from “Water Guest”
an ocean away from where you are not
a guest where are you from
people ask me ask people who look
like me look like anything but
the blankness of a page
let me turn then to the color
of water into ink ground against a stone
the words carried back by each water guest
each bringer of news and love and tribulation here
are the words that belong to you
here are the words that belong
from “遺 產”
Where can I set this inheritance down?
Maybe every winter was like this, once.
I know every winter was like this once,
the whiteness devised to draw us in.
from “When You Someday Read This—”
I have taken your mouth.
I listened, not carefully enough, spelled it
exactly wrong. Forgive me everything
you thought you could trust me with.
Forgive me: what I’ve forgotten,
what I wasn’t ready to say, what
I never knew. Inside your opening mouth
is a story, and I’m waiting—