Linh Dinh

Two Poems

Affixions

Here the young like to skate about

In their gauzy glaze, while the old

Don crusty mud as they mosey.

Horse hair extension or tall turban crowns

An upended jockey, who’s checking out

All them fine, slurry chicks in stilettos.

(In this 1 billion-horse boonies, all the men

Are 5 foot 3 or less, and shrinking fast.)

Over the crotch, an embroidered arch,

Or just air, when the temperature’s right.

Tell all the gangly fucks to shun vertical stripes.

As for the squat screws—no horizontal.



Nature Freaks

Sometimes I forget that this world came

From fresh herring, that these people come

From solid herring stock. Lovely Bianca Black

Will soon be wedded to one Chien Meow, I see

Very clearly now how herring has brought us all

Together, under the lych gate, waiting, as always,

For the damn priest to tuck away his sin, before

He lowers us, one by one, into the bog, minus

Our blameless nuts and titties.

Copyright ©2006 by Green Integer and Linh Dinh.

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Linh Dinh is the author of two collections of stories, Fake House (Seven Stories Press 2000) and Blood and Soap (Seven Stories Press 2004), and three books of poems, All Around What Empties Out (Tinfish 2003), American Tatts (Chax 2005) and Borderless Bodies (Factory School 2005). His work has been anthologized in Best American Poetry 2000, Best American Poetry 2004 and Great American Prose Poems from Poe to the Present, among other places. He’s living in Norwich, England, as a David T.K. Wong fellow at the University of East Anglia.