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Stomach Me, Delicious World

frankenpo

Hong Kong—

Their government ugly makes our colony drunk.

It’s a fuckwad Victorian-era fight. The slaughterhouse follows us,

sleep-eating. Asking for más meat.

This happy visiting hole.

And my soap voice husband. Turning over, he says—in immaculate

parentheses—

we deserve beautiful between wars. A love body, a dumpling. At least

a lovely face, some pretty piedra enclosed in jungle. For my sticky birthday

let’s go unfilial. Go national shit line.

I’ve been needed in English—

a small, hard voice pawing my night.

This is invocation. Or divination. We’re bruises, an unconstitutional ceremony

of dirt. We won’t feel the dead come. We’re brighter

birds, cucurrucucú. No llores, our messed flesh sleep,

and what was I,

apart from your law.

from Monsters I Have BeenFind more by Kenji C. Liu at the library

Copyright © 2019 Kenji C. Liu
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Alice James Books.

Published in Kenji C. Liu Poems

This program is supported in part by a grant from the Idaho Humanities Council, a State-based program of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this (publication, website, exhibit, etc.) do not necessarily represent those of the Idaho Humanities Council or the National Endowment for the Humanities.