Tuesday, July 3, 2012

A Cathy Park Hong Poem

 

Engines Within The Throne


We once worked as clerks      
       scanning moth-balled pages
into the clouds, all memories
outsourced except the fuzzy
       childhood bits when
I was an undersized girl with a tic,
they numbed me with botox
       I was a skinsuit
of dumb expression, just fingerprints

over my shamed
       all I wanted was snow
to snuff the sun blades to shadow spokes,
muffle the drum of freeways, erase
       the old realism
but this smart snow erases
       nothing, seeps everywhere,
the search engine is inside us,
the world is our display
       and now every industry
has dumped whole cubicles, desktops,
fax machines into developing
       worlds where they stack
them as walls against

what disputed territory
       we asked the old spy who drank
with Russians to gather information
the old-fashioned way,
now we have snow sensors,
       so you can go spelunking
in anyone's mind,
let me borrow your child
thoughts, it's benign surveillance,
       I can burrow inside, find a cave
pool with rock-colored flounder,
and find you, half-transparent
with depression.



(2012)

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