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[As is the blood]

As is the blood
on the screen, the horror movie,
when the last bug is plucked
 
from static. The frizz
still of it, small translucent
wings between fingers
 
buzzing like the film
it arrived on. Hollywood
horror or disaster
 
enlivened in living
rooms. The carpet
was how you learned
 
gravity, sitting so close
to it when news came.
Horror: the small fire
 
stoked between
the rib. Crack of
bone or crunch
 
of the smallest fly
now dead, now
3-dimensional,
 
melding its antennae
back to flight. How
television turned off
 
meant bodies inched
out between
rooftops and rebar
 
toward each other
again. How else
did you ever sleep
 
at night, in this
country, where singing
meant you could not
 
sit. Your hand
tests mine tonight.
Our nails are polished
 
to a fume. I could
love you like this,
like how cats slink
 
toward each other
with cicadas
in their throats.
 
Pain, nothing,
but cold cold snow
or shitty feedback
 
or static. Watching
bigger cats
in the snow. Or,
 
was it people
starving
before they turn to
 
each other. I lick
my hand and reached
into the popcorn,
 
I confess. The diva
screams
in a lightning strike
 
in this country
where you lean forward
to buzz quietly
 
in my ear
to better taste
the salt. You could walk
 
toward me with a head
thick with sea hair
and part of me will want
 
this high tide and joy,
but I am not done
mourning yet.
 
Or ever.
My fingers pressed
to the living floor,
 
translated. What good
is this bridge
when it is unmoving
 
and I never call you
back, when the neighbor
does not listen,
 
the fly hatches
in the last suitcase,
on this other side,
 
when I wake up this morning
and every morning
and there is bread.
Picture
Magali Duzant. Beijing, 5 a.m., 2012.

Michelle Lin is a poet, activist, and author of A House Made of Water (Sibling Rivalry Press), a lyrical examination of Asian American identity, gender and daughterhood, the inheritance of stories, and survival from trauma. Her poems can be found in HEArt, Apogee, and more. Her work was showcased in Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera’s “Lo Writer of the Week” and the Pennsylvania Center for the Book’s Public Poetry Project. She has performed for APAture, grlhood, Litquake, and more. She is a Kundiman fellow. Learn more at michellelinpoet.wordpress.com.
Magali Duzant is an interdisciplinary artist based in New York City. Her photographic work explores perceptions of light and landscape. She has exhibited widely, including at Little Berlin, Philadelphia, Queens Museum in New York City, Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, and Sydney College of Art in Australia. In 2015, her book, I Looked & Looked, was published by Conveyor Editions. Her work has been published in print and online most recently by Aint-Bad Magazine, Der Greif, Yet Magazine, and Reframing Photography. She holds an MFA from Parsons The New School of Design and a BHA from Carnegie Mellon University. For further information, visit www.magaliduzant.com.
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