In the Fourth Corner of the Earth
BY KHATY XIONG
I arrive as a guest on the southern slopes of my mother’s death or is it eastern I currently face in this diminishing matter leaving eventually the colorful range of her chest shades of rage & old lifetimes. The challenge precisely fatal as I juice my mind a former land in which I once filled buckets of cherry tomatoes & the occasional spider consummating this encounter. I am sore from seeing her still. So this is what grief looks like when it no longer moves. Her dull gaze creamy & honest. An enduring memory that remains & it does not betray. It is said the original humans did not have eyes. Eyes to be fashioned by three godly metals: iron, copper, & silver. When they opened their eyes they understood where they would grow to die & so they learned in time to sew their own shoes so that they may enter paradise complete with all their toes. So it was also decided among them where bodies felled by violence would go to enter magic baths of forgiveness. Where might this pool be far as I am. Mother’s metallic vision powered off & definitively. As a guest in her bedroom I examine the living garbs in her suitcases, lay onto the bed floral shirts, beaded sashes, & upon unearthing the rock of her heirloom the slicing sound of her xauv punctuating through the halls. Good maiden I leave your clothes & all your medicine. Carcass for cocoon. My mother’s discontinued perfume could grow in these slopes far as the eye can see her favorite flower: Tibetan Blue Poppy. Quite the view it would make. The temperature embalming.