Albert Hwang
Coral
And I said it's time to return
that little piece of coral we took from
the sea, the day we got engaged.
They say not to take from
the land the ʻĀina
Not to make the sacred a souvenir
But I saw in it something ancient
Imagined its striations to be
fossils and caverns of memories and to be
jurassic somehow
like the tooth of an early world.
And I imagined it to be us, an old thing
that always was, was always becoming
a new thing, evading erosion
carrying the old bodies of stars inside us.
But these years, these years, these years
this last year.
"Are we still?" you asked and "Now what?"
"Erosion," I said,
"Like the ʻĀina.”
Your Ring
I wore that ring today the one
you got me.
And I felt
three millimeters closer to
you for hours and you were
heavy on me like nine grams
or ten of anchor, anchoring me
to who I am.
And I could feel you every time I typed
"W" that key that clack that begins
every "we" every "were" every "were?"
And really you were again
everywhere,
three millimeters nine grams round around everywhere.
Albert Hwang is a Taiwanese American poet from Illinois. He is a James B. Reston New York Times Gold Key winner (Scholastic Arts & Writing) and a Betty L. Yu & Jin C. Yu Creative Writing Prize winner (TaiwaneseAmerican.org). His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Heavy Feather Review, Inscape Journal, The Lake, New Verse News, Unbroken Journal, and other publications.
