Pui Ying Wong

NOVEMBER AND THE MUSIC BOX

The field is ready
for winter,
when it sleeps
it won’t get enough

as if something fierce
in the ground is pulling it
down to its core,

then the wind will be homeless
and can’t hear its own crackling
in the cornstalks,
the flowering wheat,

and my silence will be
like the music box,
unopened, unwound,
and will grow eyes.

MEKONG

Smell of burnt leaves,
a bird shoots up
into the gasoline air,
boats carry pomelo, basil, denim,
buzzing of work, hemlocks sway,
a baby asleep to the blue
of the day, two dogs,
chin down.
How does the river heal?
Crowns of water hyacinth gather
in the river’s wide mouth.

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Pui Ying Wong was born in Hong Kong. She is the author of a full length book of poems, YELLOW PLUM SEASON (New York Quarterly, 2010) two chapbooks: SONNET FOR A NEW COUNTRY (Pudding House 2008), MEMENTOS (Finishing Line Press, 2007) and her poems have appeared or forthcoming in The Brooklyner, Gargoyle, The New Poet, Prairie Schooner, The Southampton Review, Ucity Review, and Valparaiso Review and others. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, the poet Tim Suermondt.