Lucy Xiang-fu Wainger

THICK DESCRIPTION


At scale I disappear.
I am fixed and unfixed-from.

Crawling back into
the womb, thwarted—

I said let me out.
Let me out, I said.

The particles of me
and not-me exchange

nutrients, data. My cunt
a center of commerce,

bioluminescent
tourist trap.

Meanwhile the fiction of gravity
flits in and out of the party.

Were it possible to divide
more and other, 

pinpoint the change
from quantity to kind—

that is: how many bad days
constitute a life?

I’m asking
for an integer—

WE MAKE JUMPS WE CAN’T EXPLAIN


You found yourself stranded on X
Then Y surged up to kiss your feet

      That’s all I need to know
      Nobody will believe you

You claim the evidence explains
But evidence is a handful of slush
Tossed at unsuspecting passersby

      I pass you by but I have no body
      To toss for you, to testify

The more they see how you see
The more Y will congeal
Crystalline structure of a fact
Passed hand to hand, collecting prints

Until nobody will believe
It took you leaping over this
Hole in the floor of the mind