TWO POEMS by Sally Wen Mao
MUTANT ODALISQUE
This is not an ode. February’s ice razor scalps
the gingko trees, their hair pulled skyward
like the ombre roots
of young women. March harrows
us mottled girls. Vernal equinox:
a hare harries the chicks, hurries
behind wet haystacks. Livestock.
Gnats. The glue-traps are gone.
March, ladies. March for your dignity.
March for your happiness. March, a muss
of lidless eyes. In the forest, a handsome man pisses,
puissant, luminary’s ink leaking on trees.
Penury I furl into the craven lens, in its mirror, a pulse:
webcam where I kiss my witnesses.
They watch and watch and watch the butcher
cut, the surgeon mend, they watch the glade
of crushed femora, they watch my dorsal fin,
they watch my scales dart across the cutting
board. They watch the way I open, flinch, bent
against the wind that beheads the nimbuses.
Or April’s turning toward ecstatic sob—departure.
Networks freeze, all sloe, all ice. Transmitters
falter. The cicatrix soaped, cilia & pus
rubbed raw. No machine. I dare
my witnesses to stick their pencils on me.
Do they marvel at a conquest—
blue flesh & gills. Do they think of me as soiled
or new soil. Do they take notes in their medical
journals. Am I their inspiration O Vesalius god
of anatomy is that why they ask so softly for my name.
OCULUS
This morning I peruse the dead girl’s live
photo feed. Two days ago, she uploaded
her confessions: I can’t bear the sorrow
captions her black eyes, gaps across a face
luminescent as scum. I can’t bear Ithaca snow—
how it falls, swells over the bridges,
under my clothes, yet I can’t be held
or beheld here, in this barren warren,
this din of ruined objects, peepholes into boring
scandals. Stockings roll high past hems
as I watch the videos of her boyfriend, cooing:
behave, darling, so I can make you my wife.
How the dead girl fell, awaiting a hand to hold,
eyes to behold her as the lights clicked on
and she posed for her picture, long eyelashes
all wet, legs tapered, bright as thorns.
Her windows overlook Shanghai, curtains drawn
to cast a shadow over the Huangpu river,
frozen this year into a dry, bloodless
stalk. Why does the light in the night
promise so much? She wiped her lens
before she died. The smudge still lives.
I saw it singe the edge of her bed.
