Pui Ying Wong

MOAN MELODY

                                    “But I spin all these crazy yarns

   as if sleeping in a mound of narrative”

                                                    --Zbigniew Herbert--

Maze of market streets,

bric-a-brac, flowers, shoes,

browsers’ faces, gazes

that peel night to day,

little cars going around

in search of

ascend, descend, yield---

to who, to whom

these red lights blink and blink,

crosswalks, guardrails,

scurf pegged air, there’s heart

in what you keep opening to,

a man leans on the horn

as if he’s waited

his whole life, enough,

how else can we get through

and get to, please,

the station master speaks,

just another foreign tongue

but the gesture is clear,

no tickets, the phone,

what is your number, dear,

write it down, your number,

the number must reach.

First published in Mojave River Review

 

MEKONG

Smell of burnt leaves,

a bird shoots up

into the gasoline air,

boats carry pomelo, basil, denim,

buzzing of work, hemlocks sway,

a baby asleep to the blue

of the day, two dogs,

chin down.

How does the river heal?

Crowns of water hyacinth gather

in the river’s wide mouth. 

First published in Boiler Journal

Pui Ying Wong was born in Hong Kong. She is the author of a full length book of poetry Yellow Plum Season (New York Quarterly Books, 2010), two chapbooks: Mementos (Finishing Line Press, 2007), Sonnet for a New Country (Pudding House Press, 2008) and her poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, The Southampton Review, Crannog (Ireland), Gargoyle, Connotation Press: An Online Artifact, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal (Hong Kong), Taos Journal of Poetry & Art, and Valparaiso Poetry Review among others. She lives in Cambridge with her husband, the poet Tim Suermondt.