Maw Shein Win: California Poets Part 2, Five Poems
Maw Shein Win
February 21st, 2021
California Poets: Part II
Maw Shein Win
Five Poems
All poems are from Storage Unit for the Spirit House (Omnidawn, 2020)
Imaging Center
the pointer stick she grips
trails my twisting spine
she plots movement
with the exactness of a fingertip
slow as the motion of a snail in love
my naked back on treatment table
coolness hardening into memory
Hippodrome
a bag of lemons
& what she thought was a midnight cry
she longed to sing
think about lemons now
instead think about what
besides the lemons, there were scratching bats
only when she couldn’t hear him he would sing to her
try to remember how he died
nothing to do with skullcap
nor walnuts & golf clubs
she said she was Irish
she said she ate catfish
Reliquary
striped cat’s blazing eye
sleeping nerves
towering puppets
distant theater of Barcelona
rock vines
looping gaze
lavender husk
fruit nut
black madonna in glass case
wardrobe of ghosts
jagged edges
pilgrimage
stirred light
roots in dark
yanked from ground
eyelashes like miniature chains
Tomb
first version:
she lies still
the tomb is being filled
with a clear liquid
the liquid has a texture
not unlike gelatin
a poison or preservative
for the body that has not yet expired
second version:
her body rejects the liquid
they keep pouring it in
she keeps throwing it up
an attempt to live
as the hands move towards her
she is drawn deeper
into the tomb
third version:
a triangle of light
appears on stuccoed wall
she asks: what does this mean?
the figure
informs her that she
is the queen of New York
& her body is to be filled with pith
final version:
she puts on the silver
dress & silver shoes
kohl-rimmed eyes
she is on the dance
floor of a nightclub
the orb throws circles
of light on extended arms
Tower a flying fish in smoky air one woman in cerulean dress balances on tower silk scarf over head a burden to breathe below forest on fire fallow deer wild boar sloth bear fleeing flame tower leans to east pivots moving earth she coughs drop of blood burnt sienna a tower shakes
Author Bio:
Maw Shein Win is a poet, editor, and educator who lives and teaches in the Bay Area. Her poetry chapbooks are Ruins of a glittering palace (SPA/Commonwealth Projects) and Score and Bone (Nomadic Press). Invisible Gifts: Poems was published by Manic D Press in 2018. She was a 2019 Visiting Scholar in the Department of English at UC Berkeley. Win is the first poet laureate of El Cerrito, California (2016 – 2018). Her full-length poetry collection Storage Unit for the Spirit House (Omnidawn, 2020) was longlisted for the 2021 PEN America Open Book Award. She often collaborates with visual artists, musicians, and other writers and is a Spring 2021 ARC Poetry Fellow at UC Berkeley.