Your Body is a Much Wilder Land by Kathy Nguyen
A silent thud touches the ground
and a burst of leaves and birds
shoots in the air
like an Old Geyser.
Your spine trembles in the wind,
each vertebrae holds a bruise,
a scrape, a broken limb—
a wishbone to your thoughts,
your horrible secrets you won’t let me see.
You bear your rings like medals
from war, memory stack on top
of memory…
aging and waiting for something,
or someone.
I breathe in bits of dirt from
Vietnam like secondhand smoke,
except my lungs turn black
from words and of grainy photographs
of people I can’t recognize—
another generation nonexistent to me(mory):
Past and present are one and the same.
I walked once in your womb,
jumped and kicked
as you tossed and turned
in your sleep,
and I wonder if your body was mine
or mine, yours.
You can’t shelter me forever.
I found a way out,
reaching to sunlight like a potted green plant
and words as music and oxygen,
while screaming to be free
and wild…
when you cut me loose
by the cord.
Breathing in,
my center digs its way
inside a cave—
a sleeping dragon atop
a hill of jewels and gold.
Breathing out,
my center folds outward,
pushing, crushing against gravity—
a relief imprinted, a release
sometimes forgotten
because it is sometimes buried,
just as a language
I can’t let go
and peel off layer by layer,
even though it seasons my tongue
like ginger and garlic,
and the body constantly reeks,
preserved in its culture.
Kathy Nguyen goes by A~Lotus or Ambiguitylotus online. She has been writing poetry since 7-8 years old but seriously worked on it since high school. She loves not only looking for patterns and symbolism when it comes to writing poetry but also in every single connection, thing, and person in her life. She aspires to go to nursing school and get a doctorate degree and believes that everything happens for a reason, including using art for therapy (and for keeping sanity!) and as a form of expression as well as to complement her love for science. Website: http://alotus-poetry.livejournal.com
