Olivia Sio Tse
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TO VESTAL
Dear concrete, what is it like
to be receiving? Constant?
I can hardly remember now. I listen through a door
improving the position of things with tweezers
each time they enter the room
I stand absolutely
still, to absolve them of reaction. To be a museum
for others is love. To hoard infusions of them, also
love. Even love is plating a gulf
for others to land
around. Loving, to meet at the chests of those before.
THE HOURS
So it’s not music today. Plus we’re out
of paper and jokes. So it’s work
to mop the boards and talk at once.
So I forgot
how crowded is the sea
and I’m basically berserk, backing in
to a spot by the bluffs. So bail.
The organ was tuned Monday
and darlings learn its scales. So trust
me to sour in the pre-heat. Steam
suggests phase change
but I was lonely
doing math in the carrel. So
we’re creatures decking dens with unlikely
lattice, so unlikely that no one
could speak. So nothing
came of the kiss because
there was no kiss, only an act
of elision. So division takes the big ones
and holds them under
the small, which drill us on size
and style. So I’m awash and wider still
drafting an elegy to a fish
for whom I never changed the sheets.
So this is an end
to frontier myths. So don’t cry
someone’s recast them in the same brassy
film. It’s odd we don’t call
for years, but now she dials
my desk. So fresh sweat is sweeter
than our hand-me-down
perils. So I’m older now
and does anyone else remember the flowers
that moved. So I bluff even more
scales. So is it provoking
if we’re proportional? So bring
me a cure, another eternal hour to play.
Biographical Statement
Olivia Sio Tse is a poet from Texas and a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her work has appeared in Denver Quarterly, Second Factory, Cream City Review, and elsewhere.