Response to Pablo Neruda’s ‘The Potter’

i consider your body
a threshold—
primordial route

for entering an egg
through the yoke;
through the eye of a needle

we see clearly
that we are shaped
by what we break from.

breast! oh breast!
this longing for poems
on bodies, this tying

a boys leg with nipples
and dragging him across country
is good way to die.

how can a shadow outrun
the light? must a boy be there?
a boy can outrun his body.

Younglan Talyoung