Dark thing,
make a myth of yourself:
all women turn into lilacs,
all men grow sick of their errant scent.
You could learn
to build a window, to change flesh
into isinglass, nothing
but a brittle river, a love of bone.
You could snap like a branch—No,
this way, he says, and the fence
releases the forest,
and every blue insect finds an inch of skin.
He loves low voices, diffidence
on the invented trail,
the stones you fuck him on. Yes
to sweat’s souvenir, yes to his fist
in your hair, you bite
because you can. Silence
rides the back of your throat,
his tongue, your name.
Jennifer Chang, “This Corner of the Western World” from The History of Anonymity. Copyright © 2008 by Jennifer Chang. Reprinted by permission of The University of Georgia Press.
Source: The History of Anonymity (University of Georgia Press, 2008)
