A field with a lonely base
is a fish. If you want to be
traditional, start a fire.
My grandfather fell in love
learning Chinese. He asked
his teacher out to the museum.
An abundance. A cow in the middle
that is or is not a thing. The courtyard
that shifts to an ending. A gallery.
My girlfriend and I went out also
to the Metropolitan Museum
in the weeks before I left.
To the left is work. To the right
is a mouth. Don’t mix it up
with smoothed-over stone.
My grandfather fished on a solitary
rowboat. My grandmother refused
to come just to cook. Instructed:
the moon is in service. She’ll steady
every month. Rock the tides gently
or angrily. My dad refused to fish
outside of boyhood. Something raw
in slicing stomachs. I’ll never learn
to cook properly until I’ve gone
to China. My student asks me
Why are you always looking at that
fish app? Because I don’t know
what anything means. No one ever taught me
how to speak or love. Can’t lay myself bare
like Wang Xiang on the ice
asking for carp with his whole body.
I’ve just caught a stone
in my throat. An endless field
of paper. What radical is what
radical. I’m always missing
clothes and agriculture.
Where is that matchstick
when I need it most? When
the stove won’t start itself,
when it’s been months since
we’ve kissed. Why does it mean
mouth and without? Do you understand
what I’m trying to say? Did you learn
anything? Why do I have to explain again? Love
is friend and claw and cover. Traditionally
it has a heart at the center.
And just when I think I can say something
meaningful in her first language—
my girlfriend’s, my grandmother’s—
something like: To miss is a one-eyed
forest haunting a heart. Just as I return
to the states, I start losing it. There’s too much
sorrow here. Between us, we don’t have
enough words to fish out blue-green love.
Louise Ling Edwards is a poet and essayist from Saint Paul, Minnesota. She has also lived in Shanxi, China, and currently lives in Columbus, Ohio, where she received her MFA from The Ohio State University. Her writing is found or forthcoming in Conduit, Gulf Coast, Ninth Letter, and Smartish Pace.
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