Two Poems By Tim Suermondt

ABOVE WAN CHAI
 
The shrimp paste colored moon
is intently watching an older woman
 
on her balcony cutting fruit
with a profound precision—she could
 
do it blindfolded. She’s as much
a part of history as any general ever was.
 
The blue house across the street
has somehow gotten bluer, blue as the sea
 
where the freighters sit, awaiting orders.



CLEANSING SOME WOUNDS
 
These days, in this era, I’ll take
good luck wherever I find it.
Which is why I’m waiting for the ladybug
 
who’s landed on a man’s head,
a woman’s breast and the rim of a tuba
on her way to my hand, where I’ll cup
 
her with both before gently flicking her
out into the sky to spread her good luck
as far as she can, doing the heroic work
 
brief lives often do. Surely, things will
be a little better, nobler then. Surely.

Tim Suermondt is the author of five full-length collections of poems, the latest Josephine Baker Swimming Pool from MadHat Press, 2019. He has published in Poetry, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, The Georgia Review, The Galway Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Stand Magazine, december magazine, On the Seawall, Poet Lore and Plume, among many others. He lives in Cambridge (MA) with his wife, the poet Pui Ying Wong.