Stanislavski Method

Because your father cannot hurt you
in places that do not yet exist, you must,
like a god, abandon your own self
& invent new body parts: a third arm,
a wood plank stomach, things you can
easily squirrel away in broken elevators
at Westfield Montgomery Mall.

Why you always find yourself in broken spaces
is only a matter of geometry, the way
all the angles inside a triangle add up to
a hurricane. When your father’s on the porch
he tells strangers to fuck off & they do fuck off,
un-hammering their teeth from the tarmac
& slouching away. Oh, but you fuck up
all the time. You still don’t know whether
you fear your father or want to be your father,
so you get in multiple car accidents
& let the airbag against your body decide.

It’s so easy for you to come back to life
but so much harder for you to stay alive.
Could a cello case holding a white stallion,
a Solo cup sloshing with embryonic memory,
could anything possibly save you now?

The way you know now to close your eyes
& enter where the snow falls like cold,
crushed peach slices. When the rambling wino
approaches you in the white forest, he leaves
no footprints behind. Listen as he says
your drinking water is contaminated
with phytoplankton blooms & the government
has wiretaps in all our brains. Listen carefully.
He’s telling you about his father who is
your father who is your father who is —

Lydia Wei’s poems appear or are forthcoming in The Adroit Journal, wildness, The Margins: Asian American Writers’ Workshop, harana poetry, and elsewhere. Her work has been recognized by Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award, the National YoungArts Foundation, the U.S. Presidential Scholars in the Arts Program, and the National Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. She lives in Gaithersburg, Maryland.