Tuesday poem #167 : Muriel Leung : Notes on After-World Matrimony

So watch me closely through the narrow

gates of after-world hell. This bone-lake

gathering algae and medley of human jowls.

*

On the state of carnival debris: when I walk

with you hand in hand and peel apart. Eager

to wed you with charred lace snagged

against brick and spew flower.

*

I saw that the sun was awry and then it was

purple and smoke. I saw the days of you

in the sick of a chewed palm thrust through drywall.

*

When I am on the surgical table waiting to be cut

then threaded, I want to remember the color of my blood. 

*

This cake means you chose me. Why we have each guest

bring flour and chardonnay—to bake and to hope.

*

I hope you will hold tarp over me while the earth

topples over. I will build you a tall house

on elastic stilts and teach us to overcome vertigo. 

*

When injury becomes extinct, this is how

we know death repeats itself. We line

our boxes with silk, make ourselves comfortable.

Fall into all kinds of disaster bliss.

Muriel Leung is from Queens, NY. Her writing can be found or is forthcoming in The Collagist, Fairy Tale Review, Ghost Proposal, Jellyfish Magazine, inter|rupture, and others. She is a recipient of a Kundiman fellowship and is a regular contributor to The Blood-Jet Writing Hour poetry podcast. She is also a poetry reader for Apogee Journal. Currently, she is an MFA candidate in creative writing at Louisiana State University. Her first book Bone Confetti is forthcoming from Noemi Press in October 2016. Please visit her at www.murielleung.com.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan