Trying To Get it Cultural

Carrie Chang

When the river dries up,

there will be words wasted on

Your cloud of suspicious trill, something

to climb up deep into that sand-castle

In the ovoid fish-bowl, and watch

the mimiko cat raise its first howl,

if only you knew how

to catch the five torrents,

and suck the seaweed of discontent,

See the whirlpool of iridesce

In mirrors that have been left behind,

then perhaps you’d know

the after-effects

of day-glow tears, of weary years,

and perhaps, my friend,

The participle of an end.

See it bend.

 

Carrie Chang was born in New York in 1970, and grew up in California, in the Bay Area.. She has published three books of poetry, Laundromat, and Fairytale Origami, and If Gretel were Chinese. She enjoys the spacy texture of thousand-year-old egg and imperial dan dan noodle eaten in gross contempt of popular diets and such. She is the editor of this fine journal.

Read more poems by Carrie Chang here →