Desmond Kon Poems

I am not Proust and his literary machine.

Am I partial as objects, as impulses that make me burst open Stevens?
Am I eros that resonates like an oboe?
...

The apple is first rolled across the floor, bounced, bruised
like her forehead, like her small brown tired eye. The apple tosses, itself
a tennis ball, against all four walls – still she thinks it’s the parrot
out of its cage, out all four walls. When it finally dribbles to land
...

make a poem a still life, filled in as a catamaran.

unrequited, what to cold storage for next week?
what cabinets to refloat, long looking like boats?
...

like latin-sanskrit translations, they quarry the pits of pasts written into power
but today, the dream of jerome fathers me into watching words, watching
what walls, beholds, what ends, the dream like the flame he extinguished
...

and the kings of freedom said
make of the crimson another magenta
and carnelian, of history that blankets yet
uncovers, a sheath of a redder safelight
...

[by desmond kon délong-wangshu]

a cartesian don’t-think remove
heraclitean follow-through
...

into the black, leukocyte-white
that points native, a slavish-vernacular
in red-aureate arrows to underline
...

when will you paint me pictures of home again?
those pictures spoke a sensible content
a rare happiness I haven’t seen in you recently
your half-smiles a disinclination to things as if life forced you into its elisions
...

{spring and its purple pollen}
{hear the shop, its soft opening}
{archivist on his way to work}
...

{hidden stairwell and subway}
{commune for the infantrymen}
{beyond and despite the pain}
...