Three Poems by Kristine Ong Muslim: Center of Gravity, Dread Cycle, Right Shoe

Three Poems

by Kristine Ong Muslim

Center of Gravity

To be drawn into shape,
deemed bloodless, not yet

cold, I am the curled form
in the middle. The floor sees

what it wants to see: toes, limbs,
the torso, the white of the scalp

where the hair parts, a doppelganger
taking a step back, transforming.

Dread Cycle

The corners of the room, the edges where
the walls meet all seem out of place,
like the memory of a coastline, its sand strewn
to simulate being windblown into erosion,
into golden mounds of miniature carcasses
then back again.

One is recovered from
the bottom of a hunger-belly
for dread is the source of all emptiness.

On the other side of the landscape
where the hills and trees are haphazardly
grown to muddle perspective,
the solitary people meet their doubles
howling as they decide on new names.

Right Shoe

A stroke of white, it takes its first stride.
It will not let go. It will keep us walking.

It does not wait for the other, the left pair
still stuck in another trail. It treads on

grass, earth, sand, water, pavement.
It will keep us walking.

A bloated conqueror.
A rogue dreamer.

Kristine Ong Muslim's work has appeared in more than four hundred publications worldwide, most recently in A River & Sound Review, Boston Review, Coe Review, Cold-Drill, Grasslimb, and Poetry Quarterly. She has been nominated five times for the Pushcart Prize and four times for the Science Fiction Poetry Association’s Rhysling Award. Her publication credits are listed here.

Copyright 2010, Kristine Ong Muslim. © This work is protected under the U.S. copyright laws. It may not be reproduced, reprinted, reused, or altered without the expressed written permission of the author.