Friday, February 22, 2008

Paper by kelly zen-yie tsai

paper 
by kelly zen-yie tsai

i love tupac shakur and william
shakespeare equally. i love
alice walker and courtney love.

i love poems crossing
my consciousness like the
opening credits of “star wars”

(or stretches of ocean
crashing below
grey-bellied seagulls)

i love the solitude of wrapping
myself in blank paper, covering
my fingers to pluck a
thorn from its wound –

i use paper to sop up blood as it spills,
inking kaleidoscope blots of
grotesque beauty
from unhonored pain

rows of letters
trace subterraneans
unknown in me

ones unregistered on my skin,
their bulk lopes like a long necked
monster wading in the deep

each poem, a photograph
snapped by the child whose faith
cannot be torn from what lies beneath

she camps out yawning
past the midnight hour

blinks her eyes
unsure of what she sees

she widens the aperture
slows the camera’s speed

shutter falls and captures
before she nods off to sleep

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