FANZINE

BUT NOT CHUANG TZU’S BUTTERFLY

 

Did you know – butterflies in medieval manuscripts are evil.
Because they are pretty,
they are symbolic of frivolousness and lust.

Did you know – moths are instead symbolic of transcendental worth.
Butterflies are sometimes drawn together
in the margins with snails.

Snails outside of their shells are slimy
and resemble the genitalia of hermaphrodites.
There are owl butterflies – their wings have patterns like owl eyes.

They don’t glow like owl eyes, though.

When my legs are open and naked, from a distance,
they and my pussy look like a butterfly.

I’m not kidding.
There really are owl butterflies.

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FAREWELL NOTES WRITTEN AT THE STATION

 

i.
I need some sort of structure back in my life
starting from tomorrow; or simultaneously
when I hear the train arriving, braking.

 

ii.
Because it is always an imperfect tree,
its branches crooked, its roots exposed,
its fruit fell. They all presume.

 

iii.
I think of a time machine
that only takes us to the past
and the present.
We will not see
that made-up century when the sky breaks
and all the chairs in the world
have seats made out of old milk bottles.

 

iv.
The wooden bench I sit on now
has hijacked the beach.
It has patterns of waves,
pebbles and garbage tooth twine.

 

v.
It’s raining. Everybody has scratched their arms
in the rain at least once. Do they remember
what they were thinking?

 

vi.
I will think of you all the while,
but not the way a mathematician or a mortician
thinks of their subject.

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FINAL WORDS

 

The last time I saw you, you said:
“I’ve stopped making jelly beans and guess what, I’m re-reading
Great Expectations. The bit where Pip humiliates Joe in London—
you’d need a heartful of lye not to laugh.”
You were trying to provoke, your hands dug deep into
my garden’s dirt. I worried about the daffodil seeds
under your fingernails. You ruined your last watch.

You also recited your poetry: “When a boy / gets into a girl’s
room these days, / others are bound to think about her ‘box’.”
“Save that for your next Facebook update,” I said.
Although I immediately regretted it, I couldn’t say ‘Sorry’.
You made a face and on the soil drew a mushroom
with a big stem. Then you signed your name, cursive, next to it.
The first letter had a big round head, the middle one
was hunched. The last carried a thin frog leg.

“My preferred means to go to the hospital is
by an office chair, pulled by a Royal horse. It must be
fit and well-groomed. It has to be a quiet morning.”
I hmmed, not knowing what to say. You rambled on:
“People must not use ‘gingerly’ in a poem,
don’t you think? I am sick of ‘gingerly’. Or ‘blackberries’.
‘Frenulum’. You use ‘toes’ quite often, you know?
You should stop using ‘toes’. And ‘marvellous’.
I’ll laugh seeing these words, even written backward.”

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10 RESPONSES TO A SONNET IN 10 PARTS WITHOUT 14 LINES

 –for Ricky Garni, who continues to inspire

 

Did I tell you I love this? That I would publish it
in anywhere in a heartbeat.

The syntactic pattern you used in part x
has a technical name and it’s called ‘palinode’.

In part iv, there should be a space in ‘outto’,
unless if you intentionally put ‘out’ and ‘to’ together,
which, come to think of it, would be a nice invention,
modelling as it does on ‘into’, ‘onto’. Next,
you can make ‘outof’ and ‘inandout’.

I like soft pears (although those in part i are not soft).
I never imagined pears thinking of outer space, but why not?

I thought the colour fun/pun in part iii very nice
(and of course, a bit sad since it’s blue).

I like part v. Is the Billy here the same Billy
in your other poems? I like anything that has ‘wind’ in it
and the last bit – that it could be people, not wind,
is very you – I mean you do these reversals often.

I like how ‘hateful bills’ are punished
by being slowly ground through the spindle.
The imaginary Jaguar is unexpected and delightful.

Part vii, needless to say, made me laugh, hard.

The culinary section in part ix is the least strong,
part ii – the second least effective.
It feels like filler
amidst the other parts, with their stronger personalities.
Yes, even though it has knives and a crossbow!

I love, love, love the part about parentheses.
You know it already – if I could extract
just a few lines
to present the sonnet to the whole world,
that would be the part I choose.

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LOVE SONG

 

I like the country, especially when
cicadas create such immense noise.
Listening to it, I can stop hearing

certain aural remnants from
previous relationships.
Your cologne released from its bottle
sounded exactly like

the spray of pesticide over
a lot filled with the ghosts of lice.

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