Three Devotions

Gemini hiding, Gemini holding

I am                                                               I am

only a deconstructionist. I untie 

the cities in my muscles, let them see 

the stars free from light pollution.

Your hands meteor striking a shower 

of gold on my countrysides, 

so the population knows 

to believe in miracles, 

so the wealth of my soul 

is you. The veins a river

bed of Pangea. I take 

apart what has been assembled

so you know how to hold me 

better, we assume demolitions 

and craters are biting my earth, 

this is neither, you answer in 

expressions that become impressions,

oh, honey, baby, 70% of the world is 

underground. Have you found 

the clasp to unzip the constellations in me?

WE DON'T STOP HERE.

so

we drive

with our red

blinking lights, wax

molassing our chins,

sinking heat spells. light moults

off your blonde hair, until our

warm bodies, ambering mid-fall,

absorbs the noise, slanting underground.

SUMMER, THREE YEARS AFTER

She does not know how to swim,

so you take her to the lake. Twenty

centimetres later, she treks softened

bank mud up the grasshoppered green,

taut voice expelling bullfrogs.

Bullfrogs are manageable — kissing 

her bare wrist, her pulse horse thundering

under your wet mouth, you say, we’ll

go together. Shins, then knees. 

When you were taught, they rushed

water under your ear shells and 

falcon-eyed your butterfly, nostrils

wasp stung before the inhale.

This new decade ripens edelweiss slow.

You hold her sun soft face, her grit

jaw; she cannot open her eyes, lake

lapping her patella. My sister, she

murmurs. Leaves origami craned light 

across her grown-out mane, you brace

her crooked nose on your shoulder, donkey

sweet. Into your collarbone — we

never learnt how. River too bodied. 

The laminated seams of your bodies stagger

forward, and she is pressing red crescents

into your arms, you coax her, lip to lobe,

safe, safe, safe. Water refracts enamel 

bright, swathes her mid-thigh.

If you wanted, in this cocoon womb of

afternoon, deep end laden, you could

let all the air in your body free, 

sink to whale-fallen trenches, unyoke cells

from their plausible duties and

                                                             drift. She opens 

her mineral eyes, those abalone pearls 

gossamer dewed.

By next afternoon, she wades in,

waist-deep, ripples blooming. She turns

to you, and you are already there,

clear water reflecting singularity,

the hazy shape of one animal.

by Maxine Chen