The Loneliest Light in the World

Karen An-hwei Lee

 
 

1.

In the loneliest light in the world,
a gust of pear blossoms --
the neighbor

downstairs
is falling
without a rail.

She falls for the final time.
No one helps her.

2.

A garden dies – 
hydrangeas,
star-gazer lilies, geraniums,

my hair incinerated
on a stove.

3.

Only this spring,      
the pear trees --

already those bones
broken to blossom --

 

Karen An-hwei Lee is the author of Phyla of Joy (Tupelo, 2012), Ardor (Tupelo, 2008) and In Medias Res (Sarabande, 2004), winner of the Norma Farber First Book Award. Her book of literary criticism, Anglophone Literatures in the Asian Diaspora: Literary Transnationalism and Translingual Migrations (Cambria, 2013), was selected for the Cambria World Sinophone Series. She holds an M.F.A. from Brown University and Ph.D. in English from the University of California, Berkeley. The recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Grant, she lives and teaches in greater Los Angeles, where she is a novice harpist.