Three Poems

SELF PORTRAIT AS EXIT SIGNS

my eyes adjust inward to find the source of the screeching
something always needs to be removed   even the word love

can get stuck in the hinges   the mouth/the drain/the exit
kept ajar by the tongue   stretching and pouring out words

outrun by the begging that forms them   know
that I only opened so that you could pass through,

but there are some things you cannot escape   even your name
pierced two decades to find me   it clung to my heels

as a shadow and became my eyes in the night   I have seen
my heroes change colors through the fence   I have heard

the crowd determine the definition of my body and still
I was afraid   fashioning yourself from the televisions

of suburban living rooms is an act of ironing in the gel
to hide the way your hair grows  there is nothing

I cannot pretend to be   dressing to be devoured and
reshaped in the mouth of a stranger   feeding their hunger

in the most mundane of ways   I promised myself I would
stop when my mother and I dug up her garden to find bricks

blocking the roots of her bushes   apparently all you need
are your fingers to purge what is buried   but her Japanese maple

died anyway and we had three wheel barrows of bricks   so
we joked about building another house   one with a large living room

doors   and windows   and more windows   I keep surviving
whatever is inside of me by avoiding mirrors   by saying I

love you just in case my clothes become
the only thing you recognize of me when you wake

MYRTLE

*
I reached for you through a decade
I hadn’t yet touched and you pulled me into your age
as if I were just a memory.
I buried your wedding ring in my hand as
you caught my chin with your fingertip.
My eyes were closed met
with the smell of lavender, the pulsing light
against the black.  So I opened and saw your face,
wet like air in August.

*
All I ever asked of you was to open
like bad news.  To hurt me
just so I could rest without thinking
I had vanished.  And you said you are here
with me, leave your sons at home.
So I lied
naked
as if I had no name or
my name was merely flesh.

*
Daegu sky, always the color of closed stores.
Always the smell of browned lilacs.  Enclosed by a peach
red room.
Enclosed by your waiting.

We were safe, so long as
the walls did not peel—so long
as we kept our roots
from planting.

*
Regret hardened into a child
like myrtle inside a drain.

You left for
your wife; I left because I could not hold the room together
alone; how it suddenly bruised in my lap—
how it suddenly could not keep out that
street market smell; how suddenly
I forgot your hands.

*
One night, I felt him ripping
at my insides as if he, too, knew
he was not supposed to be there.
He was hungry for a name—
something
to consume; something you can swallow
and become—
the way a crowd swallows the people
that create it.

*
And there he was,
bloodied and crying—
his screams piercing as soft as
a whisper.
How I wanted to hold on to him because he looked
so much like you—his eyes folded like yours when your mind
strayed from my listening; when you finally remembered
your family.

CATCHING UP WITH DEAD FRIENDS

________

Born in Daegu, South Korea, Mark Bias holds an M.A. from TCNJ and is an M.F.A. candidate at UMass at Amherst. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in IDK Magazine, Silver Needle Press, and Likely Red Press, among others.