Dance in Californian June
after Lydia Wei
On the prom night of your lover’s last romance,
she hands you a brush and tells you there’s more
to loving a body than to loving yourself. You are
kissing the lips of the mountain between you
and tumbling through the sky, you have always
been pure. In the summer of 2007, in the field where
she lays your silent body, the bristles of your hair
remain untouched between the whistles of wheat
and the vignettes she smokes in front of your
gravestone. The bodycon dress from prom night, strapless
and pink as it smolders & burns. In your
dreams, she kisses you and you
have never been pure in your life, never innocent,
killing the cicadas singing hymns in the distance
because you remember there is more to loving
the silent body sprawled bare on the empty field where
lovers go to regret. You learn to love &
love. She will remember the dawns of your first
kiss & the mountain in between & your hair
in her fingers as she sits, cross-legged and pretty,
as you embrace in the middle of the scorching
highway and give your whole body to the lover
who never regrets, never remorses. In your dreams,
God exists in the place of a young woman who proposes
on the last prom night of her life and whispers I love
you over & over again because she is the one who homes
the infinite possibilities of the future between her
teeth but will always, always choose the one where she
knows how to love. But in this gold-laden land,
alone, you lay so bare on the back of your pink
bodycon satin dress, strapless as your lover
leaves & leaves and regret is heavy on your
tongue as the wind brays and the sky falls apart.
Desert Burns
in Palm Springs, California, a man is on fire
like weeds in a mouth & with each mouthful
a grain of sand litters the world but it’s fine
because the family of four has a black card & pays
for everything via Amex & a daughter is named
after the man burning & the father never
apologizes because some things in the golden state are
never forgiven so why waste tongue to say sorry i
killed a man / naming my baby / when in the dollar
store, everything is always forgiven & the hotel
above is thundering like a palm in spring when
a man burns, mouth on fire, sand flying so far across
the world a family of four pays a dollar to forgive
& forget, & in the palms of a man
who kills, the black card withers, screaming murder
until the floor beneath turns gold & another man burns.
Vivian Huang is a young poet from Irvine, California. Her poetry is published or forthcoming in Poetry Daily, Eunoia Review, Polyphony Lit, and elsewhere, and she is the author of GRIEF IN A BONE (Bottlecap Press, 2023). Her work has been recognized by the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers and Princeton University, among others, and she is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of The Cloudscent Journal.