|
by Steven Duong I’m guided by a signal in the heavens / I’m guided by this birthmark on my skin / I’m guided by the beauty of our weapons / First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin —Leonard Cohen Chew your coordinates until they’re slack and flavorless, a night sky squeezed of jazz. Swing low, angel. Fly dirty if you need to—no gods up here. Let the wind ride you like an old lover, one who knows you as I do. Seduce the radar’s shadow. Fill its red mouth with music. Your body—leave it unpainted. As you approach me, the city of your worst thoughts, the carrier of your great dis- ease, keep your eyes peeled, your head on a swivel. Stealth! Do the jitterbug, the Linda Blair. No dance like a knife fight in a phone booth. Savor my downtown breath, hot and sour. Read my buildings for their stories, those sharp bodies, bristling like teeth. Remember, a man cannot be a blade. A bomb cannot be a metaphor. Fangs out, love. The earth’s perched within your sights—fondle it, flatten it, bury it beneath itself. Come meet my makers. Make me martyr, moondust, myth. What is our love but a winged madness, our bodies but a payload? There is no wind as divine as ours. Swing low, swing low. Come clean, come home. Find me, raw and righteous in each small demise, each sweet detonation.  photo by Lucie Duffy Steven Duong is a San Diego poet and a child of Vietnamese immigrants. The recipient of two Academy of American Poets University and College Prizes, he has poems featured or forthcoming in Pleiades, Passages North, Salt Hill, Asian American Writers' Workshop, Split Lip Magazine, Hobart, and Poets.org. As a 2019 Thomas J. Watson Fellow, he is currently traveling in Malawi, China, Thailand, and Trinidad to conduct a yearlong writing project titled "Freshwater Fish and the Poetry of Containment." Check out this project and other works-in-progress at stevenduongwrites.com or Steven's twitter, @boneless_koi. |