IMMACULATE CONCEPTION
Virginia Konchan
Come play, he said. You can be the horse.
It was a mating dance of cues and circling.
We ate unripened plums.
I gazed into a mirror. Me, a wife at fourteen?
Impossible. My face, impervious, closed.
Then I lowered it into the ground.
No flowers grew in our untilled soil of ash.
I despaired: how could I ascend the tower
when my husband, whom I fear, was its surveyor?
He stood frozen during the fifth month,
twitching with hate, took a trip down the river
of the father God for the last time.
The wind, restless as an ape, mourned for us both.
Today, I saw him, lifted my head high.
He mouthed come home.
Out of nowhere: the beyond.
Someone leaped.
Someone else was dragged.
after Wang Wei