1.
a bird / falls off / a balcony / panicked grasping / fistfuls of / air
2.
I was wrong
please I was
wrong please I
wanted nothing please
I don’t want
Monica Youn, "Palinode," from Blackacre. Copyright © 2016 by Monica Youn. Used with the permission of Graywolf Press, www.graywolfpress.org.
What is your face?
A house, of sorts.
What is your foot?
A chipped stone blade.
What did you dream?
A rain-washed road.
What did it mean?
It meant nothing.
What have you learned?
The sky forgives.
What does it forgive?
Each jet its wake.
What do you want?
A smile, of sorts.
No, what do you want?
I want nothing.
What’s in your hand?
A leafless twig.
No. Show me. What’s that in your hand?
Monica Youn, “Interrogation of the Hanged Man," from Blackacre. Copyright © 2016 by Monica Youn. Used with the permission of Graywolf Press, www.graywolfpress.org.
one day they showed me a dark moon ringed
with a bright nimbus on a swirling gray screen
they called it my last chance for neverending life
but the next day it was gone it had already
launched itself into the gray sky like an escape
capsule accidentally empty sent spiraling into the
unpeopled galaxies of my trackless gray body
Monica Youn, “Blackacre," from Blackacre. Copyright © 2016 by Monica Youn. Used with the permission of Graywolf Press, www.graywolfpress.org.