Jason Wee (b. 1979)

SELECTED POEMS

Epilogue

Time enough to regret my hands
wishing to know the rot beneath the bark 
or the land parcel sale, or the existence of birds,

taking every care to make nothing but pictures of these
I wish I knew how two people
empty themselves of rock and sand,

how to arrive at a time other than how one feared
the way the albizia folds the night in
or the fledgling an unhomely neck of wood

if it knew better, knowing nothing is
After all, isn't it a kindness when knowing better 
anticipates the rejection to come,

when we push the body, repulsive before, from thought
to focus on the hips, the mouth, feeding us?
I write of a coast, the changing of it,

every year these goshawks make me an immigrant
without pass or power in their high places
I write down differently but by instinct I crouch when pained

These fall off my fingers into the dark:
negatives, a watch set ten minutes ahead, 
the little given, I kept from dying

by Jason Wee
from An Epic of Durable Departures (2018)

 

SELECTED POEMS: “The Foolish Knows” >