Two Poems
Kristine Ong Muslim

After a year of researching ghost towns

The darkness swells with the bodies of strangers --
all human; their bitterness coated with chocolate milk.
Inside one of the abandoned houses, a refrigerator door
opens. Someone else's memory.


A love story

Another blind item: a couple from upstate got drunk,
laughed all the way to the stable where the horses had
trampled them to death. The mayor had to apologize on
national TV.