Michelle Johnson-Wang
The eye of the pond opens and closes,
blinking sleepily and without pain.
Deep in the hills, a green storm rumbles
the grass shudders and shapeshifts in the wind, churning
each blade a sardine
locked in the current of an oceanic swell.
Here, I am the absence of field, a black hole.
A flock of starlings pass clean through me,
picking flesh from bone,
limb from socket,
hand from unlovable hand
until I am the absence of human.
The starlings create a strange and malicious form,
like an airborne eel,
like the shifting grey powder of a child’s Etch-A-Sketch,
the magnetic granules collecting in the red frame
like rainwater
like a red wheelbarrow,
drop by drop, the pond fills once again.
***
Michelle Johnson-Wang is a Chinese American writer originally from Washington DC. She is currently studying at UC Berkeley. Her work has appeared in Ruminate Magazine, West Trestle Review, Rock & Sling, River River Journal, and elsewhere.