UnreliableRuth

I. What are you? ah        I know        What you are: I can see it in your        misshapen eyes, half- moon indentations from        your mother’s dirty fingernails–– and        look at your        rice-paper skin that curls and yellows        with just a bit of sun––        don’t tell me,        let me        guess––        Nihaoma? Konichiwah? no, actually, it’s        annyeonghaseyo II. Waegukin but        you can’t be        One of Us, not really,        no: your eyes are too wide        and naturally folded, your limbs are like cedar planks, long        and heavy and      

Mother        am I        no longer Daughter        am I just a half-breed breath        caught behind wet        pursed lips      that somehow clawed its way out?        a soul full of teeth and        chipping thoughts a body-not-quite-in-body        transfigured        transmuted        transubstantiated with an unholy        yellow-and-white casing        roaming barefoot through a dense        dark wood        leaving what-creature-is-this? tracks: they speculate about        a woman        with branches for hair strands stretching thick        into deep        tarry sky        a Strange        Cold Woman with haunches that bristle      

then release me into your famine song, sighing out from where it’s slung about your breasts and hanging hips, mumbling of wasted milk, grief like honey, starched and sticky between your shoulder blades. I’ll tread lightly on those notes, which whistle and jangle like resurrected sparrows; follow you windswept along the hem of any god’s shadow; comb and curl myself into the perfect wife at any man’s feet, then place the harvest in your wanting arms to the soft, dis- believing incantation: “Naomi has a son again.” And in that dirge turned hallelujah chorus, all those best forgotten are set ablaze like driftwo

        “I can’t tell you what’s worse: to be a medium, contorting my fingers to cast the shadow- spell of a dead girl upon a smooth, taut wall, recounting once-in-body-now-out- of-body days to an enraptured audience in the most intoxicatingly sensible way––(‘So here,        we can see the striking of skin with matches and needles, much like sandpaper or sackcloth; and now, follow that slow lean into every shuddering chuff of smoke, balloon- pop! of faery blood spilling all over Mother’s oriental rug…’)––        or to relocate the pulse of that time, to walk into a dark ro

Some years removed, I return: again, a stranger          ––again, Other and, yes, Unknown––          in this land overlaid with faint, mushroom fingerprints                    (my own?), dappled shadow of occasional devotion through spider’s lace. Some memories turn away from me, but others          remain. So, the sensation of a sudden, early- November Renaissance, followed by          an obsession with Boy Who Wasn’t          Really There crouching in the mouth of a gigantic, sometimes swaying oak tree                    ––a weakness for smudging time across the corner of a desk. (An

My skin curls back and away like burning parchment. Mid- May sunlight is an accomplished mapmaker, I’ve found. I watch as new roadways careen across my forearms, wonder at the momentary islands rising up along the patient river of my spine. I spot pockmarked burial grounds blooming between my shoulder blades. And as I walk those spaces with my eyes, I remember the secrets that long-ago boy left in my country, hands pressing against my sacred hills, then enfolding and finally resting in the simple basin just beneath my collarbones and above my breasts–– in supplication for what he believed might not come to pass.

for the benediction: because I’m obsessed with endings, that slow going- out from the pews.

That night, Mother       let her hair up so strands       could spark and shiver      against one another in the too-blue night. And       as I watched, foggy waves       pushing out       into the sky from sugarcane smokestacks      collided, twirled and         trilled with tendrils of      fast-decaying moonbeams,       last exhalations.

what has me by the neck but hasn’t       got me by the tongue––        no, and that can’t seem to stop beating       down on you and me, then       stroking up the side of both       our faces with conciliatory       murmurs, gentle imploring: ‘I didn’t mean––’       ‘I should’ve thought––’       ‘I don’t know why I’m       this way.’ But how much longer       will we be fooled      

It doesn’t really       announce itself       anymore. There’s       no cause for that       —I already know the markings, the when       and the where. A little ways       into September       —no later than mid-November, as       dewy frost begins to gather       cautiously over elementary school soccer fields       and fleece- lined coats with mitten- and hat-filled pockets       make their way reluctantly       out of hallway closets—       yes, right around this time of year       there’s that slight, telltale prickle       between my eyes, gentle snarl       of my insides, inevitable,       un- avoida