primary education

E brings home a lesson from school:

a bullet must move at the velocity of a kingfisher
to break through skin

these necessary curriculums protect
from uncouth imagination

so,
I too learn the scholastic tongue
I adopt an obsession for armed

semantics. I say things like jump the gun and
pull the trigger, recall how my lovers used to flirt

with the same slight of rhetoric that obscures
the distance between port and womb

what they baptize trench to bury discarded theory
I name for her

crater
mouth
a vessel to hold water

for her I recite allegiance to the flag that maps
how a lake is formed

we dance in the garden
our only nation

in another life, I might speak the truth:

their lessons cannot touch you

if you reject body
is border. if the kingfisher flees and sings of home

Starr Jiang is a filmmaker and production designer from the Bay Area. She is currently based in New York City, where she is finishing the production of her upcoming docufiction short, LOVE BIRD. This is her first poetry publication.