“On (Inspired by A. Van Jordan’s ‘From’)” by Jessie Lin, XII: poetry

On

(inspired by A. Van Jordan’s “From”)

on prep. 1. in contact with: as in, you wake up on grimy shower tiles, sweaty limbs, the bar of soap in your fist disfigured into a mannequin. you wake up on a pile of obituaries, generations of people you will never meet, archives of lost lives in times new roman size ten. you wake up on the kitchen floor, a cracked teacup lying in the corner under the sink, the rim still stained with red lipstick, or maybe paint, or maybe blood. 2. next to: your first muse lives on the beach, not the kind with white sand and starfish but the kind with blustering winds and uneven rocks—a wisp of a man with a home in the city but preferring the cottage on the cliffs. you find this romantic and dress his walls in champagne tides straight from the sunrise, swirling oceans and moons in wide brush strokes across his back until he fades into the sea. 3. dependent upon: you live on white tea in the mornings and white wine at night; on saltines and clementines and boxed chocolates; on the kind man who forgives your missing rent payments because he once slept with your mother. she hangs on a rusted nail by the mirror in the bathroom, all faded pinks and yellows and browns. 4. indicating possession: a pack of gum, a pack of cigarillos, two driver’s licenses, a striped bandana, some bills, a crumpled lottery ticket, car keys, a heart on his sleeve, a pocket knife, the smudged charcoal sketch you gave him for his birthday, a promise—these are all things your second muse keeps on him. 5. in reference to: you read an article on how to dry sunflowers and imagine daisies sinking down your throat, smothering. you draw stitches between the second and third rib on your left side and imagine yourself as eve, forbidden. you watch old vhs tapes of documentaries on the renaissance and imagine yourself plastered into the wall like a fresco, permanent. 6. traveling by: you meet your third muse on a redeye flight across the country, silent except for the click of his pencil; then again on the sleeper car of the train home, brandy pungent in his breath, in the markers swirling against his palm; then again on a gurney, fingers still curled around a handgun, eyes wide open. 7. at the time of: your mother bears you on her seventeenth birthday, and the story goes like this—you wake up for the first time to bloody blankets and beeping; you should have been dead on arrival. you wake up to pulsing headaches, gouache smeared behind your ears, ink-stained handprints all over the walls; you should have been underground. you wake up on the morning you fill your porcelain teapot with a half liter of turpentine; you should not wake up again. but you do.

- Jessie Lin, XII: poetry