2 Poems

by Ingrid Chung

Almost

For Aubrey & Cohan

I

Dead mussels in a bucket.

We three ran to them, famished with
Opportunity. Who are we to become the next?

(We cannot even grasp our own stench.)

II.

The shells were fractured by the sliding limp of an ocean,
split open by the tongue of a
dragonfly. The meat fell into our mouths,
honey salt.

We three arrived with the darkening blue,
Expectation in our skin. Our space is small,
there are too many. We three cling
near the ends.

III.

We have only this small clawed shred.

We have only two hands & one shadow.

We have only this tasteless meat.

Pressing ourselves into the crest,
we, who have lost, collapse
into our shells, only to wither &
grow old.

________________________________________________________________________________________________

August Trench

For Kasey

Come August it will be you, I,
perched on lawn chairs painted green. An
unread letter sits next to me,
scrawled handwriting that is yours leaps

off the envelope I sound
out your address with a scaled tongue.
This must be what madness is. The
address spins like a small child, first

clockwise then pauses, changing winds
designate its new path. I gag—
just cut grass arching forward, tilts
my finger into a mouth, draws

a circle stops. The sun is
blue today. There is no August.
I sit like a bowl of ears, open
to any news. The birds speak French

it makes no sense. You are most
likely asleep with your head there
between your hands. A spider
lays sixteen

eggs in your hair & I falter
at gunpoint. This is the part where
the ball drops—where the shelled shrimp of
your eyes droop low & you don’t come

back. August came & went. I walk
my solitude on a leash when
it storms. Once you left your blue coat
in the snow & I picked it up.

________________________________________________________________________________________________

Ingrid Chung is a recent graduate from New York University where she received the Thomas Wolfe Prize for poetry. She is now enthusiastically pursuing her M.Ed. at Hunter College while teaching seventh grade in the South Bronx through a New York City Teaching Fellowship. Her most recent publication is in the 2River View.