andrew kang

I WILL WASTE MY LIFE

after James Wright

Up ahead, there’s a carillon chiming

past the streets and straight into the sea.

I climb my way to the bell tower

and stare at the Corinthian columns. The lettering

on the stone, plaques ivy has overgrown, all those

famous, ghastly faces, and I, alone: afraid

to recognize myself among them. In the summer,

my family and I go up to the Vineyards,

rent bikes, pack cantaloupe only to slurp piss clams,

good tourists that we are. I pedal fast, wheels cricketing

on gravel, so my parents won’t catch up, weighed

down by the melons. I see everything ahead,

the huckleberry garden, the gold-kissed bell-flowers

lining the driveways of this white-ivied town—

every window creaking with light, overflowing,

colonial. Sea spray clings to my sweat, waves crashing—

write that down, write that down. Carillon chiming past

and for a moment, the water stills, judging

how I skip over every reflection I see, my face growing

vines, how I hate the sound of my voice, how

it skipped over my parents, pulsing forward in the air,

how it kept tapping the water’s surface till it sank. I skip

only to wade back through the ripples—to pry them open

for flesh. How I dip my tongue in and lick. Then skip

home. I sink into a hammock. It curdles around me;

a wave. The piss clam: salt, cream, tang, rip,

flash, face, tongue. My mouth, stinging.