Karen An-hwei Lee
On Millennial Angels Of Gravity
Or revolution as the anagram of root-unveil
Of gravity and God in the millennium
ardent face of the deep
orbiting a beatific voice of divine
attraction
as deep
calls to deep
Of air emergencies
aflame & unhoused firelight
warring in human borders of light curving
Querying an iota of oval saint
anagram for salvation so valiant
no elision of holy vowels
Or elision of holy vowels
tetragrammaton
God of X-Multiplication
Dear God of x-multiplied fishes
in questions, not yet revelations —
for instance, God: whether divine love
flows right to left on facing pages, recto verso
or left to right, verso recto.
God, does love fix our reduction to the absurd
reductio ad absurdum
in short-lived
intervals, n-1
to infinite regression? Are the coefficients of fish
and loaves multiplied with hunger
as one variable out of thousands?
Q.E.D.
Prayer at Thirty-Seven Thousand Feet Above Sea Level
To travel
on a thousand prayers. To say I was blessed as a girl
to fly across the world
so it no longer holds mystique.
Still, a miracle to ride the air.
To look up weather reports.
To use origami skills, folding clothes to the tiniest size.
To bring a rain parka folded like a wing or not.
To notate the back of a napkin —
ate a quarter of a red-angel pomegranate
this afternoon. Tart.
To fly over small orchards, blossom-end.
Karen An-hwei Lee is the author of Phyla of Joy (Tupelo 2012), Ardor (Tupelo 2008) and In Medias Res (Sarabande 2004), winner of the Norma Farber First Book Award. Lee also wrote two chapbooks, God’s One Hundred Promises (Swan Scythe 2002) and What the Sea Earns for a Living (Quaci Press 2014). Her book of literary criticism, Anglophone Literatures in the Asian Diaspora: Literary Transnationalism and Translingual Migrations (Cambria, 2013), was selected for the Cambria Sinophone World Series. The recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Grant, she serves as Full Professor of English and Chair at a liberal arts college in greater Los Angeles. Lee is a voting member of the National Book Critics Circle.