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Things She Told the Rooster Before It Became Glass
This happened to me before I turned sixteen. They said, "Learn to look after something other than
yourself." It's no coincidence that there's nothing beyond the self. It's what wakes up in the morning.
Soon it will be dark. I'm here to save you. First, the woman upstairs learned Chopin then, recently
widowed, pushed the piano out the window. The wood splintered like any other wood on the
sidewalk, the wheels turning. "She could've hurt someone," they said; "she should be put away."
Outside her door, a box full of the dead husband's clothes. You came to me that way: a foreign
object, a hunger that required feeding. And now suddenly you're an extension of survival of the self,
hence alarmingly breakable.
Arlene Ang
This happened to me before I turned sixteen. They said, "Learn to look after something other than
yourself." It's no coincidence that there's nothing beyond the self. It's what wakes up in the morning.
Soon it will be dark. I'm here to save you. First, the woman upstairs learned Chopin then, recently
widowed, pushed the piano out the window. The wood splintered like any other wood on the
sidewalk, the wheels turning. "She could've hurt someone," they said; "she should be put away."
Outside her door, a box full of the dead husband's clothes. You came to me that way: a foreign
object, a hunger that required feeding. And now suddenly you're an extension of survival of the self,
hence alarmingly breakable.
Arlene Ang
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Copyright © 2009 Arlene Ang (poetry). All Rights Reserved.
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Tattoo by Victor Portugal