Anna Maria Hong

Oral Report

I am fifty feet of spine torqued and feathered at the waist.
I am spine ripping stages root to tender.
I am stem blooming upward to a chamber full of trace.
I am tongue bending backward, slumming at the gate.
I am tongue still believing it has the power of spine.
I am the bone everybody tosses at the bone-weirdo’s picnic.
I am the star kidney makes in its hour of adulation.
I am the star beneath my heel, birthmark splashing lip.
I am toe, cold as nipple in an infant’s plucked mouth.
I am toe, hook, and nail dragging trench to trench of so?
I am fourteen. I am feet of. I am righteous. I am sound.

 

Hugo House Writer-in-Residence Anna Maria Hong is curator of Trapdoor 62 and Words’ Worth. Her publications include Hotel Amerika, Puerto del Sol, The International Examiner, Fence, The Austin Chronicle, and Poets & Writers.

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