Poetry

musings /  by Anran Li

recently, I've been waking up or going to sleep at 5-6 in the morning...

the solution to good food is hunger

--Mornings--
i like birds one at a time
mourning, the death of sleep

--The Earth--
gets one hundred tons heavier each day
due to falling space dust

one sentence from ago /  by Anran Li

I was reading through some old essays I had written (for class, no less), and I realized how much my writing has lost flavor. This is one sentence:

Sprawled on the otherwise lonely stretcher, dressed in a suit as appropriate for a successful businessman as for a corpse, with no idea of the path I was going—only my final destination, with an itch under my left elbow, unable to scratch it because I no longer had control of my hands, approaching death faster than my Bugatti Veyron, and with a heart so heavy my four attendants could barely lift my stretcher any longer, I, Christobo Marie Golonzo, proud father of five children, successful entrepreneur, graduate of Harvard Business School, recently single, of white hair and brittle bones, aficionado of wine and wordly pleasures, and known affectionately as Chris, waited impatiently and nervously, with teeth gnashing like a horse’s, eyes cloudy but fighting diligently to contain rolling tears, breath under the weight of two great pillars, nervous system walking in glass shards, and heart twisting to the rise and fall of my portable deathbed, to go to the museum, sprawling with strangers, cold, unsympathetic people and art, and an ant army of size 10 Helvetica text on glowing screens, see the never-to-be-finished work of Renee de Maupassant, whom History would agree was the most lovely of women, the kindest of magnates, the most sociable of elites, the most enthusiastic of mothers, the most forgiving of spouses, my own wife, and now dead, and I realized how much I had not said to her.