THREE POEMS by KELLY XIO
Good morning
I am trying to get stronger
Not Teflon or cockroach strong
Please don’t let me outlast
the fall of mankind
but I am trying to be strong as
an oak tree— I want to seem
immortal and larger than life
but there is a possibility
I am dead inside
I am taking creatine
and flooding my muscles
I am trying to turn to stone
I am trying to become bigger
than the sound of
inflating disappointments
& crushing returns
A while ago I said I was done
with the myth of me but
now I’m an old oak on my tiptoes
giving forehead kisses to the sun,
yes, I want arms that bear hug the wind
until it bowls me over
I like the serenity prayer and I always have —
I am microdosing hell and calling it surrender
I am accepting that I am aging irrelevant
and Yes, I mean nothing to you
October 13
Watching clouds pixelate.
Cardi B says when it’s up, then it’s up.
I’m thinking about how, when I’m down,
I’m so down—how people pledge themselves
to invocations of the worst things you’ve ever heard
just to justify selling their slices of
Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems,
Northrop Grumman.
I’m just riding the 7.
Next stop: Gould & Allegheny.
Cardi insists that bitches aren’t fucking with her,
and I can see how empathy went from
a treasured physiological event
to a tired, tradable commodity.
“Is this bus headed downtown?”
The man says yes.
I ask if I should bop off and take the 1.
He says I could, but he wouldn’t.
“You could just stay here.”
And isn’t that the thing:
always looking for a faster solution
that requires more effort
when I could simply wait.
I slide into velvet, into the night.
Cardi: I been lit since last night.
I felt that when Raena called Alina’s name
a song, and Hanif held Raena’s
hazel gaze full of tears
and said the most beautiful thing.
Then a table of food, chatter, breath.
Down the street from Dirty Frank’s
and the spot with slut sauce.
I admit I don’t know where Cincinnati is
but I want to visit.
When Cardi said broke boys don’t deserve pussy,
I heard poetry,
and that’s true too.
Rumi didn’t write the wound is where the light enters you
for those of weak lineage
and a broken spirit.
I wake in the warm hush
of Kosoma & Steve’s home,
wander Short North where the trees
dance their practiced choreography.
A mix of old and new
not so planned that I can relate.
Nothing was exacting on my birth;
I simply arrived, and here I am.
Columbus, Cbus, Cowtown,
beautiful in its changing, hurting, happening.
I’m writing this in Goodale Park
in the shade of a tree instructing me
to yield to the inevitable siren
of the seasons.
Let my leaves turn.
Let gratitude and joy rinse me clean.
And when Cardi says,
put it on him now and he’ll never be the same,
she’s naming the sense of
wonder and horror
Only a life lived awake can give.
October 14
I am in the breath of a cloud,
so far up I can look fondly down.
There’s a little house where lovers
tend to their hearths and altars.
The kimchi stew was so good, babe..
The parking lot where we stood—so good.
The way we looked in the gay ass lighting
of the tiki bar beneath Mikey’s—so good.
Every act we do is in defiance
of a loan shark of souls
eager to repossess our borrowed hours.
Oh Reaper—my soul has accrued interest.
You’ll cash me outside someday,
but right now I’m in the sweet aspiration
of this cloud,
high enough to see the plot of dirt
where you’ll bury me and say she took
everything too far.
I like the view from up here and
I see your house where I once thought it’d be nice to return.
Should I never come down,
let this poem stand in—
a placeholder receipt
for the delights I owe this earth
kelly xio lives in maryland and recently coped with the fact that mtv misled her to believe that people regularly vacation in cancun and scream spring break. they/she.