Maggie Wang

On Killing an Insect in My Kitchen

Afterward, I am again in loneliness. Her tiny death
a fog on memory. She lived here without me 

over a week. A feast on the scrap of my absence.
Her nothingness grew slowly 

into a forest, the lampshade turning
under her air-light feet. This evening, 

the open plain of her innocence. Like a coroner,
I will draw her in the nude, her figure shifting 

to permanent shadow. I have no means
to declare and measure, no final judgment to render. 

Night wraps her fiercely in its cold closure—
early night. On remembering her later, 

I will make myths about parting and joining.
About working the body and its humors. 

In our uncommon room, I want to move like her
from line to line. To follow the light

and be caught in its cross-hatching.

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Maggie Wang is interested in intertextuality, the environment and the absurd. She is the author of a chapbook, The Sun on the Tip of a Snail's Shell (Hazel Press, 2022).