A devastation of unknown magnitude
To the small star inside, we set up a makeshift rotation that gives us each a momentary relief. Watching is a rudimentary course of action, and we detail each thought as it appears. This is a gentle activity, despite the aggressiveness of the surround. A thought is the beginning of an opening, and we work diligently to trace its aperture, the outline of its extent. When he tells us he simply doesn’t know and is unable to track any origins, we recognize the rotation has failed. The small star inside is an obvious integer, but to this he has become blind.
Our job is simple but can lead to a devastation of unknown magnitude. The inconclusiveness of feelings that arise move with a heat and dynamism analogous to the surface of the sun. In the end, our documents amount to the need for a primary mother. One member of our party becomes obsolete.
At heart an altruist, ever
I think that it is much more likely we are evident because the climate requires that we be. But then this altitude was not meant for us. We seem to be in the business of siphoning abandoned furnaces of language for the service of breath. It may be more interesting from our point of view to observe the enigma as it appears in fully developed stop-motion photography. Experience shows that habeas corpus, altruistic statement that it seemed, would often turn its literal syntax into allegories with the intention of producing more strongly a sense of hesitation in its subjects. The journey of a macadamia nut, a quest by a cashew, a peanut’s progress. Being an American has again made something new, something that may not be true of temporary justice but is a basic commonplace in evolutionary theory.
Cheju Cyclo
a waterfall in brightness, or a negative funnel—
how you loved without reckoning.
a torn black flag flutters across your breast,
mingles with the ashes blown back in a breeze.
oh torrent, the ravenous waters below.
blue fade.
still of a white sash, lifting.
and light traveled faster when we were young.
and the future was a cloud formation in the sky.
death is a red songbird hovering over that gorge—
it flies abruptly into the fall’s knowing spray.
the road reaches up to meet us.
oh quickly, quickly, carry me home!
the distant sun is not so distant at all
the place inside, bright thing star
a common citizen in such tense array
insight—the things we read that aren’t
addressed to us at all
Red Tiger, Blue Sea
A figurative armament.
Their shadows stretch along the Manchurian border.
A dusty promenade.
Disclose the missile casings staggered in the train.
Disclose her foxy ways.
Bronze cast her outline
on the factory floor.
He left to get food and
never returned.
Cut to her bright teeth
set against the furnace glow.
Dissolve.
The casts, now a penury.
A series of waves wash across the Dalian shore.
A broken soda bottle, half filled with sand.
Sound of trucks rolling slowly in the dark.
End credits.
The embassy.
what is intuitive
at your base, am I a homeless man
the world is a practical container
why do anything
the reason is studied and intuitive
oh poetry
simple sting, this corruption
oh body within the principle
this intuitive principle
arise in this demonstration,
something like the FBI should go to jail 
Sueyeun Juliette Lee edits Corollary Press, a chapbook series devoted to new work by writers of color. Recent work has appeared in Effing, One Less, and online at critiphoria.org. Her chapbooks include Mental Commitment Robots (yo yo labs), Perfect Villagers (Octopus Books) and Trespass Slightly In (Coconut). Her first full-length collection, That Gorgeous Feeling, is forthcoming. She currently lives in Philadelphia.
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