Lantern Review: A Journal of Asian American Poetry
Issue 1 | June 2010

Angela Veronica Wong

LIFE AS A GIRL

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the written boundaries. the blue lines. my body grid into streets. skin against wetness.
wetness against air. movement; resistance. a red dream. a read dream. a clothesline.
scission.

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the ocean is on the bottom/ of everything. like being/ in an echo—without language, with
only/ the interruption of the body/ in space.

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i can see from here what is left— your rhythms opened.

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fuck me like cleaning
a pumpkin plunging a hand
into cold, wet, pulling
out a fistful of slippery seeds,
clumps of tangled
hair, a tumor leaking
between fingers

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