Two Poems by Gongyla Miller-Chen

Red Dog's Red Sweet Hometown

Debussy's Hommage à Rameau sprouts a pair of hands and feet and paranoias
to drive her brother away with bottles of Estradiol and Risperidone.

While the smell of a termite colony catching fire drifts
through the crack below her death-latched bedroom door,

the frontispiece depicting auntie chloroform turns red and
Dark Green Herakles sails to the Pure Land on a stolen golden alms bowl.

The Alderman Dies at the Hands of a Peasant Mob; Fei Yi Has a Chance Encounter with a Martian Man While Walking Up the Street to Vietnamtown

A contract worker riding on the back of a yellow crane
doesn't become an immortal—Parmenides' life's work reduced to a foot¹

Elizabeth Bishop's pet Man-Moth looks desperately for a way out,
not realizing the moon was only ever an image.²

Still, tourists visit this site, overlooking the hidden railways, north and south of the river, connecting³ Descartes & Foucault to⁴a headline:⁵

"Local Man⁶ Climbs to Top of Crane at Broadway/Wilson Development Site [and
and hearing the murmuring histories of gusts, a risk in an un⁷trained take-off, decides not to jump⁸.]"

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