The winds are ceaseless striking. The tenor
of a likeness. The quarrel
of the metal on the door mount
You must learn to be bamboo, she once had said
when I was still in high school, as if
she knew I couldn’t bend
unlike my sister
whose pregnancy at sixteen
broke the silence of our sex
unlike my brother. Even then
always easy on himself
How memory works forward— I had sent them
for her birthday, on the same day
she had bought them for herself
A thousand miles away
A single impulse
Bamboo chimes talking
after years of no-wind trying
The iron of the plates
Bamboo chimes knocking
as of someone at the gate
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 15, Issue 2.