luggage the roots and buckle the body
touch the nose and smell the hand, answer: would you like eggs for breakfast

a whole field of shy sunflowers, whispering: a whole field of shy sunflowers, what it’s like being born, the one plucked, and I don’t ever want to go back, not like I could, touch the mouth, drinking coffee, yes I would, two hands are invited to a separation, two hands of one body, what it’s like breaking up with yourself, a hand floating in the air looks for something to rub, the hard hair on a leg or a cheek smooth grape, answer:

why did you come here?

a bird in flight releases a ribbon of white from its ass and the brief pleasure of a moment inside its weightless body contains the ravishing ache of empty, in the first moments of being alive it is very important to take a bath, why I came here? a hand floating in the air looking for something to rub, to take a bath in your tongue, to fill my palms with kneecaps, and to breathe in the smell of your farms, to kill a vocabulary and cry over all my dead friends, a smooth grape in the mouth, when it breaks, a smooth grape in the mouth when it breaks that is how I want to be bathed the ribbon of white floating like an opera through the sky, born from a bird’s ass, and this flap of table under my breakfast, oh just crack the egg straight into my open mouth, please

in flight instructions:

picture a floating white ribbon, picture the soup of loose excrement, picture me as elbows on the flap of a table holding my head (touching my hair), picture me as an egg, picture me as a grape, picture me as bird poop, picture me as one of you

Born in Wampsville, New York, Kaitlin Rees (1985) has written one tiny book of poetry, Language Without Color (2014), self-published along with other poems and translations from the Vietnamese in Ajar Press. Her translations of Nhã Thuyên's poetry have been published in a collection of three Vietnamese poets compiled by Vagabond Press (2013), as well as a full-length collection words breathe, creatures of elsewhere (Vagabond Press, 2016). An on-going poetic artwork of compiling fragments of an infinite dictionary was exhibited at Zalaegerszeg, Hungary in 2015 and in the hutongs of Shanghai, China in 2016.