It was not a storm

that pulled me across the water.
I crossed by choice.
On its banks, I caused
my life. Thousand-petaled
clouds cleaved and hailed
into my mind, so
I never stooped to drink.
(I rolled to hear ice clink.)
My path was discrete,
wind falling on wind,
lightning into ecstatic
lightning. What landings
I stuck, I took as my own.
What words I knew,
I mouthed, cotton-
mouthed, nappy.
What I scraped
from rock faces
after the rain,
I pressed into my bed
under the dream.
There, I cut each ice block
in my extinct forest,
and the story is the sound
of the logs slotting.
Once an hour,
wind cuts through
with windchimes,
and once a daybreak,
warblers volley in in a ring.

bidding goodnight to my exes’ exes

nothing to do but open and close. door,
light switch, umbrella, mollusca, bodega. close
late night, open later night,

close, square hair around white oval, spiraling
a clear dark floor, no walls,
no halls.

close, queer ghost light in block kitchen,
you’re thick as a knife,
lantern. close,

curve joints, your child-
face out all day
wandering, now close, now

knee, may your child
sleep soundless. may your sleep
sleep richly.

i’m up all night to get
you all chairs on my planet
in mormon heaven,

mostly folding, your twinness.
nothing to do here but close, legs,
cooing like a turkey caller,

fresh lashes
upon our heart meat,
you’re radioactive,

crease creators, slick
as sheep’s wool, yellow glinting feather shafts
hollow hollow hollowed,

close, sleep, that i may stalk
the stadium lined with your long, never-
ending teeth closed

for cleaning, stuck with krill, tall.
wind bathing ice, blowing around
without temperature at all.

You Li is a lawyer and poet who was born in Beijing and lives in New Haven. Her poems have appeared in Narrative, Shenandoah, Ploughshares, Asian American Writers’ Workshop’s The Margins, and elsewhere.