MAXWELL LI
harkening ghazal
Numb fingertips rub sand to feel sensations within.
The seagull’s corpse—swan song—is a creation within.
Yesterday’s eyes were blinded by ocean spray, eyelids.
Behind them, a vomit of stars starts mutation within.
Your broken wings are pencil scribbled on yellow paper.
Guilt folds twice: the scratching, then an observation within.
To capture so much yet so little is but a failure to adapt.
Tear feathered skin away to find only steel; a revelation within.
Frizzes of pissing light pierce through now naked eye holes.
The brain is still water, a tidal basin within.
I, the romanticist, peer into this yawning reservoir.
How tonic to see one’s own condition within.
Maxwell Li is a rising senior attending Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire. There, he is a co-head of the poetry and spoken word club, as well as an editor-in-chief for the Asian student magazine, which publishes art, photography, and literature. His work has previously been published by JUST POETRY!!!, the national poetry quarterly.