Three poems by Kristine Ong Muslim

Dream elements from parcel #23

The components of a dream wife are self-assembling.

It says on the package: with an instinct for regeneration,

like a severed segment of a worm. Pain is jazz; there is

a riddle, a life in there somehow, and you read between

the lines of the instruction manual, until you understand

that the resulting wife must never be dehydrated.

The assembly process generates a lot of castoffs--

all resembling museum debris. The vibration causes

the planetary system guidebook to fall off the shelf.

You pick it up

and get seventeen paper cuts

across your arm.

Keeping it safe

I discovered this thing, took it home. It had no name,

no identity papers. Nobody was looking for it, either.

Suspended proud and grim as a hunter's trophy on the wall,

it was now nailed onto my bedroom wall. A little blood on

the spot where the nail was struck. Quickly, I wiped it away.

Another line of blood trickled down. I left the thing to bleed

to dry overnight. By morning, it was shriveled. Bent in half.

A silent backdrop. No pain could creep in that husk anymore.

Little Jimmy, 10

He caught a dragonfly today and let it go;

there was no reason to keep it

when his friends were not looking.

Walking home, he noticed that his hands

had ached after carving his name on the surface

of a boulder. That was the price of conquering

a rock twice his size. But he only wanted his name

to last, and nobody could outlive a mountain stone.

He still did not know about weathering.

Late afternoon. He reached the family house

at the edge of the corn field. It was only white

when seen from afar. He smelled cow manure

in the compost pit behind the barn, imagined

the sawdust and splinters on the floor of the tool shed,

his mother canning tomatoes in the kitchen,

his father on the tractor borrowed from

Mr. Dramb--the sweet-swearing American grouch.

He exhaled the breath of a child, the long season.

Kristine Ong Muslim has been published in over 300 publications worldwide, including Arsenic Lobster Poetry Journal, BeeswaxMagazine, Boxcar Poetry Review, Fifth Wednesday, Forge, GlassFire Magazine, Grasslimb, Iodine Poetry Journal, Knockout,Narrative Magazine, Otoliths, Ottawa Arts Review, Pank, Quay, Riddle Fence, The Pedesta l Magazine, and T-Zero.. She has been nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize. Her publication credits can be viewed here.