five poems by kristina erny
甜蜜的云
tiánmì de yún
after Feng Li's Sweet Cloud, 2019
Vera, Unknown
after a series of paintings by Vera at Being Art Museum, 金 桥浦东上海
Like a lazerbeam runs, splotchless.
Vera, waiting, hovers mauve, shivers
while she leads her shadow into the lake.
After the shine of a naive afternoon, a halo around her head;
a dry leaf twitches under some boughs.
Vera, clean now, her long clear fingers gentling a loved scalp.
Threaded through with the tenderness of Vera.
Vera chatters not, not like the other neighborhood women,
whose legs and arms crosstitched into harsh X's,
slurp conspiratorial, their tea bitter, their backs stooped.
Vera, only ever as old as she is now.
A blessing caretook so long, the water's memory
fragrant on her skin, her scent unraveling in long threads.
Patchouli oil soaked into flesh permeates every room.
A feather cape can only slightly hide a face.
Like your distinctive smell can throw a lasso around my heart again.
小心: xiǎo xīn!
a 金桥 Jinqiao pedestrian sonnet, after Kristi Maxwell
小心 ! crash-stance, the small hearted branches float heavy with man-fruit. He stands at the crux, reaching out to shake the branch's hand. The leaves make a mess of wigs on all the parked cars.
All the potted GRASSES on the balcony throw their hopeful babies out into the wind.
Custard yellow afternoon, good enough to eat. Earlier, I didn't taste the lemon cake made by the dewy-faced and recently graduated.
The irony of a pair of mated lions outside of a s-bucks isn't lost on me. Roar! 我要一杯冰的拿铁! It's boiling out.
A pile of rocks moves very slowly up the street. 21, 20, 19, 18, across the walk, the great grey eye watches us all.
What the hell is wrong with the mosquito? Massive wolf jawbone says, SHUSH, SHUSH.
It's hard to wheel the baby in a wheelless baby carriage. I see her, lulled to sleep and invisible under the rush of the overpass junction and road.
A nothing quote like, "The architectural bliss of a bank, a castle, and an office building cosplaying as a bird's nest"
Moss atrocity, an absolute massacre of fussy green. Don't you know I, too, love a broom that looks like a bush.
An itch haunts for days, the ankle bone a stage for warplay. The braggadocio of ivy on cement, and all the thwacking of a life lived by the hammer, straining to hear the present, distracted from birdsong.
Signs sometimes warn us in languages we don't speak. The round headed white man looks like he's dipping his toes in the electric river styx, next to a plastic boat that sometime in this century, used to float.
The fifth national economic crisis, no, the fifth national economic census. A census is not a crisis, but a crisis is a sort of census.
The church is under construction, no kidding
Sometimes my heart feels like a motorized tricycle piled high with scraps of styrofoam, I have to move quickly, to get out of its way
Kraken
i. first watch
The sky shifts its keel to darkness.
I rise, bubble-veiled,
through a swill of sardine,
krill in strands hooked
behind my ears. Blush of sunset
coating my beak pink.
I can see the wobble of your silhouette
from my shadow hold. Your salt-red,
beard bleached as scales.
Pinch me, Love, let's dive
together. I will not let you
come to harm.
I'm disarmed. Remember how
I once plucked you
from the angry waves,
set you back on the rocks?
Pointed your sea legs towards
the horizon? It's time. Come
overboard. First watch, see how I've
preened my skin to glisten. We'll swim
where the angler lights our way
and we'll redraw all the monstrous
maps in love's soft
and deadly glow.
ii. come
Sailor, I see you, the light
glinting off your red beard,
your salt-crusted curls. Lock
on forehead like an anchor, your
eyes the color of the deepest sea.
I love your face in full sun,
but it would be better in the shade
of 1,000 leagues, shoulder burn cooled
in a rush. I'm coming, you're aloof.
Eye to the spyglass, horizon drawn
to what's next. I plummet, spin,
spiral, my ink like water in oil.
Look to the ripple where the water ruptures
and you will see my shine. Leave the sun behind,
I will wrap my arms around,
take you deeper than you've ever swum.
Tentacles like seaweed,
each a different brain: ballast, wake,
stroke. Aye, aye. My heart a light-
house, sunk, gone.
iii. enough
Your bubbles are enough
for baubles, baby. I'm a sucker
for your cleft chin, chipped
tooth. Possessed. Sailor,
I have charted the planes
of our polar faces, pinned
close-winded coordinates.
You are my axis. Fathomless,
our synastry read in the skin
of the sea. A canopy decked
with stars. There's nothing left.
Let's gulp breaths together,
gather speed, descend
like diving bells to sea-bed.
Wake to dark, dance
arms on arms on arms on arms,
yours covered with tattoos, mine slippery,
harpoon-scarred. I've memorized
that mermaid on the rocks, notched
my name in a new banner,
suctioned a compass rose, heart tacked
by cupid's arrow.
Tangled myself in rigging
slung across your perfect chest.
iv. vow
Listen, I'll spit ink poems,
old lyrics I lifted from the whales.
Cast epic spells in clouds
to trick history, no different
than simply camouflaging in myth.
A slight of hand like your own
forearm's deck of cards.
Love, I vow to wreck any ship that haunts us,
tries to pull us from the waves.
All the baggage will float on the surface,
detritus we can pick through,
leave the rest to drown.
The Aliens Hear the Mother Speak
Kristina Erny is a third-culture poet and visual artist who grew up in South Korea and elsewhere abroad. She is the author of Elijah Fed by Ravens (Solum Literary Press), and the chapbook PUT A COMMA IN FRONT OF A PERSON, winner of the Harbor Review Editor's Prize. Her second collection, Alien Mother, is forthcoming with Accents Publishing. She holds an MFA from the University of Arizona and her work has been the recipient of the Tupelo Quarterly Inaugural Poetry Prize and the Ruskin Art Club Poetry Award, as well as a finalist for the Coniston Prize. Her poems have appeared in The Los Angeles Review, Yemassee, Blackbird, and Tupelo Quarterly, among other journals. She currently lives and works in Shanghai, China.