Glacier
The day knocked out my teeth.
The day told me there is no such thing as a lake.
Yesterday I lost my reserve
and ants took to the hill with determination.
The bodies of the colony poured over the road.
I held my hands up, out.
I looked through a faulty kaleidoscope.
Everything appeared
as it was. The sun cut triangles across my face,
a range of mountains, extending.
Is there a way to sound less disappointed?
Staring at the wall created a conversation I liked.
As if there was wind, or trees, or wind
in the trees.
~
What is wilderness doing in this scene?
How much forgiveness is left
if we argue in a forest?
If we fight in a station wagon
and fall asleep
in a station wagon?
Like ferns beside the road our shadows
have no choice
but to overlap.
~
Untethered, I waved like a tree across an avalanche.
My leg, this slab of ice, whistling.
Hello, from this shore to that.
~
The activity of the season tired me.
These nervous motors of snow, running.
In town, cowboys coughed into their handkerchiefs and
twirled me across the floor.
In another town, my mother drew swans in a factory so that
the factory filled with swans.
Distance is measured in such false beauty,
I said, staring at the mirror of my face.
~
The monarchs lodged in the exhaust pipe are lodged in my ribs, held to the road.
I drove by the same crow. He recognized my face, loved my dimple.
I am afraid he will watch me undress
or I will let him.
~
On the road, the station wagon slumps lower,
drags its exhaust pipe
around like a slug.
I pull over
and drink from the roadside ditch.
My palms full of melting slush
from water and what colors
the water.
from Kings
I slept through the wind
I didn’t dream
a tree fell
from the roof everything
started falling it was
necessary all
this clanging
hundreds of monarchs
thumping against the windshield
it can not be stopped
I kept driving I kept
whittling wings
~
The wind kept
a sheet of white
paper over my face
you said I looked like a ghost
but it was only a sheet
of paper through which
nothing could be
seen
~
Heard out of ear-shot
I thought I was here-shut
I grabbed my chest door
my brother stormed
the room shaking
me from the arms,
legs, head
what are you driving at
he yelled where is
your signal tree where is
your empathy clasp
mistakes I told him
are nothing
to be afraid
~
I saw the earth split
like an onion it came
undone in layers
I rubbed my eyes clean
disbelief is not a crime
I wore the death
mask proudly
a cluster of ants carried me out
there was no ceremony
nor witness nor wind
~
I wove a cluster
of succulents into a crown
the desert moved toward
me, completely magnetic
the sun was jealous
half of nothing is
nothing the sun shouted
and you are half of!
~
Had I sent the sun straight
out of me?
I have no use for kindness
only grave, grave
mischief
see the whelping of my lion
see the heaped waves of
the Atlantic color-
rinsed
~
The TV in the kitchen
is on fire again
all the wiring is wrong
I turned on
the light and fell
down the stairs
I have never broken anything
except your face
nightly I feed appliances
to the fire
oh I do not know what
will become of me 
Jane Wong’s poems have appeared in journals such as CutBank, Mid-American Review, Spinning Jenny, Octopus, and the anthologies Best New Poets 2012 and The Arcadia Project. The recipient of fellowships and scholarships from the U.S. Fulbright Program, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the Fine Arts Work Center, she has three chapbooks: Dendrochronology, Impossible Map, and Kudzu Does Not Stop. She currently lives in Seattle, where she teaches at the University of Washington.
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