Out of Research Into Reveries
Give up the brain
Offer down its clumsy
meditations its blurred face
of fury its hellbound
policies bugged into my throat
Cough out
that sickled attitude the ragged shelves
downing my ankles every
era of hibernation
It’s all in the performance the butcher
operating on slabs
of my identity the bereaved dissecting
memories of an octopus
Lift out far from of it
Careen the elbows out of murk
with wine taken by
the midsummer full
moon
Constantly stoneward
hunting toward heartstill
Copyright © 2019 by Mai Der Vang. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 21, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.
“I wrote this piece at a time when I was mired in research work for my poems and feeling overwhelmed by the objective nature of research. How many versions of the truth are out there? Can we ever know the definitive truth of anything but ourselves in this present moment? How might we expand the possibility of what an answer can be? So much to consider in a world where the knowledge of our collective histories is often taken or hidden from us.”
—Mai Der Vang
Mai Der Vang
Mai Der Vang's debut poetry collection, Afterland, was selected by Carolyn Forché as the winner of the 2016 Walt Whitman Award, given by the Academy of American Poets.