On mornings
Before they die mornings taste like mint toothpaste.
I had been asleep before, safe from sad news,
rocking myself dead by the sink.
The splintering of smoldering water
snapping like guitar strings in the marble bathtub
& autumn’s peach light through the slant of patterned window
pull my eyelids open, pink and thinning like rice paper.
News from the radio downstairs and the metallic clank of oven plates.
A male voice: the earthquake in Afghanistan
and Israeli soldiers in Gaza.
Over a thousand dead, he says. But first, Trump’s plans for 2024…
My feet are cold. I am sorry.
I let the water run and a tiny voice inside me goes on
and on & on, narrating the color/texture of the sky/
the strands/location of hair on the tile floor/the scent of warm garlic bread.
I cherry-pick the ripest words, their insides fresh with tangy pulp,
pluck them from inside my brain stem, trace them in the palm of my hand.
I tell myself I can write this goddamn poem.
The water is running and draws up in white wisps &
I look into the sweating mirror and by habit, tell myself to stay alive today,
forgetting what I think of the sky, the hair, the bread,
and no, I suddenly cannot write this goddamn poem anymore.
Ridiculous how depression takes the place of beautiful thought.
At least I have the dog-eyed faith of God.
I’m telling you, love is almost religion, and writing is love.
I remember begging him for a talent and he handed me a life
And I took it as a sign.
Whatever. I will not forget next time.
Downstairs, an ad on Pantene shampoo.
(Previously published in Lumina Journal)
Texas in Summer: Let’s Have an Hour Underneath the 8pm Sky
I. Prologue
I know I have
a good poem lodged in me
somewhere.
I open the hungry mouth of door & the sky
is changing hands
between twilight and evening.
Sit down with me, your bones are tired.
The voices from the house are like how you want death
to sound: faraway enough to forget.
A wobble of branches has
the same wind that turns up the
the dirt from streets of Paris.
The trees wave and throw
up leaves in applause.
Everything collapses back home.
II. Epiphany
The place, you would not know
until light. June is an
ugly month, but the breeze from
elsewhere loves me enough to brush
my hair, the mosquitos to pick at my flesh.
The incandescent glow from the last
porch light stretched,
elastic and tender, band-like, to mimic
a smoldering fire.
The clouds that cap us from falling into the atmosphere
play their final verse (most people mistake them for crickets).
III. Epilogue
This place, you would not believe
until light. June is a
soft month. The glint of stop sign metal
in the afterglow of streetlight &
the trees throw up their hands again,
this time in ash. The cough of plane engine
overhead, choking on blue sky.
Perhaps this flight is not mine to take, but I will have it
anyway.
Michelle Li has been nationally recognized by Scholastic Art and Writing and the Rising Voices Awards. She is an alumna of the Kenyon Review Young Writers Workshop and her work has been published in Blue Marble, Masque and Spectacle, and Aster Lit. In addition, she plays violin and piano and loves Rachmaninoff and Sylvia Plath. You can find her website at michelleli.carrd.co.
Chantarelle's Notebook 