Mercy
A tribute is
a wish made public, and I salute you,
O you soldier;
stationed in
mouth, I hold still like field mice, huddled
in a red barn
raised to be
a church. Is heaven what you swallow, or
is it the opposite
of mercy? A
boy had to learn to fish by becoming an
iridescent bobber
at once a
pearl and a poison, wearing the averaged
face of a Walmart
sticker. In
the pulse of you, I see the night drinking
the fire. A prairie
is a holding
ground for sinners on their way to the forum;
the tunnels lead
not to
respite but to each other, shapes out of air.
The Yellow Iris
I.
Flood the riverbed on the curse of a
cattail, jealous that a boy in rainboots
scooped up his lover, the yellow iris,
who stopped his prairie-watch only to
help a limping grasshopper. Storm clouds
gossip about this tall tale of yearning, their
gray hairs pinched modestly, unheard by the father
lost in a fly-fisher’s spell.
A spotted toad skips between the boy’s legs,
darting through green-yellow weeds
into the mouth of a splash. The boy, Ming, strokes the
tip of each cattail with two palms, a rickety plane desperate
to take flight. The yellow iris, behind his ear
in companionship, surveys the wide bend
of the Platte River. Wounded skies make room,
a gesture of welcome despite
the dead buried in the Sand Hills.
He remembers the lightning, the thunder,
reaching down to see if the earth remembered too,
this time, or the next. Flooded, wet, soak up
the new rain that painted his eyes in only gray,
no color could escape. Running, the yellow iris kisses
the sunburned mark behind his ear,
before becoming the wind.
II.
The rice fields shine like rows of tinsel,
the sun a neighborhood beggar in a lazy nap.
A boy, who will become the father,
drops a candy wrapper. The villagers from Shaoshan
stomp its pink out, rushing to see the sky swallow the
flight of cranes. Over the low rolling river, the birds slip
in between the folds of summer heat. An old stick balances
on the neck of a sunken man, his walk that of mud,
passing the boy, running on the earth-skinned road toward
the white cuts of lightning. He lifts his head skyward,
and rain takes the shape of a boy.
“Mercy” and “The Yellow Iris” were originally published in A Public Space
no name man
After Maxine Hong Kingston
heaves out heavy hooves
hover in each breath
hover
hover
fingers escape their
hands
the man who named no man
behind the birch and the well
flight on ground
despite the wood owl
take off is
approaching, the scurry of boots
glow #2: a space-warp
time is a flat circle,
or TV scientist says,
I remote flick, curve
make, sofa lay, in soft
soft velvet, I swim in
circle of flatness, pancake
memories, take me in a
whirl-a-gig, cosmic rays in
living room stillness, to be
a person, a breath, a hand
is moved in honey air to
only touch the other hand
below belt too tight not
right binding, like a sharp
circle, ritual be thy intention
—no, a circle, flat, said by
the scientist of TV,
speaking in velvet, soft, Soft.
Softer.
Huan He is the author of Sandman (2022), which won the 2021 Diode Editions Chapbook Contest. His poetry explores race, sexuality, and belonging from the perspective of a queer Chinese American raised by the prairies. His poems appear/are forthcoming in Beloit Poetry Journal (2021 Adrienne Rich Award Semifinalist), A Public Space, Colorado Review, Gulf Coast, Hayden’s Ferry Review (Poetry Contest Finalist), and elsewhere. Starting in Fall 2023, he will be an Assistant Professor of English at Vanderbilt University.