Jason Wee (b. 1979)

SELECTED POEMS

Monsters (I)

On Beatus the monk's map,
    south of the known world,
        a continent of one-leggers,
    feet raised as fronds against the midday heat.

In the mountains the one-foot kui
    presses the wind to its drum-shaped form, 
        its thunder, Ge Hong warned,
    like the devil using your head for a beat.

I plot both directions on my atlas of lost cities, 
    watch the lines converge on
        an archipelago of marks,
    guttations where the pencil rested.

Here they lived, fleet- and sure-footed, 
    and died. I look up from my desk
        to see their graves, storeys high,
    stacked with occupants—

dragonflies, a bulldog bat
    crowning a wall like a gargoyle,
        us, the most contingent
    species of these—I imagine

our graves or the lack of,
    the myths of our lives and passing,
        if they will tell of how bipeds
    evolved from monopods

thrashing their tails upshore,
    only to die out like paper maps,
        or will there be air
    upon forgetful air over us,

long buried, and no tall stone
    or calm fields? I press my pencil
        into my atlas, a carbon shovel
    digging its paper grave.

by Jason Wee
from The Monsters Between Us (2013)

 

SELECTED POEMS: “1990” >