Two Poems
ALL THAT JAZZ
After dinner, I decide to upload my mind
to the virtual world where life is eternal,
living is free, and people are kind. But like
cilantro, virtual living starts to brown as soon
as picked. I’m already missing what I left
behind: the creamy soups around the corner,
neighbors who nod back when I walk Max.
And Max. I raised him from a pup to relive
my youth and practice for old age. Now I’m
feeling guilty for putting him down yesterday.
They said Max couldn’t upload with me since
dogs aren’t conscious. But what if we’re all
conscious and can be digitized? What if we
can’t find extraterrestrials because they’ve all
abandoned the physical for a virtual world
upon developing quantum computers?
If all those E.T.s have uploaded and stayed,
I must’ve made the right choice too—so many
E.T.s can’t be wrong! If you’re still deciding,
I’d be glad to tell you what I know. Give me
time to settle in and shoot me an email.
Outside my window, Mt. Everest’s snowcap
is bright as sunlight, the sky is smiling like
a pod of dolphins, and kaleidoscopes of leaves
swing dance to the jazzy rhythms of a French-
Quarter nightclub. A monkey sits on a mango
tree branch over the dance floor peeling
a banana-shaped squirrel and taking bites—
one for his brain, one for his heart, and one
for his memories of screeching, scratching,
whooping, typing gibberish, and humping.
A virtual monkey’s virtual work is never done.
SELF-PORTRAIT OF AN EVERGREEN, SMOLDERING
After Ron Riekki
I’m drawing on paper, pulp from tree bones chopped
somewhere not far from coastal California, where
I am—far from hurricanes, blizzards, cornfields.
I chose gulls, fog, redwoods, pine cones, highways,
campuses, skyscrapers, quakes. I feel weird drawing
on tree bones but not as when eating pears, salmon,
chops, which isn’t to tout my conscience since
I’m all sap, trunk, concentric circles, what you see
after biting through a stuffed burrito, rings
around cheese, meat on beans, guac on flour, tub
rings, ring worms, nesting dolls, rooting for water,
reaching for light, bending to wind, my clog, my sap,
my leaves, my branches, a leaf, a flame, swaying,
swooning, leaping, ribboning, ribbons of orange,
twisting, wriggling, crackling. A hail of ribbons.
Hail ribbons full of burn and there it is! Smoke.
Plumes. Rising. Blowing. Spreading. And then rain.
Foam. Suds. Stench. Waves and waves of it. Night,
day, wind, rain. A bud. My blood. My trunk. Shiver
me ribbons. I draw and I draw. Others draw pine
cones and owls. I draw pointy trees and tubby bears.
They’re not what I expected and exactly what I am.
Blooms, gulls, skylines of castles, hives like honey,
ribbons like whimsy, fog like milk, termites at work.
Kenton K. Yee’s recent poems appear (or will soon) in Kenyon Review, Threepenny Review, Cincinnati Review, RHINO, Quarterly West, Poetry Northwest, Stonecoast, Columbia Journal, Electric Literature, Poetry Wales, Slipstream, Rattle, and other venues. His debut poetry chapbook is expected from Bull City Press in 2027. He writes from Northern California.
