Through a Glass Through Which We Cannot See
by Lo Kwa Mei-en

Read the automated transcript.

ourselves, a dead star is the only luminary

around for years. We see it a temple, then
sack it. I needed something, so I sang it.

O my Jupiter, magnetic war-dreamer who still
swings by & low— I couldn’t wear my red, red

storm on the bright outside for five hundred years.

I was a part, all surface, madly mirrored
across the world, just a stare, & kissing

back a false dreamer in the basement shrine.
The sofa would make no amends for being an altar.

The moon, too, had to be hauled up from there; once
now a needle, she tattooed the sweeping rib of

sky with the shape of a young woman’s bark.

Once, I saw the alarming & cooled heart of myself,
the swallower & expert of damage but not of repair

in myself, & found new ways to give it all

away. Made a gun of two fingers & a thumb, jerked
to the throat, hunting & hunting & turning in the dark.

& O bright star of disaster, I have been lit.

"Through a Glass Through Which We Cannot See" by Lo Kwa Mei-en, from YEARLING by Lo Kwa Mei-en, copyright © 2015 Alice James Books Used by permission of Alice James Books.