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.