Declaration Form, U.S. Border

Family Name: Peach In An Unlit Orchard
First (Given): Lantern, or Paper Lantern, Not Glass

Birth Date: Month:                                                          When
A siege of mirrors wrests sovereignty
Away from our taut skin.                  When
Daffodils burgeon from bloodshed,
Pistils washed into new bullets.       When
Flesh turns burgundy, too frail to confront
Anything tended by flesh.                When
Did all that happen?

Day:                                                          When
Bones are filled
With evening rainstorms

Year: Briefly old in cerecloth of snow

Predicted Death Date:                                                          When
Eternity is stitched
Within one blink of your eyelids

Employment: Flaneur of a Grander Departure

Part-Time Job: Somnambulist (with blue dreams glued in my hair)

Family Members: Dead, as you wish. Dead,
If you let me enter.

Ethnicity: Cellophane

Spouse: Lost, from the beginning. If not,
Lose that person in a second.

U.S. Accommodation: Street:               Where-Clovers-Crack-the-Alloyed-Air
Avenue:             Decimated-by-the-Suffocated-Siren
Apartment:       Butterfly-Burdens-a-Summer-Garden
To-Intrude-an-Elephant’s-Vision
Unit:                    Solitude-is-No-Longer-a-Hygienic-Barometer

Destination City: Lactescent Cataracts, Ovidian Scaffolds,
Unregimented Dance of Arrows
Breeding Wounds For An Absent St. Sebastian.

What Do You Wear: Nakedness is the last clothes I cannot take off.

Truth or Dare: Either could kill me.

Passport Issued By: Charades Are None of My Situation.

Passport Number: Nostalgia-2-Noumenon-7-Verandah-3-and-other-prime-numbers.

Country of Residence: Charades Are None of My Situation.

Countries Visited: Republic of Watertight-Sanitized-Bureaucracy.
Commonwealth of Murder-My-People-In-History.
Commonwealth of Murder-Your-People-Now.
Empire of I-Am-Not-Making-My-Body-A-Weaponry. Empire
Of You-Don’t-Believe-I-Am-Not-Making-My-Body-A-Weaponry.
Empire of You-Make-Me-To-Make-My-Body-A-Weaponry.
Colonies of United Separation. Countries of Let-Me-In.
Countries of Kick-Me-Out. I tightrope borderlines.

Reason of Visit: Hamburger & fried chicken. Escape from peaches. Look at stars.
Sing in the rain. Look at stars again. Forget human masts.
Detach nerve fibers in a constellatory laboratory that are linked
To the oceanic wrinkles of my cerebra; your American Dream.

Flight #/Vessel Name: Neglect Your Torrid Body Untenanted As A Sandal On Beach

Items You Bring With: Pocketful of periplums & Bulletproof recollection of trees.

Preexisting Impression Prehensile is not a post-requisite of an oculus.
of U.S: Nevertheless—imagine your own efflorescence,
The way you dis(re)member a yellowing face.

Additional Information: It pains my brain to cut open a peach—its veined flesh a map
Of an unfit land. Mortal boundaries shall shatter when you
Look at me. Look at me—between my eyes and your skin,
There is a constant warfare. Conqueror is the burnt-down air.

Signature: Peach In An Unlit Orchard Paper Lantern, Not Glass

 
Shangyang Fang

Shangyang Fang grew up in Chengdu, China, and writes both in English and Chinese. A recent graduate from Michener Center for Writers, he is now a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. His debut poetry collection is forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press in 2021.

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