1.

One flower cut in half:

He loves me, he loves me not, he loves me;

 

2.

Water collects in the blue-eyed grass;

 

3.

Joined together by a point,

The initials of two boys touch:

 

As from the curving of two straight lines

A heartbeat appears on a graph—

 

4.

I perish.

Some verdant fly buzzes.

“Zz. Zz. Zz.”

 

5.

We stand on opposite flies of a button-up shirt

In which the blue vectors fail to meet. No button

 

Forges together scissors, no seam

Makes a cotton whole.

 

6.

Burnt like leaves in wildfire, an aurora borealis

Scatters pansies in the atmosphere’s aisles.

 

Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.

 

7.

I bite into the fig to spit the wasp out.

The wings are sliced in three.

The legs are severed in seven.

I taste no fig in fig; God is sinister.

 

8. Occam’s Razor

When stems bend, they’re in contrapposto:

They snap back to life if you clip them.

 

The tip is larger as every trim;

If you let it grow, the flower withers;

 

9.

Nails are enough to catch a scared scarab,

Though the shell will flutter orange in the wind: bright and dead;

 

10.

Tissue gets tougher with tears.

 

11.

I myself weigh on a rope between ideas—

As a sparrow perched on a cable.

 

12.

You are a grocery list: 65% oxygen,

15% carbon, 10% hydrogen, and 3% nitrogen.

 

13.

On an engagement ring, the blue of a cubic zirconia

Clouds next to the green tarnish of combined names.

 

The relationship is blurred.

 

14.

As the leaves droop,

and colors change,

I sense that the seasons fade away, out

my window, yet

when pale light leaks

through

 

I say that today is even better

 

though I couldn’t even comprehend what

today felt like yesterday

 

15.

Salt water washes into a paper cut shaped like a frown

Waning and waxing like the blood moon’s tire.

 

The vehicle of truth is a very closed mind;

I am a contradiction.

 

16.

A rope, strung high

To inhuman judgement; or an impulse,

As the dogs’ enslavement? The dance

Is a one-man show, an audience of one,

All but the one performing.

Waltzes are lonely without a partner,

And there is no sun to cast a shadow;

Shadows themselves lack shadows;

Thus there is no shadow to accompany;

It feels forced: to be with others,

To deal with their missteps, to deal with joys and sorrows

Not belonging to one’s own;

Sharing is selfish in that way: imposing

Misery upon another, when misery

Has already imposed itself upon!

We are poorer when giving,

More generous when miserly,

Generosity upon oneself is greed.

‘Less there be a wealth increasing with expenditure,

Let me spend these words to purchase poverty;

I am poorer when poor, richer when rich,

I’d rather honesty have this way than the other.

 

17.

The sparkle of highway behind this grove of trees,

I linger through this dark forest, lost

As red-breast robin bouncing upon a snowy grass

Confused, by late winter’s frost:

 

Aside, I hear the mockery of crows

From up the treetops, where shadows grow

And then below, the sudden rift

Of sudden loss, and sudden drift

 

Of a voice. I used to hear it when I sleep

Among the dirt, in shameful weep

And yet when my eyes are seen

I notice the glimmer of a light that gleams

 

Like a highway through the woods

Leaving me where, my life will be.

 

18.

A one night stand is a corsage of green carnations.

An aphid bites a peridot bell.

 

Kevin Le is a member of the class of 2022 and can be reached at kle01@wesleyan.edu.