Ingrid Chung

Hunting Grounds for the Lost

Mr. M once told me about how the
white men had whipped him until stars
shot out of his open back and he had chewed off his
bottom lip. When he collapsed,
he said he had seen it, the sublime. It was like
a moon with a mouth and it swallowed you
up to form your tears into marbles
and keep you warm.

I searched for it in the thorn bushes,
the loving biting thorn bushes.
Fancy being this way,
scrounging the wood for the abstract—I watched
a flower die from loneliness and a mother make love
to her son among raspberries.
My skin was cut; I love the gossamer of pus,
yellow to the touch.

Now I sit upon my breakdown—              (my fingers
                                                              are dead you know and as they fall into the damp
                                        soil they point to the sky)  
                            reeking

of Buddhist incense and hurricane salt.

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