Jason Wee (b. 1979)

SELECTED POEMS

Monsters (I)

On Beatus the monk's map,
    south of the known world,
        a continent of one-leggers,
    feet raised as fronds against the midday heat.

In the mountains the one-foot kui
    presses the wind to its drum-shaped form, 
        its thunder, Ge Hong warned,
    like the devil using your head for a beat.

I plot both directions on my atlas of lost cities, 
    watch the lines converge on
        an archipelago of marks,
    guttations where the pencil rested.

Here they lived, fleet- and sure-footed, 
    and died. I look up from my desk
        to see their graves, storeys high,
    stacked with occupants—

dragonflies, a bulldog bat
    crowning a wall like a gargoyle,
        us, the most contingent
    species of these—I imagine

our graves or the lack of,
    the myths of our lives and passing,
        if they will tell of how bipeds
    evolved from monopods

thrashing their tails upshore,
    only to die out like paper maps,
        or will there be air
    upon forgetful air over us,

long buried, and no tall stone
    or calm fields? I press my pencil
        into my atlas, a carbon shovel
    digging its paper grave.

1990

an excerpt from “Unreliable Evidence”

May I first of all congratulate you
 handing over my possessions for inspection
have taken the road towards a gracious
 I tore up my drawings.
Festival of Arts is now a regular feature
 The cell without pictures, I feel sorry to see 
them bare.
We are also showing more compassion
 did not require two sureties to ensure my 
good conduct.
towards the less privileged, contributing
 my mother didn't believe what I had said.
All these evidence of our becoming
 She looked frail and tired, as if my words
not just one which is good
 But when the blue gate opened and they 
were told
We are just learning to sing
 My belongings and a gunnysack of seized 
documents
or end up as a parvenu society, will depend on
 a yellow bird had flown into the house,
each and every one of us
 home at last

1991

an excerpt from “Unreliable Evidence”

Given enough time I can forget anything,
the most recent and the smallest
first, which pocket my pen was in

or if it’s never been, my travel umbrella.
Slowly the older moves into the indifferent dark.
The way to my studio in the four-room flat,

the library I first read Borges in,
the buses to my parents’ home,
one lost memory begets another and by the hour

I’d forgotten anniversaries, the years
in school spent learning numbers and names,
the schools, my name, and who you are.

My mind reshaped, without ridges and
perturbations, smooth as a leveled hill.
I can forget that I had forgotten,

which is to say I can remember anything
you might want me to.
Only the grass before the condo rose,

a clear field and not old stones.
The highway has always been there.
Only this country and not the country before.

The names you say turned out
to be all the names I know.
As for the rest, I think of the ash

that falls in the dry season.
Though char-black and tastes of smoke,
if you say it’s snow, it’s snow.

by Jason Wee
from The Monsters Between Us (2013)

 

SELECTED POEMS from An Epic of Durable Departures (2018) >