Poetry by Kimberly Gibson-Tran
Night-fires
Night, and the wind swings the limbs
of the peacock trees. I’m cold and start a fire,
listen to the crackle of teak leaves
eaten in a cloud. The guilt is mine. And grief.
They tumble like bats in the rising air.
Who’s there?
The moon’s steel socket winds to a glare.
I should have spoken out, I could’ve changed my mind.
Between my hands the felt of leaves, sleeve of a dress.
I let it happen and all the world shakes its seeds
and howls. Or is it me?
When I wake
light bars my skin. A car rounding the cul-de-sac
splashes its eyes into the darkness. Everything is still
in the house. No crumbs of ash in my hair.
Cinderella’s Hands
Princess that she was, my Nana’s knobby hands
mapped a sequence in blue on a star chart of freckles.
She used to call herself Cinderella
for doing my dishes
while I dozed on the couch
watching Drew Barrymore in Ever After.
Men are flighty, Nana observed, scrubbing, judging
the prince, his feathered hair.
Papa, years older, was long gone
yet she couldn’t stop sparing us chores.
It became a problem. This is my house, Mom,
said my mom. You sit and watch. Kimberly can wash.
Always someone telling us what to do, isn’t there?
she whispers in my ear. The sink sparkles. Sparrows
twitter at the window. She traces the ridges
ringing my palms, fingertips
grins conspiratorially—
guitar strings, golf, free-weights at the gym.
She puts the rough square of her thumb to my lips
makes me promise to do everything I wish.
When she died and they cosmetized her—her hands—
they laid out her long hands, one on the other.
Brown folds. Flattened birds. There are
no words for the wreck of it.
Kimberly Gibson-Tran holds two degrees in linguistics. Her recent writings appear or are forthcoming in Baltimore Review, The Bombay Literary Magazine, t’ART, Passages North, Third Coast, Porter House, and Reed Magazine, among several other places. Raised by medical missionaries in Thailand, she now lives in Princeton, Texas with her husband and cats.
Arcturus 