John Yau

It is said, the past
sticks to the present

like glue,
...

The world weeps. There are no tears
To be found. It is deemed a miracle.
The president appears on screens
In villages and towns, in cities in jungles
...

I used to be a plastic bottle

I used to be scads of masticated wattle

I used to be epic spittle, aka septic piddle
...

As you may have inferred, Ka Pow is not a spicy chicken dish
Meanwhile, you are an accident waiting to repurpose yourself

Who are you to mix up languages? This is not a smorgasbord
You have to remember that you are a cylinder, a form of fodder
...

They are dying out and I want to reach them before they are gone
Not that I know what I would say to them when I get there
Their songs rippling beneath temporary sky
As I approach, as I am doing now
...

Come live with me
And we will sit

Upon the rocks
By shallow rivers
...

It had to be from someone whose grandparents were born in Shanghai
not the city's greatest citizens, but certainly among the sober ones
to make their small now eroded mark
...

It does not do you like it
Imperfect copy's forgery
Posts its vermillion decree
These anointed mistakes
...

Or is it
a poor trait

I am a
parasite
...

There are rooftops
made of cloud remnants

gathered by a trader
dabbling in car parts and burlap
...

A blue and green city, with the sun rising behind it, just not swiftly enough
Don't worry about being perfect. Just make sure you have some juice left in the pump

I have many other remedies on hand, not just history's bags of sumptuous soot
Hello, I am beauty's representative; I work in the self-improvement sector
...

You grow up hearing two languages. Neither fits your fits
Your mother informs you "moon" means "window to another world."

You begin to hear words mourn the sounds buried inside their mouths
A row of yellow windows and a painting of them
...

(after Carlos Drummond de Andrade)

Don't write poems
about yourself.
...

1.
They say we should write about our misery
soaked selves, parade our inadequacies
before all, pad about in cracked slippers
Why speak about other things when you cannot mean
...

A hippo sits patiently in a palm tree
while a hoopoe hops up a ladder
On desert's edge, far from oil lamps
a Slughi plays tag with jackals
...

Horizon helmet horse hierophant
Sun presses clay snakes back
into rows of snarling eyes
Bristles bring back their prey
...

Father liked to say that things were different back then, that even the snowflakes were larger, more fulfilling, especially if you were afflicted with a hunger that only snowflakes could cure, but mother disagreed, standing her ground, fierce and toothsome-a tall glass of dish soap weathering a storm of filthy laundry. This duet of bits and pieces gained notice as the Third Neo-Mexican Symphony, a name that hardly does the event justice
...

ilm was rumored to have disintegrated, but that was not the case. A copy of it existed in the library of the small town where the director had been born and where he was last seen entering a theater that has become a small but enduring monument to his artistry.
...