Anna Maria Hong
 
 
Fix the Sphinx

 
Addicted to riddle and reversals

of person. Shift happens.

Core pulled down to core.

The monstrous breadth,

beached. The navel gazes

with its inner

whorl, eye knit over

original tore. The great draw

at world’s, at world’s ignition.

A stutter burns the heavens,

as seizure grabs

the firmament’s flotsam.

A tug at the wall of the mind’s drum,

as the riddle resolves.

10 to 2

 
Raise the hour and the glass—there is

beauty in the braggadocio. I break

my heart for you. My fast is no lament.

I break my luck in two—one for you

and two for me. My rumored blood,

my dynasty. The neck keeps pace. The horse

and I retouch the sky on clipped, brown wings.

To tell, rehearse, recede.

I raise a glass to the hour

you took the box from me. I raise my voice

inside your throat; I hum a viral children’s

storyline, which has no native melody.

The arrow whistles through the weft. The watch

sets on a silver beam minutely attached.
 
 

Anna Maria Hong is the Visiting Creative Writer at Ursinus College, a former Bunting Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and a recipient of Poetry magazine’s Frederick Bock Prize. Her fiction and poetry recently appear in The Iowa Review, The Nation, Green Mountains Review, Fence, Verse Daily, Drunken Boat, Dusie, Unsplendid, Harvard Review, Conduit, Great River Review, China Grove, Best New Poets, and The Best American Poetry. She is a Contributing Editor at The Offing.