight hit to the temple

I’m tired of negotiations
I’ve finished all the required reading

Taking a knife to a pineapple is pleasant
Leveled and leveraged in the sweet

*

Cement pours into a street
Trapping everyone

I spent years looking through
A telescope the wrong way

Years emptying a bathtub of water
Accumulating film along the side

A new muscle forms
In the New Year

Grinning in gristle and rust
This year I will protect my own porch

This year the angle of everything will change
A row of smokestacks will sweep the sun clean

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TYPO 24