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.
