The absence of a vocative case

in this language, Distress.

And now I cannot address you

the way I want to, blind thing.

 

To unearth what is absent,

what has since past, stressing

clarity in the face of common things:

but I cannot name you

when this, this, this, this.

 

To give you an anchor

against the drift, blind thing.

To anchor you

to the unmoving shore, blind thing.

To stop you, as drift of the world,

from binding me.

 

You were meant,

drift as you were,

to stop me from

wordplay and

distortion,

 

to move me

in the center of

my grief, blind thing,

 

to remove me.

 

*

 

Cathy Guo is a student and writer published in Mobius, the Margins (run by the Asian American Writer’s Workshop), Verdad, and more. She is currently working on her first chapbook project, which aims to present both oral history and poetry in a dialogue on memory, landscape and diaspora.  Follow her musings @_duxfemina_