Two Poems
Arlene Ang

Black Ink on White #2

Here's the porch light. It's hard to understand what I mean. Sometimes I am mean myself. Once, I used a knife to open a frog's lungs. Pink, like balloons. In those days, we called it religion. When she died, I burned all my mother's letters to the President.

Now it's night, and the trees are whispering Greek manifestos. I can see there's a hole in my head through the mirror. It is shaped like a beetle, with eleven legs. The twelfth one came off. An eyelash. I find myself in the lost-and-found window.

History

Everyone pretends to read
their book. On the radio,
someone plays the virginal --
Napoleon writing his imminent

return to wife Josephine.
The directive, largo: Don't bathe.

1996 © 2006