Meteor Shower
Written by Darren Ngyuen
In this vacancy, I stir .
1.
There is a blind girl
balancing her weight on a blazing hole of crushed light
bore inside a stomach only dirty men know best
laced in star-like shreds of the universe
counted in constellations before her birth
her Empyrean wings wavering
towards the pain glowing neon.
The stories she questions
why women have to have so much love in bodies thin
that cradle rouge & hold heavy truths in behest
this diaphanous safety lipstick-stained
this imbued becoming one with dread
is a wasted figure eclipsed
is another evil we call a satellite
& even when she has done everything holy in this life
& still
& worn-thin worship in every pulse pours bloodred
& still
In the center’s crescent of myth
In the stairwell’s stomp of echo
In the grief of youth
In the murder of snow
In the barrel of moon
you’ve been destined a white-hot scar
2.
A couple gazes at the rustling of overgrown greenery hugging forgotten sidewalks
soon part ways with human touch like the line of demarcation running
after the first wash of hair.
Outside of businessmen and skyscrapers, they stand far and few between
in this field of plains
with their glinting eyes
under each lush light brightening
illuminations of each rock and blade of grass to be
A shooting star arrives.
Its flash of beaming brightness: a beacon’s omen of death captured in milliseconds.
She stares in wonderment, then a pause, slowly speaking:
Stars have become secretive blessings lately
too charming, too true
they eat at the longing to forgive and forget and forget and forget
at howblisteringly bright
stardom consumes
Rewriting astrological signs
reassigned to birthmarks on backs
comets in their wildest habitat
preserving nature’s outlines
pencil-drawn symbols pressing against chins
‘til the blanket of dusk contours laughter’s shadows
letting the nighttime win again.
In the year they massacre heavenly bodies
the pair will savor each kiss
each breath and then the satisfying next
tracing their initials in ephemeral evergreens
they swim into the beauty of the azure
a pure ecstasy scarcely found in lovers’ spit
before being swept into the pitch black:
a motionless motion, a joyous sound for sad films, the end to a revolution.
3.
I have a mystery to tell of you.
In the blood-washed clay
my legs are bound to you and everything else that I have seductively sat inside:
the crevices of being human & being held
Maybe it’s the season of changing or sentences unspoken
but I want to soak your incense
sleep through your sunset
leave marks where there should be marks
how day lilies flourish in similar cuts how earth holds us tight to sullen ground
In our spring equinox the equator spins around this cyclical bloom
A rotation of gardens atmosphere stood awake the sky billowing
Into florals & craters favors of the deceased toe the crooked line
We run its course in meadow moments imagined wilderness
To hold a child in this delicate plight and handle beauty
How fortunate to twirl in the midst to be a mother of one
4.
To refuse troubled nature is to refuse oblivion & the night & the stars & flowers & supernovas &
siblings & T Coronae Borealis & holding hands in public & blue stars & red stars & shooting stars
&arguments & all-out war & apologies & stars & stars & stars & stars & stars / all the white
dwarf stars / stars that refused to stop burning / rageful stars / they ignite fragmented objects /
midnight skies’ soft organs / but they do not quiver / nor stop multiplying / ‘til a sun rips out the
heart / ‘til bated breath becomes weightless / ‘til we measure the body’s worth / an incandescent
skeleton is aglow / in vicious waiting / in crimson / do we break the day
5.
the men in her family have always spat and chewed
unsavory teeth fillings she had to get checked
“you are bitch-brained” and too ripe to tell the tale
when dying is your second cousin and to rot in linen is to gouge anything edible
a cavity is stuffed with crushed satin and coracious darkness that growls like a lynx
a can of sparklers spill, a flashbang of her universe unknown to man
an open woundbetween endless melancholia & man-made fireflies
a can of sparklers spill, a Luna moth in its final phase
an impending wrinkled imprint of the girl’s resting place
their house creaks like his father and she’s a floor.
tips of fingers. spikes of lust. she lays twitching (in touch)
6.
Do you remember the shimmering phenomena and its white-hot reflections dotting the glass of
our eyes? When you stroked the sparks that starch my skin like vengeance, when the red-hot
ripples of being rare and alive dissipate and I’m under the fortress you built again, with your
limbs, a blanket, a mattress—not as an endangered species.
In the backlit kiln of the night before, there is a swollen pit in front of us and our circling of
rabid dogs left behind us. I am the offspring swallowed. Partner horrified. Publicly inflamed at
the canines drooling all over my rotting flesh.
//
It is mid-morning of a late autumn and I avoid luminaries at all costs.
I begin to believe all celestial bodies are hung-up astral projections, faux cosmos watched
Anodeto brilliant sparkling heat like flashing memories of a groveling woman superimposed
The tapestries we mended—sent in staring contests and smiles at slaughter of shooting stars
These fabricated holes in the sky, we manipulated, repeatedly turnt over and disappeared
///
Nightfall in a busy, noise-polluted city but there is no barking.
Past the bitter hustle & bustle
past lone goldenrods trembling
past crowds of cars scattering
past the unhoused sleeping
past saplings rustling—
a liferaft is splayed in an alleyway dumpster on the corner of 33rd.
An unorthodox sky is left starless
painted charcoal
&colorful leaves wilting
will confess
before an inevitable winter.
