Two Poems

Arlene Ang

STUDY OF AN OBJECT AT REST

First thing you question is the owner.
Take, for example, the carcass
of a car. Identity is contrived by environment.
The engine itself may not be aware
of loss. Is graffiti on the hull—some lines
by Keats—soul or solitude? Beauty,
like a love for the natural world,
has stolen the hubcaps. It is stuck
without tires, without the car thief
who stole it. Apart from experiments,
there is no other use for dead
things. You throw stones at the windshield
and study the filigree of cracks.
You'll never observe what goes on
after you've gone, how the moon
walks its light across the glass like a dog.

THE MACRO LENS FEEDS, IN PART, ON HUMAN SKIN

The violin of hunger. The foreign country.
The body off the hook, like a phone.
Hunger in the folds of chiaroscuro and shavasana.
Hands travel the textures.
What is hair on the carpet if not grief?
The lines follow a tattoo around the navel.
Curvature of cigarette smoke.
Lampshades. Aphids on an ear lobe.
A torso composed of symmetrical rib patterns.
Piloerection. The tuned strings.
A spiral staircase mirrors a snail shell.
The eye reproduces its own depth of soul.

Arlene Ang

Arlene Ang lives in Spinea, Italy. Her poetry has been published in Forklift Ohio, 42opus, Pebble Lake Review, The Pedestal, Poetry Ireland and Rattle. She received The Frogmore Poetry Prize for 2006.

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