Leo Kang
Acts of kindness
1
This house is hardly young enough
to hold out the things behind the air.
We should have knelt
for whatever it was
that nourished the upholstery into bloom.
Atavisms
when we glove that dust.
Who owned it, at first? Not I.
Not I.
Systems of glass doors, gashed
with other colours,
and a giantess
roosts graciously in the keyholes.
Once a generation, the walls will breathe.
There are two forks left in the sink.
2
harissa: pungent
lettuce: sleek green
nuttiness
of tahini,
jounced with lemon
and cumin, fumed
earthly,
no halloumi?
no halloumi,
four fifty, with a water,
three twenty, no water
It’s so sunny today, and I’ve missed this.
It’s so warm and lovely today, and I will miss this.
3
We never did unspool our separate
topographies.
Sky? grown tender as it dumbs.
So he left for the Arctic, rippling
tenselessly.
He left for the East, fingers sticky as kings.
South, and we’ll keep the window seats
empty.
Stay, then arm us in the hour.
4
A sentence skins dimpled
somewhere in the middle.
Their sons and daughters
quartered themselves, ironed their silks,
kissed cheek to cheek, went out
and hurt one another.
Everything unsayable, gored by butterflies.
Butterflies are blue, or grotesquely beautiful.
“Wait , just five moments ”
And her dry legs kindle under the eiderdown.
5
All progress is a sort of falling off,
those eves of gentle atrocities, continuing,
like shedding your flesh from the balcony,
like waking with one stake through the page.
Retrace your footprints in freshwater.
Refurbish the bigger picture.
From pole to pole,
the small, cruel braille of long-lost children
sparkles.
An animal is lethal when wounded, so they say,
as the shadows go on fracturing the dials.
6
This house is hardly old enough to die in.
A poet’s immaculate skeleton
stands, just outside,
and whistles new jewels into the dark.
Blow out the taps, the lights. Melt down the doors,
keep the flowers, if you like.
This is all we owe ourselves:
fresh blackberries, to smear,
the machinery to miss,
a place to bleed at sunup.
This house is hardly young enough
to hold out the things behind the air.
We should have knelt
for whatever it was
that nourished the upholstery into bloom.
Atavisms
when we glove that dust.
Who owned it, at first? Not I.
Not I.
Systems of glass doors, gashed
with other colours,
and a giantess
roosts graciously in the keyholes.
Once a generation, the walls will breathe.
There are two forks left in the sink.
2
harissa: pungent
lettuce: sleek green
nuttiness
of tahini,
jounced with lemon
and cumin, fumed
earthly,
no halloumi?
no halloumi,
four fifty, with a water,
three twenty, no water
It’s so sunny today, and I’ve missed this.
It’s so warm and lovely today, and I will miss this.
3
We never did unspool our separate
topographies.
Sky? grown tender as it dumbs.
So he left for the Arctic, rippling
tenselessly.
He left for the East, fingers sticky as kings.
South, and we’ll keep the window seats
empty.
Stay, then arm us in the hour.
4
A sentence skins dimpled
somewhere in the middle.
Their sons and daughters
quartered themselves, ironed their silks,
kissed cheek to cheek, went out
and hurt one another.
Everything unsayable, gored by butterflies.
Butterflies are blue, or grotesquely beautiful.
“Wait , just five moments ”
And her dry legs kindle under the eiderdown.
5
All progress is a sort of falling off,
those eves of gentle atrocities, continuing,
like shedding your flesh from the balcony,
like waking with one stake through the page.
Retrace your footprints in freshwater.
Refurbish the bigger picture.
From pole to pole,
the small, cruel braille of long-lost children
sparkles.
An animal is lethal when wounded, so they say,
as the shadows go on fracturing the dials.
6
This house is hardly old enough to die in.
A poet’s immaculate skeleton
stands, just outside,
and whistles new jewels into the dark.
Blow out the taps, the lights. Melt down the doors,
keep the flowers, if you like.
This is all we owe ourselves:
fresh blackberries, to smear,
the machinery to miss,
a place to bleed at sunup.
Biography
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Leo Kang is tucked away somewhere dour in Yorkshire, England. He is sixteen years old. When he grows up, he hopes to write good things that last.
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