Muriel Leung




MOURN YOU BETTER: ecstatic phrase








Ecstatic phrase: mourn you better or else
surrender to the cherry nothingness of go back
to the everyday, which like a runaway gurney I should
lie awake for a pink comet to engulf me. I should
prick myself over and over with a thorn its grip
should strike me into grave.











Plenty of things to cry about—
Afterthought: dead
Sun and sugarland: dead
Briar ghost: dead
Mother: dead






The bones go clacking up the chimney. Time used to
mean, Let us be better to each other in the now. Today it means—






Don’t wear red on your wedding day
Suck salt off your thumb
Don’t cry









Go on and live without me









If I paint the suture trees or comb the luminescent
waste or huff the volcanic air. Something monstrous turns
my way but is blanketed in the prettiest lilac down
all gushed in purple-white.








Muriel Leung
is a multimedia poet and former teaching artist from Queens, NY. Her poetry and essays can be found or is forthcoming in Coconut, TENDERLOIN, Nepantla, Bone Bouquet, Dark Phrases, and RE/VISIONIST. She is a recipient of a Kundiman fellowship. Currently, she is a MFA candidate in poetry at Louisiana State University where she also serves as the Assistant Editor of New Delta Review.