Two Poems by Maw Shein Win

She

sits
on the ledge of the sofa
ankles
crossed
arms extended as if she were holding a long french-tipped cigarette
back
stiff
this self
on alert

she
is
engaged
she
is
listening
to
every
word
the
person across from her is saying
she
responds
to
the words spoken by this person

the
other self
sits
back
legs casually flung to the sides like two shuttered gates blown open by the wind

she
is
not
engaged
she
is
not
listening
to
the well-dressed woman sitting in the beige armchair across from her
holding a yellow notepad and a fine-tipped pen

the
third
voice
in
the
hallway
is
loud
when it falls it is like a bookcase solid with books pushed over by a
small child with black hair wearing a pink dress with a heart-shaped collar

the
second
voice
is
resigned
the
words
fall to the hardwood floor the woman drops a book one at a time
her shoes are covered with mint-green paper for the operating room

the
first
self
is
listening
to
every
word
she
is
engaged

the
other
self
leans
back
on
the
sofa
she is listening to the first and second voices in the
two-bedroom suburban house with the broken porch light



Art in America, July 1999

a smear of color and then as a girl in motion

the discomfort induced by this cross-wired
carnal narcissism suggests a sort of discourse on
the increasing denaturalization of nature and
the mechanization of creativity which mines the
organic geometry of genetic and cellular forms
to create compositions

that attempt to fit the details of her own life
into economically derived systems

obscured by a thick dollop of lustrous,
pale-pink oil paint
cryptic narratives map
out the descent
from rural grace into suburban angst

an obsessive quest for order

notice the vicissitudes of personal existence
travel endlessly in search of the sublime
realize the artifice of your constructions

an island of trees in a haunted valley glows red


Maw Shein Win has been published in Watchword, Shampoo, Instant City, and Hyphen and has recent work in Progress Chrome, Boston Literary Review, and Red Hills Review. Her new chapbook is entitled The Farm Without Name. She is the editor of Comet and was recently awarded a summer residency at Marin Headlands Center for the Arts for 2006. She lives in Berkeley, California.