Exquisite Corpse.

Woo, Nancy Lynee

A point is only location. And isn't that what we are? Mere points? Some points suggest beginnings, some ends, all divide, and when they connect or divide, where they are defined, it is always because of a turn, an angle, a shift toward another plane.

--Percival Everett

   One point lies
   neatly packaged
   in an American
   history book.

   Red bean soup
   is another point.

   One point is tea,
   cultivated 350 A.D.

   Europe is a whole
   set of points,
   a cat's cradle.

   Another is Kunlun
   Mountain, abode of the gods.

   The Silk Road rests
   at a perpendicular angle
   to blue tiles in Mazatlan.

   A Lamborghini lies tangent
   to apartheid.

   The roar of jets overhead,
   a cloud of points.

   Plato's lungs, a mosque
   and the Star of David
   form a parabola.

   Hunger stretches
   into a plane of brittle grass.
   McDonald's and Walmart, a web.
   Red, where they connect.

   Ferguson, Missouri, rests on a long rope
   of turns, tight around too many necks.

   Exclusion Acts are points
   and also, the negation of points.

   Language is the Yellow River,
   isn't it?

   A mouth always leads to an ocean.

   A man's shout echoes,
   forms an obtuse angle
   with the black of the street,
   while someone says grace
   behind closed doors.

   The definition of mythology
   reads like the contours
   of a sand desert, reshaping
   and reshaping.

   Who the land belongs to,
   a stone on every immigrant's
   tongue. Thousands of points
   in thousands of stomachs.

   Like a kindergartner,
   I start drawing lines
   outside of lines.

   Pass the paper off to you.

   The crown of your head
   opens like a lotus.