Two Poems

By Skylar Wu

Fonsphobia (Fear of Spring)

Spring is the most plump, most miserable

mushroom to ever grow out of my eyes.

Teal and yellow scurry for billions of years,

crash on the internal walls of memory,

scatter into caterwauling kittens, wailing children;

tears spring into a pedal of moldy oranges. Damp

heat, they say, is the mosquitoes’ crying ritual, cries

today into tomorrow. What does it avail? My

pericranium still burns scarlet red,

chaotic like the inside of a bird’s egg.

Let it puncture clamorously, its nutrients outflow—

make this spring more spring than any of the past.

Illustration by Phoebe Wagoner

Invitation

Spring hangs off the branches of the nearest tree,

I grab its fruit with hands that have never touched a gun:

instead, receive some embroidered card,

written in words of supplication,

of presumption, of ekphrastic dreams.

Before this invitation, there was no me.

After this invitation, I am quartered.

Gardenia-shaped wind flicks the fireflies,

disturbs the wild rabbits;

their running away empties a patch of grass.

Inside the clear stream

scatters the embellished movement of an egret.

God’s face floats on the lake’s surface,

alongside the seagrass,

licked by the most interfering waves.

The feather is a lethargic piece,

left alongside the over-exerted bank.

The turbulence of silence

wraps around the finger,

polyphonically flutters.

The flower branches tremble

as if afraid of ossification,

or desiring caresses.

Wrinkle the humid night,

then all worries become ancient:

I delay grief for tomorrow.

Tonight, I ask to bypass the echo of human songs.