^{7/9/2020: the hope or ambition of achieving something}
^{7/10/2020: consequence of gastric feeding tubes in which food or vomit
is fatally inhaled into the lungs}

And what am I supposed to do? Sit in the yard, lungheave
your long-ashed particles in and out until either pollen or light
headedness coaxes out a closure? Expect it to thud on the grass
before me like afterbirth?

And what will I do with it? What will I do when it’s too late when
before it hits the ground, without thinking, it hardens in my eye, silvery
as cataract, as the fool’s gold you gifted every year, the ones you called
moonrocks, sent from NASA (you said every time);
a forced-out ritual
a premature fossilizing
irretractable?

It’s hard not to feel I’ve inherited your gift for compression, pinballing
between the two halves of the bogus science magazine about the left and
right sides of the brain, veined jelly scrambling for carpenter alignment,
no matter how far into the saving cosmos the temple incense fails to
take me.

But let me tell you,
on my birthday a few days ago, I lifted a puppy’s soft brown body out of
the cardboard box, wrapping paper splayed in a wheel of approximated
petals, and saw first (and only) how she would look on her last day, I
took my time with it:

euthanized on cool metal, scraps
steaming on a quiet intersection in July, heaving
hot car in the mall lot, a fished up chocolate
belly round with ocean
water—

               hello
love,
               oh, hello
hello
               let me tell you,
I took my time.

Poets

Tian-Ai

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