NELSON YANG
Dead Birds Don’t Fly
When I think of love, I know of two birds watching helplessly as ants infiltrate the rotting stump of which their chicks chirped out in pain.
It is a boy who believed he had the strength to save those chicks as crimson scars continued to cascade on his skin, countless compared to his goal.
He raised them without ever expecting anything but the joy of having something he could call his until his mother decided the birds were too old for cages inside a dying house.
He had not known she had done such an act until he came home greeted by the absence of decay. He asked, “how could you do this to me? I loved them.”
Her response was not for him to hear but for his father who didn’t want to be there; absent in the role of a lover, a husband, he did not have the type of wings to reach her.
The porch always cracked under the sun’s outward gaze. The floorboards ached from unused furniture. It was a dying house but those birds always came back to see me.
When I think of love, I think of how those wings carried them to places I’ve never been yet always returned in their freedom. When I think of love, it is how men who have lain themselves next to me slither away in the darkness, choking on my unborn children.
Rules to know it’s love;
There are nine rules
to being human
according to the Ancient Sanskrit
Can you find yourself
Inside him
When he is lost in yours?
Pick eight things
You would bring
To an island adventure
Is there any
thing that reminds
you of him?
Seven ruffled crows
circle above you
eyeing the soon-to-be cadavers.
Should you feel
an intense hatred
toward the nature of things?
Over there, six times
greener than yours
with no shit in tow
Do you ever want
to go there instead?
Does he?
Hear five lessons
echo in your
muddled stained throat
Have you ever
Learned how to
Whisper “forgiveness”?
Burn four letters
That you wrote
For the places you’ll never visit
Could you find
The strength to
Ever write them again?
Commit three hours
Into understanding
why kiwis don’t fly
Does it take
A cold embrace
To learn your lesson?
Leave two reasons
Why you didn’t
Feed the dogs
Wild roses sway in the wind
You see less than 10,
how can you pick one?
One body
Makes pudding splatter
Across the walls
<|There isn’t a
reason anymore|>
Another Red Day
They told me I came out of the womb bleeding,
caressing my blood like sweet fruit bleeding.
Oh if you could see baby me smile,
how the cuteness from me was bleeding.
Tough love comes in many different forms,
I did not know it meant my heart would endure bleeding -
even after I learned the way sand fell through my fingers
that a “no” would be followed by the tip of the wire bleeding.
I lost my youth hidden in the darkness of the lakeshore path,
The chill of a fall was more comforting than when he left my ass bleeding,
When life gives you lemons I made sure
it was normal for the sting to be bleeding.
The unyielding earth does not tell me
if we all die alone bleeding.
He stared into my soul as his lips parted touch,
and even Nelson could tell his eyes were bleeding.
Mixed Drinks
He pins me
on the ground
and he smiles
he knows me
as I let
him think so
our bodies twist
and tangle, hot
and heavy breaths
my face reddens
around his neck
he lifts me
up so I
smile into eyes
that makes it
hard to control -
I love you
as he relaxes
his hold on
me, he cries
Nelson Yang is a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.