and the hummingbirds sip from corries
cradled astride crests of Santa Anas
as the crickets churn their doubts
and prospects for oaks to arc their backs
auger well within the moss.
And so many petals shiver
at the ice churning within a cloud
that turns throbbing soil slush
and the sun centered in each seed
ashen.
The butterfly emerges
and slowly dries her wings as
we too spill from our cocoons.
Skyline unleavened,
our collective palms needed to knead
affection for a city to rise again.
For curled in the oriole’s beak
resonates a swelling
certainty. Today’s debris makes tomorrow’s sturdy nests.
Wriggle me a bee please
with oceans stacked on antennas
and collapsed universes on proboscis.
The bones untangle and remember
old whale songs that reverberate
within misty marrows sepia parched.
Azure acres ascend and
make multitudes of medullas again.
Let’s find an eon inside an acorn.
The ocean suds
suggests an accord
tempered in a granule of ancient sand.
The grime gloms misty
and the calipers strain against the brakeman’s lever.
We tunnel together to destinations
that have long been rubbed off the manifest
and replaced with sweat-streaked
solemnity
that could nary turn weak-fatigued necks
let alone
cranky twilight turnstiles.
On your alabaster bones
a pattern of cuneiform
has carved runes
of ancient birdsongs
and the grey-blue
speckles slung around
your unblinking irises
dislodges the moon
from the belly
of old and old once more.
The sea blue and folds over itself
over and countless times,
how the clippers haul creases
suggesting seams
on the brittle kirigami
of our wind-swept
paper-thin existence.
Tommy Vinh Bui is a librarian for the Los Angeles County Library. He was a 2015-16 American Library Association Spectrum Scholar and a 2018-19 Arts for LA Cultural Policy Fellow for the city of Inglewood. Bui’s poetry and artwork has been featured in Department of Cultural Affairs publications and he was a 2020 Pushcart Prize nominee. He also writes about the intersection of art and librarianship for the American Library Association’s Office of Intellectual Freedom. Many moons ago he was a Peace Corps volunteer serving in Central Asia. And today volunteers as a transportation specialist for the American Red Cross. He’s learning French so he can wear a beret on Bastille Day.