In the Old World

I am to reread their wrinkles
search their weeds for memories

even as ancestors' eyes are forced
to close, go masked, invisible.

It will make sense
until you ask about it.

*
They want to open my mind
wrest, twist it wide

then tip it like the overfilled point
of a plate, at the moment when

you're suddenly sated,
free of the desire for it.

*
I mime their scolding for I have no will,
and I am meek. Still they are forgotten

even so, every time--memory by memory
in a language my children will never speak

Aiyo--to think I meant at the start
to hold and shape love

as it pooled its fast and fluid
escape in my heart.

****