5 October 2008 | Vol. 8, No. 3
The Boy Who Opened Everything
If you were really dead, thought Harlan about Toland-in-Heaven, I would let you go. Then while I was at it, I would sort into shapes I could understand, all your difficult disguises. There are so many. I would hold your death in my heart and sharpen on it. Where we used to go to be alone, I would hold apart us together. Where once holding meant our bodies different to each other dulling with desire. What would I do with the mouthshaped mark you left me hearing forever in my ear? Out of the sound of the blank space of the many closed things you once told me. Trapped like proof in the cement floor. There would be nothing else but to open everything if I let you go. If you were really dead.
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About the author:
Kim Gek Lin Short's chapbook, The Residents, is part of the dancing girl press 2008 series. Her work has appeared in journals such as Caketrain and Crab Orchard Review, and was selected by Kate Northrop among the Mad Poet's Review 2007 contest winners. Visit her online at www.kimgeklinshort.com.
For further reading:
See the complete list of work by Kim Gek Lin Short at 42opus. Browse the contents of 42opus Vol. 8, No. 3, where "The Boy Who Opened Everything" ran on October 5, 2008. List other work with these same labels: poetry, prose poem.
