Three Poems by L. Acadia

Omkarasana

 

You know who are secretly the biggest assholes?

Yoga Teachers.

 

Adverts full of pretty people bending blithely

on teak docks jutting, calm, into Bali sunsets.

 

Then I’m ‘unspiritual’ for complaining about

not mastering the humble flamingo on the

 

thousand-buck (mosquito bites gratis) intensive

‘retreat' on a suburban tarp-walled concrete slab?

 

The bemused man listening from the tatami

is luckily not a maligned yogi, but a

 

bicycle theft victim. He searched every back lane,

sketchy corner shop, then the whole police impound.

 

They let him scour CCTV footage for

four hours until he saw that French dude with a

 

Kundalini studio cut the lock. Before

he could decide how to confront the yoga bro,

 

A cop tipped off the French guy’s wife, who called in a

favour, sending a thug to tatami man’s door

 

with his bike and a threat: don’t press charges or you’ll

be doing omkarasana in the river.

 

To my Grandfathers

  

The Gascon

Setting me on your tweed-suited knee

            “call me grand-père”

You fulfil a fantasy of patriarchy,

Posing, feeding your koi, walking your elkhound, spotting dolphins, as though
you care

Longer than the camera flash.

 

Coming out as gay,

I read your smiles as tolerance

Unusual in your day;

Now I recognize your indifference.

 

The Caitiff

Swivelling in your tall desk chair

            “Leave it; don’t gawk”

You direct as a dare

To look at the model rockets, framed diplomas, vague plaques, pens in cases,
under lock

Trappings of a career, over.

 

The only grandchild to learn your mother tongue,

I still wasn’t worth talking to,

While had I known what you had done,

Neither would I have talked to you.

Flightpath of a Cicada

Humidity

      Remember laughing over umlauts:
it’s schwül; we’re schwul?

means even Taipei nights are hot

For now

I shouldn’t tease you,
unable to open enough for ü to echo under your collarbone

past midnight,

you didn’t mind me laying my fingers around your throat
pressing against your windpipe where to feel each vowel

we will ignore

walking our new dog,

I feel you swallow.

addicted to cicadas.

the warships

Flying squirrels, civet cats, even pangolins live here

While we brainstorm collective nouns

but frog-song fills the dark neighborhood

—an argument, caterwaul, fracas, fray of frogs—

and fighter jets

between the river, beautiful for swimming if not for water-ghosts

She cocks her head for the rattling chirp

and hills scaled with brightly tiled and mirrored spirit homes

from the bully

that gives no warning before careening in

we woke early to hike through,

a wobbling dive at our heads,

across the Straight

daring our bodies not to perform the miracle of turning sunlight to sweat

you shriek, uncharacteristically vulnerable, pull me into you.

luxuriate in being.

drenched.

 

L. Acadia is a lit professor at National Taiwan University, a dog pillow at home, and otherwise searching Taipei for urban hikes and ghosts. L. has a PhD from Berkeley, received fellowships including Fulbright and Marie Curie, and has writing published or forthcoming in Autostraddle, Common Knowledge, Immanent Frame, Neologism Poetry Journal, The Dodge, The Oxford Left Review, Typehouse Literary Magazine, etc. Twitter: @acadialogue