Diana Khoi Nguyen
IN THE FARTHEST MEADOW OF CHILDHOOD, a boy rocks
upon a wooden horse.
The candle too dim for prayer is bright enough
for madness.
Love webs the body like a nerve.
He grows febrile & strange, his eyelids like hawk wings
forever over a sore—
“You'll break your horse!” cries the nurse.
—A secret within a secret like
illness from a flaw in the womb.
He trembles now with a grinding sense of shortage & on & on
it goes,
a mania—the vulture's crimson neck bent down with
waiting—
I hate this house for whispering.