Egg
I can’t remember
if I read it in the bible
or in a cookbook
but it all began
with an egg.
See. This egg cracks open
exposing baby towns.
In one, lives Kim
who is allergic to eggs
and children.
She thinks about her future
with a hard-boiled vision.
My apartment is made of
shaky plaster and eggshell doors.
When I am mad, I drive
raw eggs into the carpet.
Kim told me about a town
with no eggs
and strong windows.
It is a wonder that Kim and I
have made it along so far
with our scrambled wardrobes
and yolk hearts.
.
Allergic
The trees are barking at me
like a pack of bloodthirsty hounds
& the sky is stalling, falling.
I am not right with nature.
I feel like the half-cigar floating in the stream.
An industrial noise band in Bali.
An allergic reaction
For which there is no cure.
The gentle wildflowers try to reach out.
Close your eyes, relax. Here’s your chance!
The hills are even a deeper green
Than my student’s contact lenses.
But I look around nervously
For an empty tent which equals: escape
& begin to scratch away at my brown legs
like a hound dog.
.
‘
Round
This is a world made
up of sanguine dogs
& vicious models.
Misters and masters
make pacts
over hard black tables.
And the whole day flips around five o’clock.
The water is shrinking
on the west side and in seven states,
people have never seen daylight.
Once a week I call my father and he hangs up.
This is not a conceptual art piece, but it is because he doesn’t know what to say.
We love this person and hate that person and have pets and go out to dinner.
But the world doesn’t notice
because it’s too busy
being round.
.
.
shine
he crawls up the high hill on all fours. stops to admire the brilliantly colored snakes. at the foot of one boulder sits his ex-wife in deep meditation. he chooses to let her alone and crawls on by. the sharp rocks cut at his skin and the heated dust layers about him like a complicated situation. he sees phyllis, his fourteen-year-old daughter, waving an american flag. she’s wearing a dark gray dress and those shoes he’s always hated. the hill starts to shake. the tiny rocks and plants bounce off his hunched over frame. a bald eagle sweeps down and snatches off his toupee. bastard, he mutters, that one was guaranteed. he begins to question this action he has taken upon himself. crawling up this hill. curiously enough, his vision becomes clearer. he can see the red ants, brown spiders, and baby scorpions going on about their lives. he envies their focus, their tenacity. he tries to remember the original idea, the whole point of it all. he crawls up the hill for a long time. his bald head shines under a red sun.
.
.
cave
up to that moment dark
in the nightclub dip
i prided myself
on my rocky insides
this heart all cave
(stalagmites and stalactites)
sometimes the sound of water
dropping
but cooly hollow
echo and retreat
one night, i remember waking.
a man next to me
hair, skin, reptilian,
and i did not know this place
this room, this bed, this person
next to me
nor myself
the concrete things
that signify safety
coffee cup on counter
a cotton shirt with blue buttons
mean nothing
anymore
sometimes it is simply a
matter of dipping
not halfway,
but all the way,
down,
and allowing someone
to live
in your cave.
Maw Shein Win’s poetry has appeared in journals such as 2River, No Tell Motel, Big Bridge, the Fabulist, and Forklift, Ohio and has work forthcoming in Zocalo Public Square and the anthology CROSS-STROKES (Otis Books/Seismicity Editions). She is currently a poetry editor for Rivet: The Journal of Writing that Risks for Red Bridge Press and was an AIR at the Headlands Center for the Arts. Win often collaborates with visual artists and musicians, and her latest poetry chapbook, Ruins of a glittering palace was published by SPA/Commonwealth Projects. She is also a member of the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto and a recent recipient of the Arkadii Dragomoshchenko Prize for Innovative Poetry.
Some of these poems appeared in slightly different versions in her chapbook Tales of a Lonely Meat Eater.
