The Sea

By Helena Haitian Jiang

Though intending to pause,
the position of the chessboard is always shifting.
Holding the cold water: in the sun
flashes a bottle of transparent violence.
 
One beetle is not enough.
A clutch of beetles creates a rending flow.
A clutch of buttons won’t do.
Just a single drop
it will sound like a cluster of collisions.
So they came and surrounded you too.
You get too close to the ground to get a closer look at the beautiful sparkles.
You shouldn’t have gotten too close to the ground.
You don’t have time to catch a stream of the brilliant water.
 
Under smacks,
his stomach began to growl with hunger.
Hung upside down,
he saw a large overturned cake: finally he was in a position to see rather than being seen— 
being stared at by that vast nothingness— 
almost over-confident.
The world is the only well-prepared cake,
toasting the universe’s birthday over and over again.
Every tree is a candle,
every leaf stands withered on the branch
for but a moment.
There was no reply, no flicker of bonfire.
The only things bustling are people, plowing the lawns
like maggots crawling over mold stains, completing some ruts but failing
to realize that completion needs further, deeper divisions.
He moved a bit, wanting to help finish.
No one can split the checks for him.
Then he will wait, helpless and endless
as the dark streaks ooze and fade, foreseeing the outlines that are about to usurp the subject,
the curtains that will eventually close.
He serves as the background. A less majestic one.
 
You try to figure out if his name is Rafflesia,
what bites and swallows an animal or a plant.
Like a reluctant mission
the sea
still has to be trekked in time. The shadows of sails connect the hulls.
Your iced neck cowers. The heat is so light
that it has flown to unseen heights without your seeing it whole.
Gradually your height falls and is filled with that burning pain.
The bubbles, reversed,
puncture the ground in bits.
No more echoes beckoning home, no more shouting.
Lift the smooth glass (like a mirror, satiny;
folding the faces, satiny, inside).
The park was deserted again.
 
Make a face
(a fake smile), the plastic shapeshifts
(squeezing, squeaking).
Plant a kiss on the mucky lane of revenge.
The lane trodden,
palm-slapped,
desolate,
glazed over with new tiles
(through patchwork, gaps become seams)
but unveiling unforgettable reefs.
It is also in a bottle.
To drift away.

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​Helena Haitian Jiang is a postgraduate majoring in English Language and Literature at Shanghai International Studies University, China. Her poems, translations and paintings have appeared or are forthcoming in Ilanot Review, Heavy Feather Review, Hawaii Pacific Review, Arkana, Corvus Review, and elsewhere.