Poetry / December 2013 (Issue 22)


Lamprocapnos Spectabilis

by Janice Ko Luo

Hung upside down
you are white pigeons
on a clothesline

if pigeons were Chinese
courtesans dressed in red-
silk underthings.

That night his boat
floated towards me
on the Yang-tze River

and your skin emitted
white paper lanterns
in the dark.
 
What is nostalgia
but another name
for love?
 
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