Karen An-hwei Lee is the author of Ardor (Tupelo Press, 2008) and In Medias Res (Sarabande Books, 2004),
winner of the Kathryn A. Morton Prize and the Norma Farber First Book Award. Her chapbook, God’s One Hundred Promises, received the Swan Scythe Press Prize. The recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Grant, she lives and teaches in southern California, where she is a novice harpist.
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Song-Riddle: The Ocean
Micah 7:19 “You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea.”
I guide drifters to my lightless caves,
yet seize those who tumble to my depths.
By memory, the blind navigate on faith.
What creature gathers its lost bones,
yet fails to heap them for the wind?
There is no wind in this place.
yet seize those who tumble to my depths.
By memory, the blind navigate on faith.
What creature gathers its lost bones,
yet fails to heap them for the wind?
There is no wind in this place.
Whose horse allows its rider
to swim bareback or saddled
to swim bareback or saddled
over fields of blue aster, blue wool star?
I spawn flora and fauna
yet desire no fuel or sustenance
not even waves of blue nasturtium.
Who invites houseguests while
those overstaying their welcome
meet an untimely demise?
Where is the well of forgiveness
for casting all our sins?
A word for this might be, azureum
as in a blue arboretum of praise.
those overstaying their welcome
meet an untimely demise?
Where is the well of forgiveness
for casting all our sins?
A word for this might be, azureum
as in a blue arboretum of praise.
Sea of Crises
We ask whether any water exists here.
Mare crisium is a dry sea on the moon.
If water is real, then stone flowers grow
on the shoulders
Mare crisium is a dry sea on the moon.
If water is real, then stone flowers grow
on the shoulders
of air sealed in volcanic glass
hidden under polar caps
proof the moon is not only bone.
Molecule on molecule,
regolith on a dark basalt meadow
aligns with evidence no one can see.