“Poetry is made of metaphor. It is a collision, a collusion, a compression of two unlike things. . . . It is a transfer of energies, a mode of interpenetration, a matter of identity and difference.” —Edward Hirsch

Angela Lim is a poet, educator, and editor currently living in Bloomington, Indiana, where she is pursuing an MFA in poetry at Indiana University. In addition to writing poems, Angela has written dozens of juvenile nonfiction books.

Welcome to the Poets Weave. I'm Romayne Rubinas Dorsey. Angela, what have you brought for us today?
 
Without Compass

As the sky glares and throws up
its horizons, I am night-tromped, near empty.
The stars twinkle with ill gossip. Bad omens
shake the landscape. The earth creeps
with beasts more unnameable
than self. I just want the grass
to stay grass, but I haven’t learned
how to spend life without worrying
what lies beneath the plain’s cloak:
toe stubs and undead arms,
rattlesnakes and rusty nails.
Whenever I appear here, I fear
I have nothing to offer. I’ve crashed
into every stillness as soon as it appears.
I’ve begged peace to storm
into me. The fact is, I am not good
for the chase. Every gentle thing
escapes me. I don’t feel ready
to run barefoot. To have everything
in the dirt impress
itself into my heels.

---
COMPULSORY

Flummoxed, searching for epiphany with my eyes
closed: my thoughts scrambled like radio static: I imagine
myself wearing a makeshift aluminum cap, trying again
for contact; and maybe, I want to believe
a conspiracy will cleanse me
of my organs, lift me
into hyperdrive—Is this attraction or the bone-

white pull of a tractor beam? This language has so many beautiful words
for confusion: We could stare at the sky together and ignore

my befuddlement: abduction is another way
to say I was swept off my feet, or I’m getting carried
away, or did I take it as proof that I’m worthy
of study. But I finally saw the tentacle
for what it was: the debt I owed
was all hoax: I didn’t want to leave
this world on my back: and to think
I almost gave it all up. What was I doing

baffled in my own flesh, sundered
by two calls: one voice says to hold back,
another urges me to be wilder,
as if I can learn a new instinct,
as if I should also want to drop my hood—
wink out of this existence.

---
I find myself jealous of ghosts,

for the ghost belongs
to no one. Tell me how
and I’d shed my skin.
I’d wear the wind, I’d undust
the floor with a dance.

In a sweeter hell, I’d tantrum
through bookshelves, blow out
every candle, be the first
to language the darkness.

I taught myself to speak
with a sweep of a chandelier.
I never asked to be divisible
with my comfort. I never asked
to be seen, only recognized.

Maybe this is all I’ve ever wanted:
to be untethered from my architecture.
To pass through a room
and feel it quake.

If you speak my name in the mirror,
please pair it with my aftermath.
Let me be known only
as what I have done.

----

Tell the Space Enthusiast “No, thank you.”

I can watch the stars from here.
I don't want the intimacy of their carnage.
I don't want my own.
It's enough to cobble space stations for my poor imagination.
It's enough to sit in my tender bedroom and know the sunrise will come through the window.
If I want a waning crescent, I'll stare at myself in the mirror until my smile disappears.
If I want a shooting star, I'll sit on an idea until it fades into tomorrow.
If I want galaxies, I'll notice my blue shift miseries.
The red shift solutions.
Perhaps I don't want my curiosity to die on another planet.
I see infinity and fill it with our capacity to ruin.
I know I've lost contact with my ability to marvel.
I see only the rubbled orbit,
the spare parts loose in the cosmos,
the theory that everything is moving away,
the belief that the only legacy we leave behind is centuries of city light seeping into the ozone.

You've been listening to the poems of Angela Lim on the Poets Weave. I'm Romayne Rubinas Dorsey.