“Dedication” by Wendy Xu

Our poetry editor, Joe Pan, has selected a poem by Wendy Xu for his series that brings original poetry to the screens of Hyperallergic readers. For those interested in submitting work for possible publication, email 3–5 poems, with a cover letter, in a single Word document or PDF to poetry [at] hyperallergic [dot] com.

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DEDICATION

Thinking to see them there, captains
industrious in
morning sun, I crack the egg’s tender
yellow head

Love comes to me un-
repentant, toward it all vectors
converge repeating, like

moments of necessary form
I pluck a feather from your neck

On the page one alights without permission, or
love is
an assemblage

beginning each day identical, palpable
remarks of, is it that music or need edits
my body

two people leave a shopping mall
with goods, death squad hovering high
a streetlamp
Call your mother, stay up late

to watch the neighborhood
undressing light, like
multiple phone calls
connected then
hung up, get the family together soon, watch

American bison overtake the field
filling a vehicle lane in early snow
obstructed I paused

To see it, their dark furs shaking enormous
out of trees they descended from the line of sky
respond to a much deeper instinct

we were then back on our way
input later to the search bar
I love keywords, like
love is
an exodus

I imagine you sleeping, then a pyramid or
chandelier throwing sunlight

An absence emerges, sharp, I regard the whole
practice of it

touch it

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Wendy Xu is the author of You Are Not Dead (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2013), and two chapbooks. Recent poems have appeared (or will appear) in The Best American Poetry, POETRY, Denver Quarterly, Guernica, The Volta, and elsewhere. She is the co-editor and publisher of iO: A Journal of New American Poetry / iO Books, and teaches writing at CUNY.