Stacey Tran - Five Poems
Selected Questions, Reflections, and Instructions Regarding Mortality
Will you still love
me: Learning
to love yourself
It is the greatest love
of all
Misdirected kiss
Everything #5.2
Other things seen // other things heard
How can you stay
in the house all
day and not go
anywhere?
When Species Meet Part 1 (shine
or go crazy)
Wikipedia Badlands
Canvas is to
tarpaulin
as calligraphy is
to shorthand
Treatise is
to rhapsody
an altar of
nonrhythmic like-
ness; Clinique
green doesn’t
age, matcha
over ice and
stracciatella says
I’m faking it
Do not put
the letters
in your mouth
A series
of switchbacks
Points to photo:
a sheet of dry
rice paper + permanent
marker writing — asked
What’d you call this?
I thought
“canvas” at first, but doesn’t
that mean blank?
Death
Eating the lineup of
words we overcome/cycle through
the alphabet
Someone’s hair touches my hair
I walk out of a family emergency barefoot
Survival scripts/ancient
fears we pause to acknowledge
Perhaps after death
with no body
we are only nourished by scent
Liver
heart muscle
fragile
question marks
burned as fuel
Soft and alive
milky tooth gap
left open for any death
Scoop coleslaw
out of my bag
at the movies
Two young girls
prevent plants
from catching fire
Covered up that death
Two uncles I’ve never met
Animal faces are difficult to forget
Yesterday
the doctor hole punched
my armpit
I asked the dying
what kind of dying could be had
Her blond hair will be buried with her
A moth refused to land
on my mouth
I walked out onto the beach naked
threw a stone in the water
The table needs a vase of flowers
somewhere in the middle
I, too,
am alive in an identified jar
Unlearning What to Expect in the Center of a Nectarine
Longing for a vocabulary
of lost archives
I dig through my mother’s idioms
What you eat
you return to the mouth
What’s difficult
is wise
Love
me with your
chili salt speckled wings
+
In the frozen food aisle
a boy stares
deep into my shopping cart
Might as well
have been my family tree
that made this metronome
beside my bed
The stone inside a sweet dessert
Whole and
cut open
Allowance
Swim inside
a marshmallow
exfoliated by kisses
Bad luck loops
in the big spoon
of dollar signs
idling
in the wings of free shipping
Leave the car at home
I will
pout with the fish
to avoid writing
just to write
To arrive at the thread-
bare tee
a locked nest bitter melon
stuffed with flowers
Anxiety scrapes edge of safety
I’ve become
fake chamomile
big red wine vinegar
baby thoughts
committal mimicry
Break up the obvious
Sidetracked
by cooking shows
Tongue glued
to cocoa pod a mountain
of candy
also relaxes
Opalite magnifying
glass against
my forehead
You read it back to me
asking for nothing
in return