plea

in cities / i harden / so i seek / a holding space / in mountains / snow refines my distance / silent pines blink / more than words pass / into each other / pressing want into want / a new amplitude of longing / crowded by your / own hair and fingernails in this quiet land / of morning moons and bathroom suns and / in other worlds please: milk of more / kindness butter silk / more pines that weep / such batter-sweet sap / reach / for all the other ways to be you / to be full / to let your skin go / slack / between revolving doors / a lick of feeling / please: butter / silk and rivers let the skin have this / the golden the green i mean everything / including other ways of knowing / you in other worlds / please: fruit butter grass silk and rivers that run / like a riot and reach / may honey become / the global / supple chain / in other worlds please: kindness be / a mountain filling / my mouth.

to be a god however minor

and where
our lines fail
to meet
grow trees
from which
fruit fat
with seeds
drop to our feet
generously draped
as we are
by this canopy of light
the air is not
one but many
currents mingling
with secrets
invigorated
by a possibility
that can’t be
thought or felt
only flung forward
like a love
letter to the unseen
i know you too
fantasized about receiving
a message in a bottle
on an empty shore
as a child
it seemed incredible
that something so small might
survive an ocean
though each of us
did eventually

Zavi Kang Engles writes and walks in the city sometimes known as Los Angeles. Her writing has been published in The Rumpus, The Texas Review, HAD, and elsewhere. She is the Managing Editor of Apogee Journal. As an American Studies and Ethnicity PhD student, she researches Korean American shamanism and contemporary Asian American literature. For more, visit www.zavizavizavi.com.