Those Were the Days

I remember the days

Of after school escapades.

We watched the afternoon scuttle along

As we filled each others’ ears with classic remarks.

–

Your gestures still dance before my eyes:

Please tell me you still remember the stitch at your sides

When I made you forget who we were – two fearless innocent girls

At the ice-cream shop – and gave everything you had in

You to laugh;

The comfortable shy silence that followed

When we hastily scooped up

Rare bits of still-intact ice-cream

Ring in my ears –

I want to go back to those

Careless days of fro-yo nonsense,

When we painted each other’s imaginary canvas,

And sparks ignited my only heart.

–

Iris Zhang, May4, 11

Edited May23, 12

The Calm Before the Storm

After the sullen storm brings the dust to a halt,

Please permit me to settle like the silence that buries

These past memories.

–

I come from the tide like scars and flowing ashes

To recline in the desert of your ignorant compassion.

The silence sears a million more secrets as clear

As your watery eyes; secrets that should have

Stayed secret behind my pursed, trembling lips

That render me speechless before your listless concern.

–

Iris Zhang, May11

Displacement

Communication, the high brick walls

Of words and pause;

Pause like a mouth just about to

Open; Open those cold, indifferent walls,

For I cannot climb, for I cannot

Suffer your insurmountable walls

That bear no meaning, that bear no weight

On this burden of thoughts that compel me

To keep banging on those formidable walls.

–

Iris Zhang, May11

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Emily

I should write a poem about you, I thought. I wanted to lay your character bare so everyone could feel, from the back of their spines to the front of their chests through the warmth of their mouths and out through the tips of their teeth, the kindness I experience. I thought about the socks on my feet and the chocolate on my desk and how everything I know that is good about the world emanates from your persistent desire to reveal it to me. I started on conjuring unrefined imagery to try and place you in a gilded frame that I could hang from the heights of my ceiling, but then I got distracted by a story you were telling me about a mean Harvard professor bullying some poor Chinese restaurant owner. I thought, what more can I ask for, than for the privilege to write to you instead of only having the words to write about you. 

Iris Zhang, December14, edited May15.

On Foot – Edited April11

If home be my destination, you are the voyage–
The walk from here to where:
The barefoot trek on pebble gravel,
The journey that grows garish and weary;
The adventure on calm bullets of inexplicable silence,
The trip desperate to prove functionality on a fatal Tuesday morning.
The crossing on smothering brick-red stones smooth like water;
But water splashes like the feast of starvation rushes through each bloated vein–
The refreshing expedition to a familiar dread,
The travel designed for the traveling rather than the destination.
And before expected, home, is where my reflection ends.
Sand and dust;
Soil and dirt;
Scars and dreams;
These memories and footsteps never liberated
attach ingrained to the souls of my worn-out sneakers–
Know that the road on which it lingered later absorbs footprints of immovable weight, of companionship and cheerful comraderie.

Voyager lost at the end of the voyage–
Yes, if home is where the voyage ends, you are the voyage and I the vessel drifting at sea.

Iris Zhang, Dec09, edited April11

You always seem to know where to find me and I’m still here behind you
In the corner of your eye.
I’ll never really learn how to love you
But I know that I love you through the hole in the sky.

Where I see you
And that’s not an invitation
That’s all I get
If this is communication
I disconnect
I’ve seen you, I know you
But I don’t know
How to connect, so I disconnect
Communication, The Cardigans.

Me and You

I have two cats…

Scratch is an iceberg of reservation;
The Amazonian warrior, always alert
And ready to attack without hesitation.

Her independence shields her from getting hurt
By the follies of reliance and broken promises
By her owner; so she exerts all her effort

To keep it that way. But at night she quietly begs for kisses
And curls up in her owner’s arms, for no queen can forever be
On their own. They too need loving caresses.

So keep her safe; be gentle but never too bold,
Though her true self will never completely unfold—
Indignant yet innocent Scratch, your sadness remains to be told.

Kyle is the King of free will,
The eager explorer following his cause,
Curious and carefree, and never idle.

He is his own cat. He writes his own laws.
‘Think less, eat more, and sleep even more.’
He knows just how to charm by kneading those paws.

Playful and friendly, he is never a bore.
Those expressive blue eyes always tell the most
Exciting of stories you’ve never heard before.

No worries in his naïve little head,
He claims every inch of our house as his bed—
Insufferable (adorable!) and insatiable Kyle, your hunger remains to be fed;

…today I observed them
And was reminded of me and you.

Iris Zhang, April11

 

Please Stay

Stay

Shadows of the sun of wind
Surreally running through my fingers
Undress me with strands of casting flames
Like slenderer wisps of smoke sinking
Seeping through a diaphanous resolve
Suddenly we are projected back onto the sea
Mulling in the moon as if we forgot
The way we drowned or the way back to
Where we stemmed from a thought or the twisted
Innocence of a tweaked momentum that propels
Us on our haunted journey till we arrive as empty
Shells somehow with a nautical story to tell like how the mast rose
Above the tide while we sat on the deck like waking shadows
Shadows of possibility and what it means to be afraid
Of an elusiveness that keeps returning
As what we knew right from the start to be simple
Shadows.

Iris Zhang, Aug10

This is my latest revised edition of ‘Frolicking Theories’

the marrow of a bone.

Or it may be that we are from two
Different worlds, and
Tissue of thoughts flow through, along and
Out with the collusion
of tonight.Rewiring the plugs and cables just to connect
To a sound for a
Sigh or for a note so that we can see
Just what it feels like to hear
Tonight.

Maybe I’ll fascinate you for
a while, twirl on tiptoe and plan the fall
About which you will laugh
And your smile would melt
My night.

Scattered beats and staggered bones,
They built churches in Prague of
This bullet in my mind and
the forgotten moans, they ring through
Every night.

For when I cannot dig deep enough,
When I cannot show you the clutter
Of porous blood and matted hate,
It claws away, into
The night.

Iris Zhang, March10

Endowment Lands by Chris Bone

The painting of a million pictures of words

They came to take my song away
I twisted and curled and jumped and kissed
Ever so slightly, a peck!
My lips shocked the windowpane
And sent fits of giggles
Juggling through my window frame

My dream leaped out from her ghetto
And twirled around my back
So you either hold the brush
Or you just enjoy the tickle
For as they draw you away
They paint you back in
With five thousand different colors of love.

I woke up
The music rings in my ears
My wet hair falls a dropping rhythm
I sit in my chair
And tap for some rain.

Iris Zhang, Feb10