Plague
i.
Always there has been this hunger
& this need to disguise it. In the
invisible background of Van Gogh’s
Cypresses is a son reaching into the
Earth for the lack of fruit hanging
from the trees & the same hunger
stayed with Billie Holiday in the
next century, when the branches
drooped with bodies. Hidden in
the mountains of Fan Kuan more
than a millennium later is a mother,
spearing the last fish that would
make the journey upstream & the
yellowing water, gleaming iridescent
with oil. Around Marie Laurencin’s
nymphic hill is a girl wrapped into
the tongue of another, struggling to
remember when she felt whole
without the fullness of another
devout & unholy consummation.
& the world denies us our meal &
we are still shamefully hungry.
ii.
Before the tsunami the tide must
ebb. There are always the hungry
before the locusts swarm.
About the Author:
Vanessa Y. Niu is a Chinese-American poet and classical singer who lives in New York City. She has written text for the modern composition scene at Juilliard and Interlochen, and can be found at the opera house, a slam-poetry session, or attending open physics lectures when not writing