The Death Of The Author Poem by Chen-ou Liu

A Tanka Sequence for Roland Barthes


after opening
the envelop stuffed with my poems
I take out my heart
wash it clean
and start writing again

surrounded
by a swarm of buzzing words
I squash them
in the rhythm of
short, long, short, long, long

I keep
stacking blocks of stanza
suddenly
the poem collapses in silence
I am buried alive

under the gaze
of Calliope's love
my next poem
is about to take flight
but Heaven's window is shut

I skip
a stone of words
across the lake
of another time
another place