FENG SHUI
Listen: mute bells peal
as you step into the room.
The longed-for lover
shuns a cluttered house.
Sun-bleached books & browned papers
pile on shelves & chairs.
Avoid the blockage
of qi, of coffee tables.
Hostile corners jut
indecorously.
A bookshelf facing Travel
& Friends must be tamed
by a necklace of
mirrors. The Guas for Love &
Success appease eyes.
An inlaid-cypress
box contains photographs of
cats. A gray one sprawls
onto a settee
with vertiginous rosettes.
Gaps in smashed windows
leak relationships.
Voices seep into late night
as you listen for
heart’s compass rose. It
pivots till it locates the
needle pointing: here.
PARANOID X-RAY
X-Rays pierce a painting’s layered glaze.
Negatives reveal the chambers of eyes’ maze.
A woman’s portrait began as a man’s.
Impastos hide a stranger in eyes’ maze:
Warnings seep from a painting’s craquelure.
We see danger in an eye’s maze.
Dendritic cracks splinter in gesso—branch
into optic nerves: teal embers in eyes’ maze.
Ultraviolet rays expose charcoaled lines,
sealed in the amber of eyes’ maze.
Phantom figures in a canvas plead
to the blind who try to remember eyes’ gaze.