There is a swan bathing in my mouth.

It was very hard for me to choose just one of the powerfully mystifying poems from Jane Wong’s recently-published first book, OVERPOUR, so I urge you to explore more of her work if you can.

“Field Notes Toward War”

The war is not over.
The streets are lined with little lamps of snow,

melting. Water pours without end.
There is a swan bathing in my mouth.

I have made a mess of it all.
Cotton in my eyes, too much

cast on my arm. All around me,
the mountains hum

a broth of air. A little on the tongue
is enough to feed. My eyes rinsed out

make a river large enough
to carry that which diminishes. I’m afraid

I will never make it home.

*

My mother feeds more envelopes during night shift.
The deer shift in limb light.

In the morning, we rake the yard.
She falls asleep in the yard, standing.

This bag of leaves, gathering.

*

Send death to swallow the war.
Send courage to tear each plume apart.

The sound of great wrestling.
It is enough to feed you.

*

The air settles like a magnet.
What choice do we have but to lean in?

The rocky regions of my brain quake.
It’s one damn thing after another.

The mountain of granite has a face I recognize.
I drape a scarf across my eyes

and walk into every wall.

*

Eyes bloom along the cliffs.
The root of my brain recedes.

Together, my relatives carry the bodies.
I carry this bag of leaves into the garage.

Above me, the sun leeches.

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The sound of rain outlives us

This gorgeously layered Li-Young Lee (1957-) poem felt right for this rainy day in a draught-stricken landscape, in any landscape really.

“Water”

The sound of 36 pines side by side surrounding
the yard and swaying all night like individual hymns is the sound
of water, which is the oldest sound,
the first sound we forgot.

At the ocean
my brother stands in water
to his knees, his chest bare, hard, his arm
thick and muscular. He is no swimmer.
In water
my sister is no longer
lonely. Her right leg is crooked and smaller
than her left, but she swims straight.
Her whole body is a glimmering fish.

Water is my father’s life-sign.
Son of water who’ll die by water,
the element which rules his life shall take it.
After being told so by a wise man in Shantung,
after almost drowning twice,
he avoided water. But the sign of water
is a flowing sign, going where its children go.

Water has invaded my father’s
heart, swollen, heavy,
twice as large. Bloated
liver. Bloated legs.
The feet have become balloons.
A respirator mask makes him look
like a diver. When I lay my face
against his—the sound of water
returning.

The sound of washing
is the sound of sighing,
is the only sound
as I wash my father’s feet—
those lonely twins
who have forgotten one another—
one by one in warm water
I tested with my wrist.
In soapy water
they’re two dumb fish
whose eyes close in a filmy dream.

I dry, then powder them
with talc rising in clouds
like dust lifting
behind jeeps, a truck where he sat
bleeding through his socks.
1949, he’s 30 years old,
his toenails pulled out, his toes beaten a beautiful
violet that reminds him
of Hunan, barely morning
in the yard, and where
he walked, the grass springing back
damp and green.

The sound of rain
outlives us. I listen,
someone is whispering.
Tonight, it’s water
the curtains resemble, water
drumming on the steel cellar door, water
we crossed to come to America,
water I’ll cross to go back,
water which will kill my father.
The sac of water we live in